Alcoholism is the primary chemical causing addictive disease in our country. It is responsible for thousands of fatalities each year, but there is another drug that is having a profound effect both on how we think about chemical dependency and on addictions medicine. In the 1980’s and early 1990’s it became the “in thing” in […]
Archive for the ‘Substance Abuse’ Category
College and Law School Drinking
Posted byI made it through junior high school and high school drinking regularly on weekends. I could drink a lot. Miraculously, no one seemed to know how inferior I was and I was somehow elected as president of everything honor society, junior high, freshman, junior, and senior class, key club, and high school fraternity. My grades were […]
A Recovery Story: Darkest Before Dawn
Posted byIntroduction My name is Kent S. and I am a recovering alcoholic and drug addict. I am sober today through the grace of God and the fellowship of Alcoholic’s Anonymous. I am also a husband (married thirty-four years), father of five children, and an active member of the LDS faith. I have been a member […]
Demystifying 12-Step Programs
Posted byIf you are bewildered by the workings of 12-step programs but think that you or someone you know might benefit from one, this article is dedicated to you. If someone (or more than one person) has recommended that you check out a 12-step program but you don’t think that you have an addictive or compulsive […]
Alcoholism: Designed For Lawyers
Posted byIf I had to pick the quintessential malady to fit lawyers it would have to be alcoholism. No other affliction brings together the conditions under which law is practiced and the strengths lawyers have, and builds to such an extraordinary degree upon both the weaknesses of the profession and the strengths of those who are […]
Hammurabi and Addiction
Posted byNot too long ago the headline for this column was “The Chemistry of Self-Centeredness” (Bar Journal, Winter 1997, vol. 2 # 4). In the Bill Moyers special on addiction, the hour entitled “The Hijacked Brain” demonstrated how the brain is actually changed by addiction, how the neurochemistry of selfishness occurs. Maybe that is one reason […]
Hope
Posted byOne of the most difficult aspects of helping a person struggling with alcoholism or depression is to be able to bring hope. We don’t derive hope from taking tests for alcoholism or depression, or from hearing a lecture about these subjects. Mainly we get hope from hearing the experience of a recovering person, and identifying […]
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 Suicide
Posted bySociety puts the burden of coming to grips with homicide on lawyers and the justice system. It is a lawyer’s job to prosecute the accused, try the case, and defend the accused. Yet, more people in America die of suicide than from homicide. Unlike the elaborate justice system, with its guaranteed right of appeal for […]
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 […]