THE ADVOCATE 717
VOL. 80 PART 5 SEPTEMBER 2022
LAP NOTES
By Anonymous
I THOUGHT OTHERS HAD THE PROBLEM
I did not have a problem. No. I just needed to figure out what was wrong
with everyone else … Or so I thought …
When I first came to the Lawyers Assistance Program (“LAP”), my primary
issue was to find ways to alleviate the harping from friends and my
spouse about my sometimes excessive drinking. I just needed a solution to
relieve them of their concerns, while I continued to enjoy my Fridays and
Saturdays out with friends to blow off the steam built up after a hard week
of litigation. Little did I know how drastically my life would change.
When I first came to LAP, my typical week would consist of hard work
from Monday through Thursday, and then copious drinks with friends on
Fridays and Saturdays. Occasionally, Thursdays would be an early celebration
of the weekend to come. I thought I was doing well at working hard and
playing hard. However, I began to feel more emotional insecurity. My social
life had become the bane of my spouse and had started to result in my
becoming less reliable in getting home when promised, with more and
more mornings spent worrying about how I had behaved the night previous.
I had begun to rely on my drinking as a reward for my work, and also
the main outlet for relief from the many responsibilities I had in my life.
Of course, when I came to LAP, it was to placate those few who had raised
concerns about my drinking. However, my alcohol addiction quickly
became apparent through initial counselling, experimentation with controlled
alcohol intake and attendance at an AA meeting as a flyer to see how
badly those with a “real addiction” have it. At my first AA meeting, I could
not avoid the similarities between myself and the attendees identifying as
“alcoholics”. These were intelligent, well-respected counsel who had come
to the exact same point as I was at now … but had been strong enough to
admit the true nature of their issue.