Addictions to Work and Alcohol

Human behavior varies depending on culture, environment, or special circumstances. Ellen Goodman was born on April 11 of 1941; she is an American journalist and Pulitzer Prize winning columnist. The author Scott Russell Sanders studied physics and English at Brown University, graduating in 1967. “The Company Man” essay indicates how an excess of work can take over an individual’s life by having emotional impact on the people around them on a daily basis. “Under Influence” essay shows the readers a family experience with one of the immoral habits, which is the alcoholism. The readers can realize the common purpose of each author writing on both essays is to warn the general public about the negative effects of some of the evil habits and addictions of being alcoholic or workaholic, the undesirable outcomes on the addict’s family, and the harmful result on the addict’s health.

To begin with, any types of addiction will have some negative consequences in the long term. Being a hard worker is a decent characteristic for the person himself, his family, and for the society. Goodman, in “The Company Man” essay, mentions how Phil had a busy schedule, and describes that “he was a perfect Type A, a workaholic, a classic” (Goodman 1). However being hardworking is a respectable impression only if there is a balance in life between work and family. For this essay as an example, Phil developed an addiction to work. He became a workaholic who got isolated from his family and his own self focusing on his job only; he ignores everything else including himself, his wife, and kids.

Just like Phil, the father of Sanders was an addict too; he was an alcoholic, getting drunk all the time and causing a lot of suffering to his family and children. Sa...

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... mentally. It can damage the brain cells, the liver and digestive system, which leads to early death, and that exactly what happened to the author’s father.

In brief, addiction is the continued repetition of a behavior despite adverse consequences or a neurological impairment leading to such behaviors. Workaholic or alcoholic persons both share an addiction that leads to unwanted effects on the family and the whole society. The effects of addiction for both Phil and Sanders’s Father is that Phil was a workaholic “type A,” strange to himself, stress made him over weight and he died with heart failure. On the other side, Sanders’s father was an alcoholic and his addiction made him ignore his family and caused him early death. If a person does not want to ever suffer. The significance example for everyone’s life is never enslaving himself or herself to any addiction.