When Dave Shatilla started working in his family’s business at age 15, he was already drinking heavily. The company, KDDisplays, based in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, designs and manufactures point-of-sale displays for clients that include watercraft manufacturer Sea-Doo.
“We saw him drinking with his friends on weekends, but we couldn’t differentiate teenage partying from a drinking problem,” recalls his mother, Joan. By the time Shatilla joined the company full-time at age 22, he was binge drinking, especially after ice hockey games. “Whether I played at 6 p.m. or 11 p.m., I’d be out drinking until 4 a.m.,” Shatilla says. “I never had a shut-off valve.” He hid his excessive drinking for years and says he was in denial about how his hangovers and lack of focus were hurting the business.
Ten years ago, Shatilla tried cocaine. For a long time, he says, he snorted the drug only a couple of times a year. “It was a nice break from reality,” he says. The business was doing well, but his second marriage was not—which, Shatilla acknowledges, is no excuse for turning to drugs. By the time he entered rehab in 2007, he says, he was snorting more than two ounces a week and had stolen more than $200,000 in company funds to finance his high-flying lifestyle. “I was treating the company like my personal bank account,” he acknowledges. “I’d spend $30,000 on booze, drugs and women at a trade show.”
The sales executive, now 40, has been clean and sober for more than two years. His recent divorce was amicable, and his three children from that marriage seem to be adapting well, he notes. Luckily for the family business, Shatilla is wiser now and committed to its success. The company’s 2009 revenue was $5 million. And on a personal level, he has his life back. He has agreed to tell his story both for his own benefit—to reinforce how far he has come—and in the hope of helping others.
Addiction and substance abuse cost businesses billions in lost productivity and increased health costs, to say nothing of the personal cost to families. The problem is compounded when the worker who drinks to excess or abuses other drugs—or both—is a family member in a family business. The substance abuse can destroy the family’s current and future livelihood, in addition to testing family bonds.
According to a 2007 study by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), about 11 million American workers are dependent on or abuse alcohol, and approximately 3 million abuse illegal drugs. (Because the study respondents self-reported, the actual numbers are believed to be much higher.) There are no statistics on substance abuse in family businesses. But because family business owners often are not held accountable for their work performance, the family business environment can be more enabling than other work settings, as business psychologist Michael L. Stern noted in The Family Business Conflict Resolution Handbook. James Olan Hutcheson of ReGENERATION Partners, a family business consulting firm in Dallas, estimates that more than half of the businesses in his practice have dealt with a substance abuse problem within the family.
‘Are you ready now?’
Dave Shatilla’s father, Robert Shatilla, 66, started KDDisplays in 1984. His mother, Joan, 64, who was president of the promotional marketing division until ten years ago, is also a former chair of the Canadian Association of Family Enterprise (CAFE). Dave took over responsibility for sales; his sister Kim, now 42, was the controller.
In 2000 Kim and her husband spun off the promotional marketing arm of the company, and in 2003 Shatilla and his friend Brad Robinson bought his parents out. The parties arranged a phased payout over ten years for the elder Shatilla, who became chairman.
Robert Shatilla says he never realized how much his son drank and was unaware of his serious cocaine habit. Months earlier Dave’s then-wife had alerted his family and Robinson about his substance abuse, but Dave told everyone he had stopped using.
At his wife’s insistence, he had been seeing a drug counselor, but he had been buying fake urine on the Internet to pass the drug tests the counselor required and continued lying to himself and others about the extent of the problem.
As is typical of enablers, Robinson made excuses for Shatilla’s absences and bad behavior, even though he knew the business was suffering. Robinson had always overlooked what he viewed as his partner’s reckless spending, thinking Shatilla would just make up the losses at some point.
“When you go through the counseling process—they use the word enable, but when I was doing it I didn’t think I was, although I did fall on my sword for him a few times and let a couple of things go,” Robinson says. “It got to the point where I was disappointed and frustrated. As much as I wanted him to get clean, I knew we’d also be a better company if he did. I’m good at running things and he’s good at closing deals. We’re better as partners than alone.” He met with the elder Shatilla and told him his son’s wild behavior had to stop.
One day in November 2007, it became clear that the charade couldn’t continue.
Shatilla had picked up some important clients at the airport—while in the midst of a six-day cocaine binge. When the men finally arrived the office (after the drug-addled driver had received a speeding ticket), Shatilla kept excusing himself, supposedly to take calls from his divorce lawyer. He was actually snorting coke in the restroom, and Robinson guessed as much. They barely got through the meeting. Afterward, Shatilla drove the clients to their hotel and finally slept himself—after doing a couple more lines of coke.
Robinson woke him around noon the next day and insisted that he make an appointment with the drug counselor he’d been seeing at his wife’s request. Robinson surprised Shatilla by showing up at his appointment and confronted him in front of the counselor. Breaking down, he told Shatilla, “I just want my friend back.”
The counselor, who had listened to Shatilla’s protestations about treatment for months, now turned to his client and asked him one question: “Are you ready now?”
The business owner was finally ready. The counselor booked him into Caron Treatment Centers in Pennsylvania and, unbeknownst to Shatilla, arranged for an intervention to take place before the scheduled plane trip the next morning (“in case I decided to run,” Shatilla now knows).
Participating in the intervention were the Shatilla family, Robinson and Robinson’s father, who was on the company board. When they were all assembled, Shatilla’s family told him what his addiction meant to them, reiterated how much they loved him and said they feared what would happen if he didn’t stop. “We were devastated when we learned how bad the problem was,” his father says. “He was going to die if he kept it up, and he knew that. We took everything away from him—he had no money, no credit cards, nothing. I drove him to the airport, and walked him through security. The feeling of not knowing what was going to happen to him was unbelievable.” Shatilla’s mother calls it the worst day of her life.
