Today is National Oyster Day. I don’t know much about oysters, personally, but they’re a big deal in different parts of the world. There are oyster festivals in Connecticut and New Orleans, another in Long Island, New York, and still others in England and Australia. The little mollusks are a big deal.

National oyster day has me thinking about commercial fisherman (fisherpeople?), people who fish for a living. Fishing is a fun pastime, but it can’t be an easy job. It can be physically demanding. You have to do a lot of bending and lifting. It looks like it might also be boring, because fishing can require you to wait. A lot.

The uncertainty and lack of control seem to be the worst of all. If you fish for a living, you have to depend on the right weather conditions. You have to hope that the conditions were right to produce enough oysters to allow you to make a living. You have to compete with other people who fish for a living.

It looks like fishing can be a tough job. It’s not too surprising, then, that a number of fisherpeople turn to alcohol to help them cope. According to the Center for Integrated Behavioral Health Policy at the George Washington University Medical Center, people in the fishing, hunting, agriculture and forestry industry miss several days of work each year due to their dependence on alcohol. They have more alcohol-related work absences than workers in any other industry, in fact.

People facing such stress can also find help for it. While stress is an unfortunate part of many professional lives, people don’t have to use alcohol and drugs to handle this stress. If they do, they can find help. This help can help them treat their drug and alcohol abuse. Just as importantly, it can help them find ways to prevent it from happening again.