The substance abuse which is currently facing Canadian Oil workers, is one which can be referred to as destructive, as this addiction has been known to cause the destruction of lives, especially for men who initially came to Canada with the mind of making a living for themselves and their families. Eventually, they got caught up in the web of addiction, and breaking free from it becomes nearly impossible.

Now, they cannot entirely be blamed, based on the fact that the living conditions are not that great, there is a lot they have to sacrifice to ensure that they perform well as oil workers. Worthy of mention, is the fact that there is a lot of money to make in the oil industry, hence, the stress can be assumed to be worth it. This is one of the reasons why oil workers do not really take the stress to heart, since the money makes up for it.

First of all, Oil workers in Canada are known to invest in drugs and alcohol. They take these substances because it helps them calm their nerves after a hard day’s job, and they cannot be totally blamed, as it is likely that this act was also passed down to them. For instance, one prominent drug which they take, is Cocaine. In the oil sands, cocaine is very lucrative to the dealers, and accessible to the oil workers, and it is largely responsible for the causes of mental issues which is present among oil workers.

Asides drugs, the same applies to alcohol. The rate of alcohol availability among oil workers in Canada, is also on the increase. Oil workers also take alcohol in order to cool off, without knowing that there is a detrimental effect in the long run.

It is essential that oil workers who are down with addiction to either drugs or alcohol, need to seek prompt treatment in order to salvage their condition. There are a good number of working rehab centres which can adequately cater for addicts irrespective of the degree of addiction. In addition to this, addicts should also be aware that, all the love and encouragement which they can get in order to break free from addiction, is available at addiction treatment centres.

Boom towns have a culture all their own, and they are not always pretty. Boom towns like Fort McMurray, Alberta are established when a valuable resource is discovered in the vicinity of the town and the city grows rapidly with the efforts to harvest the natural resource. The term “boom town” is typically applied to mining cities that are excavating for oil or precious metals. Because of how workers flock to boom towns to make money, and because of how the towns struggle to accommodate the influx of new residents, boom towns are known to have particular surpluses and deficits, both moral and logistical.

The things boom towns tend to have too much of are men, jobs, money and population. Because boom towns are typically built upon labor trades, it is men who seek and obtain a majority of the jobs. This leads to an imbalance in the town’s population between men and women, making it male dominated. Boom towns obviously have a surplus of jobs or they would not be boom towns. While a boom town is a boom town, its primary industry is ever expanding, creating new jobs daily. The work is highly profitable and earns its employees an impressive wage that they could not make anywhere else. As more and more people pile into town to make their fortune, the population grows to an unmanageable size.

But where boom towns have an excess of some things, they have a deficit of others. Boom towns commonly lack women, space, infrastructure and entertainment. Because it is men who flock to trade jobs, boom towns typically do not have enough women contributing to the population and turn into a heavily male dominated culture. Space for people becomes very limited as the town’s population grows at a faster rate than its infrastructure, causing overcrowding and tension. As the governing bodies struggle to provide basic services to the rapidly growing population, recreation for town residents gets put on the back burner and neglected, which consistently leads to debauchery among bored boom town residents.

The oil worker population is largely made up of displaced men, averaging 30-years in age, who have often separated from their support systems in order to be there. The work sites and camps are full of testosterone, energy, angst and boredom. When these things are fueled by large paychecks, addictions and substance abuse run rampant.

Particularly in winter when conditions are harsh and frigid, there is simply nothing for the oil workers to do for recreation and the lack of recreational activities in Fort McMurray and in the surrounding oil camps is in part responsible for the area’s extreme addiction and substance abuse problems. The reasons for this are numerous. Only ten years ago, Fort McMurray had a population of 50,000 people; a number that has more than doubled in the present day. This kind of growth is almost unprecedented for a city, though it is common for a boom town. Predictably, the city and municipality have been unable to keep the city’s infrastructure relative to the size and the needs of the population, so recreational amenities are lacking.

However, there have been some efforts to provide entertainment for the oil workers. Oil giant Syncrude recently built a huge recreation center near the downtown area to give oil workers access to gym and game amenities – an effort to give employees much needed physical activity while they are not working. The trouble is, the draw to Fort McMurray is so massive and the wages are so lucrative that the city should look vastly different in order to support the needs of its population. The residents of Fort McMurray are able to afford a lifestyle full of entertainment, but the area they live in is cramped, unequipped and overwhelmed with people.

Currently, Alberta’s addiction treatment services are overextended, and many people have expressed the need for more recreational facilities and addiction service centers. Whether or not this goal will come to fruition remains to be seen, and people in need of treatment are venturing out to other provinces for help.