Shatilla’s family attended the family sessions with him at Caron, and Robinson attended a few as well. His father says Shatilla’s mother could tell he was still “snowing everyone,” however, and the family recommended he stay for 90 more days. (He had already been at Caron for 30 days.) Afterward, he signed up for yet another month. In all, he stayed for five months, paid for by the company. Robert Shatilla went back to work three days a week to help run the business and to support Robinson. Robinson told the truth about his partner’s absence to customers he was close to and told others Shatilla was taking care of some heath issues.
‘I had manipulated everyone’
Shatilla signed over power of attorney to his father the day he left for Caron, and Robinson and Robert Shatilla renegotiated Robert’s original ten-year payout. “We had bought the business for a set amount, with profit sharing added to that,” Dave Shatilla says. “The payout was based on the future profit of the business. They had to renegotiate the profit sharing and make it revenue-based so that my father will get paid on sales, which is better for him. Brad and I arranged our own settlement between ourselves.”
Shatilla says he abused alcohol and cocaine because he didn’t know how to cope with controversy or pressure. “If I don’t produce, then it affects my parents’ retirement and our 25 or 30 employees as well. That’s a lot of pressure,” he says.
He says he learned to deal with pressure in rehab, and he now accepts that “All I can do is my best.” Also, he says, he had always kept his feelings bottled up, but the program has taught him to discuss them.
Shatilla credits the extended program for saving him. “I had manipulated everyone to feel sorry for me,” he reflects. “I had Brad mad at my parents and my wife, I had my parents mad at my wife and my partner, and I had my wife mad at my partner and my parents. I didn’t even realize it before Caron.”
After he left Caron in April 2008, Shatilla stayed on hiatus two more months because he wanted to reconnect with society and with his family, he says. But he made sure to attend two self-help meetings a day during his newfound sobriety. “My biggest fear is complacency—feeling things are back on track with the business and I don’t need the program,” he reflects. “I’ll probably go to meetings forever because I know if I don’t I can be back to where I was.”
Shatilla believes his father must have been terribly disappointed after learning his son had nearly run the business he had started into the ground, but Robert downplays that assessment. “My initial feeling was ‘God, he’s going to die,’ and that pre-empted everything else,” Robert Shatilla says. “He’s our son, so we looked at the stealing, and it hurt, but it was secondary to his life.
“We looked at Caron’s record and they have a good one, especially for people who stay for the extended program. I think it saved his life. He’s back to what we remember. I also believe he’ll pay us back what he owes us.”
Acknowledging the problem
Hutcheson, who is a trustee of Caron and chairman of the Caron Texas Advisory Board, has referred numerous family business members to treatment centers. When family business consultants are called in for advice, it’s not always obvious initially that the family’s real problem is substance abuse, Hutcheson notes. “The family might say they want to discuss succession, for example, but when I meet with them, things don’t make sense,” he explains. After further discussion, he might find the issues the family contacted him about are the result of someone’s addictive behavior. Usually it’s a problem with alcohol, Hutcheson says, although he notes that he once worked with a company president who played Internet games eight hours a day.
In another family business he worked with, the CEO passed out after drinking wine and 15 martinis at an event organized to honor him. (An employee counted the drinks, Hutcheson says.) The business was rapidly declining and no one respected the man.
The problem is particularly thorny when the addict is the business leader, who need not worry about potential consequences such as loss of a job, the consultant explains. “The person has to be made to understand what they’re giving up and what their behavior is costing them,” Hutcheson suggests.
Hutcheson has found that a lot of companies aren’t willing to do anything about the problem. And if the business leader controls the purse strings and affects other family members’ income, it’s especially difficult to get their buy-in. Other family business members might ignore a substance abuse problem because they don’t know how to deal with it, he notes.
Robert Shatilla advises other families to remember that the most important thing is the addict’s recovery. Though it was hard to admit his son is an addict, he learned to get mad at the addiction, not the person. Joan Shatilla says the other lesson they learned is that, as difficult as it is for a parent, “letting go” to allow the addict to heal is crucial for the recovery process.
Hutcheson has this bit of comfort to offer family businesses dealing with alcohol or other substance abuse: “You’re not alone. It’s treatable, and there are good treatments available.” He adds that if the family truly wants to get to a better place, experts can help them gain control over their own lives rather than be controlled by the addict.
Patricia Olsen is the author, with Petros Levounis, M.D., of Sober Siblings: How to Help Your Alcoholic Brother or Sister—And Not Lose Yourself.
Resources
• Al-anon: www.al-anon.alateen.org
• Alcoholics Anonymous: http://aa.org
• Caron Treatment Centers: www.caron.org
• National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism: www.niaaa.nih.gov
• The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration offers information at http://store.samhsa.gov
• A helpful publication for those curious about safe drinking limits can be found at http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/RethinkingDrinking/Rethinking_Drinking.pdf
• Two tools to help ascertain whether someone may have a drinking problem are the CAGE and AUDIT questionnaires. They’re available in various publications geared to medical professionals at http://www.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/Pages/default.aspx
• Books by addiction specialists include Helping the Addict You Love, by Laurence Westreich, M.D.; Willpower’s Not Enough: Recovering from Addictions of Every Kind, by Arnold Washton, Ph.D.; and The Heart of Addiction, by Lance Dodes, M.D.