alcoholism

A Recovery Story: Before and After

I didn’t consider alcohol as a remedy for my unhappiness and depression in high school.  I was introverted, although active in school activities, but I never felt like I belonged in social situations.  While my classmates were having fun outside the classroom, I was at home reading a book. I discovered alcohol when I was […]

A Recovery Story: Nothing to Lose, Life to Gain

I am forty-six years old and have been a lawyer since 1976. I practice in a Piedmont city. I concentrate in civil litigation. Martindale Hubbell has give me an “av” rating, which I consider to be almost meaningless but which I mention because it may help you identify with my type, whatever that is. I […]

Recovery Success Stories

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.  […]

A Recovery Story: Three Strikes and I Won

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 […]

My Journey from Alcoholism to Sobriety, Recovery, and the Bench

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 […]

The Next Frontier of Recovery: Emotional Sobriety

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 […]