The title of this post is basically the short version of a fascinating article at the New York Times: The Lawyer, the Addict. It’s the account of a woman discovering her ex-husband, a high-powered attorney, was also someone with a serious drug abuse problem — and that it’s apparently a bigger problem than anyone in the profession is ready to admit. It wasn’t until she found him dead that she began to unravel the signs and follow up the clues.
It’s a heartbreaking story of a personal descent into destruction — but it also raises serious questions about the profession. Just as we’re now learning a pro-football career seems to come at the cost of traumatic brain injury, this article would seem to raise questions about the toll practicing law takes. Here’s a few excerpts:
...Human beings are physically and emotionally complex, so there is no simple answer as to why Peter began abusing drugs. But as a picture of his struggle took shape before my eyes, so did another one: The further I probed, the more apparent it became that drug abuse among America’s lawyers is on the rise and deeply hidden.
One of the first things I learned is that there is little research on lawyers and drug abuse. Nor is there much data on drug use among lawyers compared with the general population or white-collar workers specifically.
...At Peter’s memorial service in 2015 — held in a place he loved, with sweeping views of the Pacific — a young associate from his firm stood up to speak of their friendship and of the bands they sometimes went to see together, only to break down in tears. Quite a few of the lawyers attending the service were bent over their phones, reading and tapping out emails.
Their friend and colleague was dead, and yet they couldn’t stop working long enough to listen to what was being said about him.
...Some research shows that before they start law school, law students are actually healthier than the general population, both physically and mentally. “There’s good data showing that,” said Andy Benjamin, a psychologist and lawyer who teaches law and psychology at the University of Washington. “They drink less than other young people, use less substances, have less depression and are less hostile.”
In addition, he said, law students generally start school with their sense of self and their values intact. But, in his research, he said, he has found that the formal structure of law school starts to change that.
Rather than hew to their internal self, students begin to focus on external values, he said, like status, comparative worth and competition. “We have seven very strong studies that show this twists people’s psyches and they come out of law school significantly impaired, with depression, anxiety and hostility,” he said.
There’s quite a bit more in the article, but this should be enough to give you an idea of the problem. Considering how many of our businesses, institutions and political offices are run by people with a legal background, it’s perhaps worth pondering if what we see happening around us today isn’t a spillover from the problems of the profession and the way it shapes people.
Read the whole thing.