New Job Hope For Adults In Drug And Alcohol Recovery

For most of his life when he was in between jobs, Tim Tulvey would toss his resume up on a hiring site like Indeed.com. He had decades of management experience working for landscaping companies, and even owned his own pest control business for a while.

"I was getting hits left and right," Tulvey said, recalling previous times he'd posted. "I mean, there was companies reaching out to me a lot."

But this time was different. This time, he had been through rehab, and picked up an assault charge. He didn't get any bites.

For many with a history of addiction, finding a job can be tough. Of the 22 million adults in recovery in the United States, nine percent are unemployed — that's more than double the overall rate. There are lots of reasons for this - addiction can cause people to go long stints without working, and that doesn't look great on a resume. For others, like Tulvey, addiction goes hand-in-hand with jail time and a criminal record.