Post
by Anonymous User » Wed Jul 19, 2017 8:50 am
This is such a tragic story, and it gets at some very systemic problems with the culture of biglaw. It's a horrible story deserving of attention for those of us who have struggled/are struggling with some manner of addiction and substance abuse.
If anything good comes from this, it's helping people like me realize that I need to seriously cut back on intake of things that are both harmful to me and harmful to my career, both future and present. I was/am a pretty regular consumer of alcohol, and while it probably borders closer to the typical "functional alcoholic" than it does one that goes on benders and won't be found for several days, it's not any less destructive a behavior. It was borne out of habit, stress, and frankly just not identifying it as problematic behavior. I was functioning in my life, so why should it change, right? Well after reading this article, along with a few other pretty major developments in my personal life, I've unilaterally decided to cut alcohol out of my life for the foreseeable future. I'm not saying I'll never have a drink again because I feel I have complete control over my consumption (giving it up has felt like a blessing every day to this point, and I don't expect that to change anytime soon), but this article pushed me over the edge to stop justifying why it's okay to have a drink or three most nights because I continued to function. My mornings are better, my work feels more focused, and I'm just generally in a better mood day to day.
What I'm most happy to have done is to share this decision with my family to allow for accountability and support. They never thought I was a problem drinker, but that support is all I need to justify not mixing a cocktail at night when the night settles down.
I don't realistically believe I've ever exhibited truly addictive behavior where I couldn't go without alcohol, but I just thought that if it's not negatively impacting my personal or professional life (in hindsight, it very well may have been and probably was to some degree, but it never felt like it at the time because I've always been pretty successful in whatever I've tried to do), then I am not a problem drinker. But I still kept on increasing my consumption to the point where I was consuming an ugly amount of alcohol on a weekly basis. I could always control drinking in social/work settings, but having a nightcap when I get home was normal, and anytime I have/had a night off, I'd supplement whatever activity I was doing with several cocktails. It was just a habit, I told myself, and because nothing bad was coming from it, that seemed to be enough.
So all I'll say to this poor family and to those others who are struggling/have struggled, thank you for the wake up call. It helped at least one person save themselves from a destructive devolution that eventually would've caught up to me, whether I wanted to let it or not.