Jim, California To almost any outside observer in 1980, I was sitting on top of the world. Maybe not a very big world, but one that a lot of us know. I was 28 years old, a very successful solo practitioner with a practice growing beyond my wildest dreams, and a “hometown boy” to boot. […]
One of the turning points in my thirty-five years of sobriety occurred in 1972 when I chose to lament on the shoulders of my good friend, S. Pretlowe Winborune. Mr. Winbourne is a friend of mine and a friend of attorneys everywhere. I had been working diligently with five attorneys and two of them were […]
I am a lawyer. I am also an alcoholic. I drank in college, but the alcoholic drinking started in the military and persisted through law school and the next 22 years. I was a quiet drinker. I did not hang out in bars; I drank either in the office at night or at home. I […]
Standing at the doorway of the courtroom, I reflected on how I had come to be here as a civil court judge. My reverie took me back to another time when I stood at the door of a different room, where a meeting of recovering alcoholics was in progress. I recalled wondering how I had […]
Tatum O’Neal. Britney Spears. Lindsay Lohan. Your dear sweet Aunt Mamie. Why do so many substance abusers keep getting sucked back into their addictions–just when you think they’ve bounced back for good? According to psychologists at the University of Wisconsin, it’s because these folks never deal with the original core substance responsible for their substance […]
The LAP received a call on the afternoon of July 24, 2007, from the daughter of an aging attorney. She said that she needed assistance to help her 90-year-old father close his law practice. Though I did not speak with the woman, my initial impression was that she was seeking to have someone from the […]
I was not one of those who was confused as to why my world was falling apart around me. I knew. All too well. It was my addiction and alcoholism. I remember exactly where I was when I looked myself in the rear-view mirror of my truck and admitted I was an addict and an […]
I’m telling my story because it is an important story to tell. I came into the Gambler’s Anonymous (GA) 12-step program in March 1987, and since then I have attended thousands of meetings. I didn’t know what to expect when I went to my first meeting, but I knew I had gambled compulsively for 26 […]
I think that many oldsters who have put our AA “booze cure” to severe but successful tests still find they often lack emotional sobriety. Perhaps they will be the spearhead for the next major development in AA — the development of much more real maturity and balance (which is to say, humility) in our relations […]
My grandma was fond of saying, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” This is something that needs to be said to researchers from the Italian Agency for Public Health in Rome who recently reported there are no advantages to a 12 step intervention program. I don’t know why researchers felt the need to study […]
I always liked partying. I liked the way drinking made me feel. I knew I drank more than most of my friends, but I didn’t think too much about it. I played around with some drugs, but I never went to great efforts to seek them out. I was pretty much content with drinking. It […]
I come from a family of worriers, and I’ve done a lot of worrying in my life. I now do it less than ever, but there was a time when I thought I was a “worry addict.” Of course, a feeling of any kind can be “addictive”—we can use one feeling or mood to alter […]