Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Alcoholism and the Bad Lawyer

I am an alcoholic.  If you read the Bad Lawyer, this is not surprise I've written about this many times since I launched this blawg last summer.  Local websites and professional blawgs are full of funny, tragic, and disgusting stories of alcoholism and it's effects including domestic violence, injury, disgrace and death.

I've related many stories of lawyers and lives ruined by alcoholism.  Alcoholism is a mental illness of which a symptom is drinking excessively and obsessively.  Stop the drinking, and you are still and alcoholic.  I still have the mental illness.  I'm afraid despite 24 years of not drinking (with, let me acknowledge 3 brief ill-advised relapses), I have not recovered from alcoholism.  My grandfather on my mother's side was a notorious alcoholic if I can trust my memory of my family history--and, my gandmother on my mother's side died an alcoholic. 

According to the family history I recall hearing, my mother's father, who I have no recollection of but there is an old family photo of him holding either me or my brother--was a regional salesman for the Del Monte Company out Indianapolis in the 1940s-50s.  According to family lore he was a charismatic man, but a doomed alcoholic.  I've outlived him, he died of a heart attack changing a tire.  My mother told me that he was "in and out of sanitariums" to dry out, "get the cure."  The cure never stayed around. 

So I was intrigued by a story in the NYT this AM about the Charles B. Towns Hospital in NYC that opened in the early 19th century.  This story is very cool, it actually talks about "the cure," which was thought to be a pharmacological mixture of belladonna (nightshade extract) and other chemicals.  The pharmacology turned out not to effect an overall good outcome for patients.  Except, perhaps, in the view of the article's author, Howard Markel, M.D. for one very special patient--the legendary Bill W. 

Dr. Markel's remarkable account suggests that Bill Wilson, an east coast stockbroker who would later connect with Dr. Bob Smith in the gatehouse at the famous Seiberling mansion (Stan Hywet Hall) in Akron, Ohio--may have been in the throes of a belladonna hallucination when Wilson experienced the ecstatic calm, that Wilson and Smith later described in the "Big Book" as the spiritual experience that some alcoholics experience prior to or immediately after achievin sobriety.

Personally I don't buy Dr. Marke's speculation because my own personal experience and that of so many others that I met, not under the influence of the AA "kool aid" or legend is remarkably similar.  I had this soul shaking moment, a genuine spiritual experience. I feel goose bumps as I write about even now.  The challenge for most alcoholics is to remember this experience, to remember the way out of the morass of their own disorder.  I admit that I have been lost again, too. I have been hiding for so long, like Adam in the Garden when he recognizes his nakedness before God.  

Fortunately, I have an appointment with the OurState Lawyers' Assistance Program people for a mid-day meeting tomorrow.  I'll keep you posted.  I have a long road back, but what options do I have?  Suicide is not an option if you are genuinely a parent--and, I genuinely love my children.  Or as my friend the R-man says, suicide is the supreme act of selfishness.  Let me visualize the death of the angel of death--that Angel (my ego) has been stalking me.  Not today, dammit!

11 comments:

  1. "ism" I seek misery. Thank you for your forthright comments. I've got the same bug! "Look around and dream, look within and awaken" Carl Jung, the first to suggest AA's spiritual SOLUTION.

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  2. "Ill-advised relapses" Who the hell is it that gives us this ill advice?

    Re your meeting tomorrow, don't take the brown belladonna.

    Cheers.

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  3. The same clown that thinks he can write a legible blawg without a proof-reader is the same schmuck giving me advice on the wisdom of relapses.

    BL

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  4. Charlie--

    Nice to hear from you my friend, thanks for the great comment.

    BL

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  5. Hey, after almost 3 years of sobriety I have not experienced this mystical moment of bliss. I feel slightly ripped off. Oh well. It's still good to have a clear head. And kudos to you, BL, for not turning to the demon rum in your dark nights of the soul. This can't be easy. I admire the hell out of you.

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  6. Gayle--

    Spiritual experiences are probably not a sign of any great soul-level development, and if you believe neuro-science, the experiences which are empirically demonstrated on MRIs have a chemical and elctrical foundation. Having made that observation--why do they occur? Isn't that always the rub?

    When I first "got sober," in May of 1986 I had this profound, body shaking experience and peaceful sense of ecstatic relief. The sensation lasted for days at a very high level, and the sensation lasted for months in what is called a "pink cloud." As I type about it, once again I can feel the edges of that sensation. Wow!

    I think that as educated and sophisticated people---oh, can I add something? I am not a "seeker" in the sense of self-help or TM, new-age this or that, Buddhism, neuro-linguistics, or any of that. I am a traditional "lapsed-Catholic" or I was when I got sober, to the extent that I was anything. As some one interested in classic lieterature I read the Bible as a literary exercise and preparation to read the classics--I was in no way looking for or anticipating a "spiritual experience." What happened was I went to an AA meeting, a 31 yr old, well-heeled (or so I thought, young lawyer) and I heard a real bottom-of-the-barrel/living-under-the-bridge drunk tell his story. Somehow on that night, I heard this guy tell my story about me on a cellular level. It was like for the first time in my life I was able to see myself in the mirror and walk right through the mirror and join my spirit to my being.

    I'm going through that experience, right now. Thanks fro giving me an excuse to write about it.

    BL

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