Confidentiality Guarantee
  • Judges
    Offering private, confidential assistance for state and federal judges and magistrates.
    Learn More
  • Lawyers
    Understanding the unique pressures lawyers face and offering reliable, proven solutions and guidance.
    Learn More
  • Students
    Providing assistance with character and fitness issues and the stressful demands of law school.
    Learn More
  • Family
    Offering assistance for lawyers with impaired family members or family members of impaired lawyers.
    Learn More

Posts Tagged ‘alcoholism’

Eyes on the Prize

Posted by

I’m 10 years old and just won enough money performing in a group at a talent show to buy the toy I’d had my eye on for months. This is how the story of my first regret begins. The show, put on by my religious community, was aimed at raising money for a capital project. […]

No One is Coming

Posted by

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 […]

Alcoholism and the Distance it Creates

Posted by

Personal stories can be either the easiest to tell, or the hardest. Easiest, because we know our own stories so well; hardest, because they often reveal things about ourselves or those close to us that we might prefer not to disclose. This story is both. I was 30 and divorced when I fell in love […]

When “Helping” Hurts—A Guide for Law Firms and Families, Part 2 

Posted by

The LAP recently conducted an interview with a managing partner of a firm who years ago orchestrated an intervention with a leading lawyer in the firm. This example illustrates how a law firm can proactively address an issue of impairment. The following is taken from that interview and told from the point of view of […]

When “Helping” Hurts—A Guide for Law Firms and Families, Part 1

Posted by

Most lawyers, regardless of practice area, are accustomed to solving others’ problems and providing solutions. Lawyers are helpers by nature. While many of us may try to project a certain image, and despite whatever lawyer-joke-du-jour may be fashionable, most lawyers have big hearts and want to help people. It only makes sense that when a […]

A Recovery Story: Being a Lawyer Saved My Life

Posted by

I am a lawyer and an alcoholic, but not necessarily in that order. I was an alcoholic long before I even considered becoming a lawyer. I don’t believe that the inherently stressful nature of the practice of law caused or even exacerbated my alcoholic drinking. I do believe that because I am a lawyer I […]

A Recovery Story: Get Off the Couch  

Posted by

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 […]

Recovery as a Process

Posted by

In September 2005 I was driving down I-95 to a Florida treatment center for what I believed would be a 90-day stay in beautiful South Florida. I really did not know much about where I was going or what I was going to do, but Ed Ward of the North Carolina Lawyers Assistance Program had […]

Accommodation or Transformation

Posted by

The heart is the literal and metaphorical center of our lives.  We have either an open heart toward life or we may be closed hearted.  Our response toward life may be one full of heartache or heartfelt joy. All of us have issues and challenges from time to time.  How we respond will tell us […]

A Recovery Story: Alcoholism is a Family Disease

Posted by

I am a Double-Winner.   For the uninitiated, that means that I am a member of both Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon.  Al-Anon is for the friends and family of Alcoholics.   The focus of my story will be a little different than the kind of story you typically read.  These articles usually focus on how the disease of alcoholism, and subsequent […]