If Professor Daniel Gilbert is right, then you are wrong to believe that a new car will make you as happy as you imagine it will. You are wrong to believe that finally getting that big case in will make you as happy for as long as you might imagine. On the other hand, if […]
Archive for the ‘Law Students’ Category
Joe’s Brain (Alcoholism and the Brain)
Posted byA lawyer (let’s call him Joe) comes home every day and pours a big drink into a Bobcats cup, goes into his den and closes the door. Because his wife has been complaining about his drinking he has started keeping a bottle in the car, so he had had a couple of long pulls even […]
Lawyer Anxiety
Posted byOne of the leading mental health issues facing lawyers, including lawyers suffering from alcohol addiction or depression, is anxiety. Anxiety can be a terrible emotional experience. It is a feeling that something horrible is about to happen, that is not actually happening. A mechanism in our body has been triggered to put us into a […]
A Recovery Story: My Life Is Ahead Of Me
Posted byThe Stories of fellow alcoholics are the fresh minted coins of survival. You pass yours to the next person in the hope he or she will see a gleam of their own life and find the reassurance of recovery. This is the story of a PALS member offered anonymously in that tradition. As I approach […]
A Recovery Story: Overcoming Barriers of Culture and Fear
Posted byDenial is a big part of addiction. The step from denial into recovery is a huge one, and for women lawyers it is very large indeed. As a young associate in a private firm, I faced a terrible fear. That fear was about addiction. I had gone straight from college into law school and from […]
Seeking the High Ground
Posted by“Man is nourished by that which is beyond the personal. He dies from preferring their opposites.” These are the concluding two sentences of Jacques Lusseyran’s book Against the Pollution of the I, which I discussed in this column last month. Today, I would like to explore what this means in legal education and how Lusseyran’s sentiment […]
Suicide – A Misunderstood Tragedy
Posted byThese articles are written by the family members of Mississippi lawyers lost to suicide. But for the Grace of God these stories could be about anyone of us affected with these illnesses. Rodney, Robert, and Portrait were real people, loving fathers, husbands, and lawyers. Often our culture focuses on “the suicide.” With these stories we […]
The Addictive Personality and the Legal Profession
Posted byOne of the questions I get asked over and over in meetings with local bars across the state is, “Are lawyers really that much more likely to become alcoholics or drug addicts?” Or, said another way, are lawyers more apt than others to contract addictive disease? The statistics for the general population reflect that approximately […]
It’s Now Easier for Law Students to Get Help
Posted byEvery now and then the Lawyer Assistance Program gets a call from a law student at one of our seven North Carolina law schools. The student would rather talk without giving his or her name. The LAP person answering the phone says that’s OK and asks what the concerns are. Usually the student is facing […]
Women and Addiction
Posted byClose your eyes and think woman alcoholic or woman lawyer alcoholic. What image comes to mind. Probably not any. There is not the image of the dirty, sleeping-under-the-train trestle wino image we often have for the male alcoholic. That image is inaccurate, but at least we have one. There is not the more accurate image […]