A Disneyland employee who spent $24,000 on his corporate credit card to buy illegal drugs said the Mouse House gave him a second chance after he came clean about his addiction.
Taron Sargsyan, who has since left the company, penned an essay for Business Insider detailing his personal struggles when he started an internship with Disney in the summer of 2014.
After graduating from college, Disney hired him as a software engineer on the Photopass team, which was a “haven” during a dark time, Sargsyan said.
Sargsyan said he was depressed and isolated after coming out as gay to his Armenian immigrant family, and that he turned to methamphetamines as a refuge.
“As my addiction deepened, my finances didn’t reflect the near-six-figure salary I earned at Disney,” Sargsyan wrote. “Most of my money was spent on drugs and on helping out my immigrant family.”
The engineer reached a breaking point when he realized he had racked up a $24,000 bill on his corporate card to support his drug habit and his family.
“I convinced myself I’d pay it back, but I was getting in over my head,” Sargsysan wrote.
for drugs.
A desperate Sargsyan took a stranger’s advice in early 2017 and admitted the “mistake” to his manager.
“I was terrified I’d get fired or go to jail, but Disney offered me the greatest gesture of love anyone could’ve shown me,” he wrote. “The company gave me a chance to pay it back and left me with a formal warning. This was a big turning point in my life.”
Sargsyan’s family gave him a loan to pay all of it back, and he said he worked to pay the company back that year.
The engineer said that Disney’s kind gesture also inspired him to go to rehab, but he “failed six times” and was starting to “give up hope.”
A year later, on July 17, 2018, Sargsyan hit rock bottom when he found himself “with no gas, no money, and 10 days left to return to work from another medical leave of absence.”
He said he pushed his friends and family away, and feared losing his job at the Mouse House, but he decided to Google “rehab for professionals,” and called for help.
Soon, Sargsyan was in Tustin, Calif. at a new rehab facility, which “changed his life.”
The engineer connected with the people at the rehab center who reminded him of people from his childhood and his innocence.
The experience reminded him of his own humanity and the humanity of his employer, he said, explaining that his relationship with his family improved as a result.
“Disney showed me that compassion can be a powerful force to inspire forgiveness and accountability. I learned that without self-forgiveness and accountability, healing from addiction is impossible,” he added.
Although Sargsyan no longer works for Disney, he said he is “grateful” for the company for “unlocking the power” of his “imagination” and for giving him a “second chance at life.”
Disney did not immediately comment.
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