Happily Ever After
“Right Now,” I’m Doing Fine!
My Story of Addiction, Alcoholism, and Mental Illness Ends Well
I have not had a drink since January 4, 2018, my new personal record after years of relapsing. I check my app, as I have long since stopped counting, and I see that it is 3.77 years or 1,381 days. I have just posted several articles of my descent into a very dark place in my addiction, leading to my lowest bottom in 2009. I don’t want to leave my audience without a note of hope and faith.
Since entering AA in 2009 as a practicing trial lawyer, I have unwound the stresses of my life. I am poorer, perhaps, but I more than make up for the “lost income” with nonmonetary benefits. This year, I resigned from the California Bar, ending my 33-year career as a lawyer.
Earlier I had slowed down to working part-time writing articles for legal publications. Now, I just get to write. No, not just write. Now I am a “Content Creator.” Even though I enjoy releasing text, I enjoy putting pictures in my articles. I am writing a book, launching a podcast, and setting myself up on the internet.
I live with an adoring, loving, “normal” wife, Lisa. She was a nurse at the VA hospital in Connecticut. I researched and brought in a consultant who convinced her that she had vested in her retirement and could leave her job in her mid-50’s. She did and retired on December 31, 2020. She received praise as a “hero” and “essential worker” but no combat pay. The pandemic had overwhelmed everyone. Her doctor left, and that was the decisive factor. She also was apprehensive about bringing COVID-19 home to her immunocompromised husband — me.
She went out on FMLA leave based on a note from MY doctor in September 2020. Since then, we have been joined at the hip. Only our cat, Fluffy, can come between us. In fact, I had to stop writing this twice when Fluffy jumped between my legs to nuzzle.
Here’s my schedule: tonight, I got high with some friends on zoom, and we talked. That’s what passes for my “recovery meetings.” They always say any time two addicts meet is a “meeting.” Why have a format for four people? We just share and talk about our lives. It works. I am opening the concept into an interactive podcast that I want to host for a broader audience. It will be my video content. I am working to building an audience for my book. My draft book has almost 40,000 words. So much for the lazy stoner stereotype.
I watched the Dodgers game and then — when they WON!!!! — I was so pumped up that I wrote 2000 words in my book, and I wrote this article. Today, Lisa and I are going “leaf-peeping” around our neighboring area. We are going to a “sugar shack” to pick up some 100% pure maple syrup to send to my sponsor for the holidays. We will get pumpkin spiced cold brews and pumpkin spice donuts or muffins and go for a drive. I will drop her at home and get a haircut, beard trim, and a manicure/pedicure. Tomorrow, Lisa and I have a massage, then I host a “Wake & Bake” on Zoom for my friends. The next day, we have a home organizer coming over.
I write, go to free webinars, watch movies, binge watch TV, smoke a lot of weed, and stay away from my poisons: crack, cocaine. alcohol and cigarettes.
All the above is to assure you that even someone who reached the level of destruction and depravity that I did and someone who has struggled with sobriety. I can finally “break on through to the other side.” I have found happiness. My wife and I own a condo in a quaint New England farm town, where we have a patio in the woods.
Our patio is perfect for meditation with my cat or for working on my nonprofit organization #BipolarLivesMatter℠. In June of this year, I formed that nonprofit dedicated to educating the public and policymakers about the serious issue of abuse of the mentally ill by the police and other state actors. I founded this organization because of my own experience getting beat up by the Minneapolis Police for yelling at them when I was psychotic and did not know that.
My work is very cathartic, even if it’s not as financially rewarding as being a lawyer. But surveys show that many successful lawyers are miserable. I am seeing an MD psychiatrist, who also does my therapy. I go to meetings of Medically Assisted Recovery Anonymous (MARA). The sessions are small and very tolerant. Nonjudgment is the watchword of the group, and I very much appreciate that. Using plant medicine to stay sober is fine. Everyone has a unique path. I still occasionally go back to my old AA group to say hello to my friends.
Since 2009, I have met quite a few friends in AA and NA. I have scared off some, but by no means have I been abandoned. I still have friends from my inpatient stay in Israel. I certainly do not judge them. I welcome anybody as a friend. And anyone is welcome on my podcast. I especially want to reach out to other professionals and invite them to participate in my podcasts; anonymously is fine. I see damn few lawyers at most AA or NA meetings, but I know that plenty of them drink and drug, though probably not as much as I did.
How did I do it? I finally found a sponsor who said that the first edition of the Big Book was all they had at one point, and it was good enough that those people considered themselves “recovered from a hopeless state of mind and body.” They would “work the steps” in two weeks. We took more than two weeks, but less than five months to work the steps. I have not had a drink since. I keep myself dry by living a purpose driven life, working with other addicts and alcoholics, and smoking a lot of medical marijuana. It works for me. I’m not saying it will work for you. It may even be illegal where you live. But if you are new, use my tale to have hope that you can live sober too.
This is my testimony hoping that you can find sobriety as I have and wonderful life. I’m a 56-year-old Content Creator, Activist, and Rocker. Sure is better than a drunk and drug-addicted lawyer.
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