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My son is an addict. His addiction has had a profound impact on my life. Addiction—which includes alcoholism—is a disease, and it wreaks havoc on family members as well as the addict. In this 2-part article a LAP Volunteer shares about recovery on the family side....Read Part 1. Read Part 2.

I am smart. I really enjoy using my smarts to solve problems: logic problems, crossword puzzles, strangers needing directions, my clients’ problems, my friends’ problems, and my family’s problems. But, fixing problems has a sinister side, just like any addiction, and one can develop compassion fatigue. The best way to explain “compassion fatigue” comes from my therapist. During a session, as I was throwing off my defensive statements to her regarding “not caring” or “it’s not my problem,” she openly scoffed that I enjoyed fixing other’s problems the same way alcoholics drink beer. She observed that I would never be the person who just didn’t care. She is so right. I like helping people. I like being smart and solving problems. I discovered, however, that the bad side of caring too much and about the wrong things can lead to not caring at all about most everything. Read full article here.

I’m here because somebody, maybe somebody reading this, dimed me out. Threw me under the bus. Lied about me to the authorities. Said I was drunk in court. The truth is, I have never been drunk in court: yet. Never been drunk at the office…yet. Never lost my driver’s license because I’d been driving drunk…yet. Never been disciplined by the bar for an unethical act committed while drinking or drunk…yet. Read full article here.

One of the most-used words during the pandemic has been the word “change.” Each of our personal and professional worlds has undergone countless micro and macro changes; some for better, others for worse. The amount of adjustments we have been forced to make during the pandemic is almost incomprehensible to our brains and nervous systems. While we may have successfully adapted in countless ways, our nervous systems are not used to making so many changes all at once in such a short period of time; we may need some time to catch up and integrate what happened. Read full article here.

When I think back and remember the latter part of my active alcoholism and its impact on my family, more than anything else, I think of the extraordinary amount of time I spent trying to hide my drinking. It felt like I spent almost all my time either hiding the purchase of alcohol, hiding the use of it (and then lying about the use of it), and attempting to hide all evidence—usually by throwing away all of the bottles, cans, etc. I knew, however, that there were times that it was not hidden. Read the full article here.

Alcohol is not my problem. It never was. My problem is me. Always has been and always will be. And the problem follows me wherever I go.

I struggle to accept my imperfections or acknowledge that I make mistakes. I have trouble admitting that I am not the best at everything. When I was in the first grade, my optimist league basketball team made the championship game. We lost, and I received a second-place trophy. Instead of being excited about my trophy, I was upset that I did not win the championship. So, when I got home, I grabbed an ax, took the trophy behind the pump house, and chopped up the second-place trophy into little pieces. My grandfather found me and was horrified. Read the full article here.

While driving to the coast recently, I was listening to Tara Brach’s book Radical Acceptance. Brach is known for encouraging her readers and listeners to face and walk through their fears and problems. It made me think of that night of my first AA meeting where I uttered the magic words for the first time. There was something powerful in stating publicly what I had known for years but refused to accept. I have described that experience as flipping a light switch. There was an immediate shift within me. That got me thinking. Are there other things in my life that I am resisting? Wouldn’t it help to acknowledge those things to someone else? Read the full article here.

At the start, it was a starburst of luminous warmth. It was fun, it was freeing, it was sophisticated. It was summer beers, sunset champagne toasts, French martinis and obscure Italian wines. I started drinking because it made me relaxed and connected and in love. I felt closer to people around me, to myself, to the buzzing hum of energy I called God. Drinking helped me inch from chrysalis shells of shyness and insecurity. It took me to temporary planes of higher consciousness. Drinking was my friend.

At the end, I was stranded and alone in a darkened house, a husk. What once connected me had led me to self-imposed isolation and crippling loneliness. Read the full article here.

21 months into the pandemic, many lawyers are on the verge of collapse. In this latest edition of the Mindful Moment with Laura Mahr of Conscious Legal Minds, Laura takes us through a short exercise we can use to rewire our brains when the world does not feel OK. Link to the full article here.

Mid-November 2000 I was lying on a couch in my office with the lights out, hoping the room would stop spinning. It was around 8:30 am and I found myself in the same situation again: hung over at work and desperate. I was desperate not to have to go to court and act like everything was okay. I felt empty and fearful. I was disgusted with myself and felt no hope. My life seemed to be one big black hole. I couldn’t face people and I couldn’t look anyone in the eye. My professional life was coming to an end, and I thought there was no stopping that inevitability. A hearing in front of the Grievance Committee of the State Bar was fast approaching....Read the full story here.