Hi, I’m Carly, and by the grace of a Power much smarter than me, I have been in a 12-step recovery program since April 30, 2011. I have never publicly disclosed my sobriety despite it being a part of my life about which I am most proud, most protective, and for which I am most profoundly grateful. Yet, I have kept it private. That has been partly due to my being a bit loath to have a spotlight cast my way (unless I’m singing karaoke) and partly due to fearing your judgment.
When I learned that this publication would feature local attorneys’ personal recovery stories aimed at destigmatizing alcohol and substance abuse, I knew I wanted to help. One does not have to look far to be confronted with the alarming reality of alcohol abuse in the legal profession. A January 2019 American Bar Association “Study on Lawyer Impairment” references several studies and articles dedicated to attorney-specific alcohol and substance abuse, with estimates of impaired lawyers ranging anywhere from 20 percent to greater than one-third (as compared with less than seven percent of the average American).1 What is more is that these figures preceded the COVID-19 Pandemic, which I must imagine subjects them to an unfortunate inflation. Ours is a profession gravely affected by alcohol and substance abuse, and ours is also a profession full of people too ashamed or too prideful or too wary of the stigma to get help. I know because I have been there.
My story is not terribly interesting or unique, and the part of my story that qualifies me to write as “recovered” is not the most important part of my story. I am someone who works hard and has played hard. I went to law school with an overachieving bunch just like me who learned to unwind or socialize with drinks in hand, and then I joined a profession full of the same. We networked at happy hours and nursed our insecurities and anxieties and celebrated our victories with alcohol. Everything was an effervescent blur until the very predictable consequences stopped me nearly dead in my tracks. The way I endangered my own life and the lives of others and compromised my own values and future is now quite astonishing to me through a sober lens.
When confronted with my own inability to manage my drinking, I was both terrified–by my own capacity to ruin my life–and ashamed, because, at that time, I believed that it was a moral failing, or a shortfall of my willpower, or both. I now know better.
For me, and I have said this many times when I have shared my story in recovery circles, I know I got to the planet this way. I tried in vain for years to control the amount of alcohol I ingested once I took a drink, or the way that I would seek out additional drinks after I took that first drink, or that I took that first drink at all knowing what consequences would follow. However, much like I cannot control that I am allergic to cedar pollen, I have zero control over the way that my body and my mind react to alcohol. It is utterly demoralizing to believe that if you just tried harder, if you could just get this right, you could drink like a normal person only to be confronted with the shame of failing over and over and over again.
I wish I could tell you that I realized the insanity of this on my own, that self-knowledge saved me, but it absolutely did not. My very best efforts at trying to control my drinking landed me at a rocky bottom. I have learned through a series of humiliations and heartbreaks that I am not someone who can safely drink any amount of alcohol.
I say this without hyperbole: 12-step recovery absolutely saved my life. All I had to do was be willing to consider that I did not know what to do; willing to try something different; willing to ask for help; willing to follow suggested steps; willing to listen to others’ stories of despair and recovery; and, on the toughest days, just the willingness to be willing. Most importantly, I know that I need to be willing to help others, to try to show others flailing in that hopeless place that I used to know that there is a different way–a much better way.
I remember when I first entered recovery over 13 years ago, I would hear long-sober people speak of being grateful for their struggles, and I thought it was such a curious thing to say. I now understand that it is precisely that lived experience with the struggle to be sober and the experience of recovery afterward that gives me the ability to light the path and show someone else how I got out of the dark. And so I share this abridged version of my story with you here. I share it to contribute to the conversation and need to destigmatize alcohol and substance abuse in the legal profession; I share it so that we all know that we are not alone in this; and I share it to show you that recovery happens and gratitude, not shame, waits on the other side.
Endnotes
1 “Study on Lawyer Impairment: The Prevalence of Substance Use and Other Mental Health Concerns Among American Attorneys,” American Bar Association, January 18, 2019; citing Journal of Addiction Medicine, January/February 2016; see also “Addiction & Substance Abuse in Lawyers: Statistics to Know”, American Addiction Centers, June 21, 2024.