Long before I stopped drinking, I had stopped feeling anything except anger and fear. I had plenty of those two feelings. Although I drank like a champion to deaden them, the feelings of anger and fear just wouldn’t go away. I justified and rationalized my anger by telling myself if fueled my effectiveness as an attorney to be angry on behalf of my client. I justified and rationalized my fear by telling myself that if I wasn’t afraid, I was not pushing my own boundaries for growth hard enough and was becoming complacent.
Both were lies.
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I was obsessed—insanely so—with alcohol while I was still drinking. This obsession left its calling card on my appointment calendar. Now, as a recovered alcoholic attorney, the “obsession to drink” is removed, but before we get into that, let’s discuss some vocabulary.
Desire: wanting something.
Craving: wanting more of something.
Obsession: thinking and planning your life around something.
These days I’m not obsessed with alcohol, nor do I desire to drink, because if I take even one drink there’s one thing I know for sure—I will crave more. And, that path leads steeply downhill.
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You hit bottom when you stop digging.
Alcoholics, including alcoholic attorneys spend a good bit of time discussing how they “hit bottom.” Some people have “hard,” or “low” bottoms. Others have “soft” or “high” bottoms. The reason for this is simple: you hit bottom when you stop digging.
I didn’t get a DUI. I didn’t have the allergic reaction that finds many alcoholics “breaking out in a bad case of handcuffs.” I didn’t lose my spouse or kids. I didn’t lose my practice. What I lost was my ability to manage the day-to-day events of life without drinking, and in spite of my best efforts, it was getting worse.
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Alcoholics, including alcoholic attorneys, think we can stop drinking anytime. We’ve told ourselves that dozens, maybe hundreds of times. But it really hasn’t worked for many of us—at least not for very long. I tried to stop drinking on my own for just one year. I couldn’t do it.
A while ago, on a December 30th, I had a long afternoon of celebration with some friends at a bar. Martinis, beer, even a little food had been the focus of the day. My spouse had asked me to pick up some batteries on my way home from work that day, so after saying goodnight to the gang, I stopped past the hardware store and picked up the batteries and drove home.
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I am just one more lawyer, one of the estimated 1 in 5 attorneys in the United States who has the metabolic abnormality, allergy, disease, known as “alcoholism.” I am an alcoholic attorney. Odds are you know a bunch of people just like me. Maybe you are like me—an alcoholic lawyer who has recovered from the disease of alcoholism. But maybe you are an alcoholic lawyer who is still drinking. I am writing for the still-suffering alcoholic attorney as well as all the alcoholic lawyers in recovery.
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