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22 Winter 2016 The Mississippi Lawyer I remember feeling foolish and weak because nice girls werent supposed to become chemically dependent upon prescription pills. Strong women didnt have depression. And if they did then they simply needed to just put their big girl pants on and get it together because just look around at all the people who have way bigger problems than I do and theyre somehow doing just fine. Ignorant as to what life in recovery actu- ally looked like I recall the sheer terror of admitting that I had a problem. At the time I was aware of the stigma associated with substance abuse and thought that recovering addicts were forever marked as different. My mind conjured images of shot-out looking people chain-smoking as they gathered under fluorescent lights and lamented their misfortunes. That or Stepford-esque born again recovering addicts with plastered smiles and empty eyes and manic declarations of Im great Everything is great So great Put simply I thought recovery was a cult and that I would end up losing all of the things that made me me. By Gods grace my options were super-limited and I was saved from my delusions and prevented from screwing up my life even more by attempting to get better on my own. Because heres the reality I am a nice girl and an intelligent super-strong person. I am your mother your daughter your sister and your friend. Addiction and depression didnt care about any of that. And despite what I told Chip get- ting back to the salad days wasnt going to make anything better the change would have to begin within me. LJAP did me a solid and disregarded all of the excuses and justifications to which I so desperately clung. Instead they worked together with the folks at my old firm to whom I am forever grateful and indebted to issue an ultimatum I had to get with the program or else face professional consequences. I entered treatment and quickly learned that for me going back to the way things were in the past would be an impossibility. Somewhere in my substance abuse I had crossed an invisible line that had forever changed my brain chemistry. Therefore I could either choose to give recovery a meaningful shot and try to live in a new way or I could keep doing things my way and alternate between small bouts of maintaining and periods of misery while things continually became worse. When I became truly honest with myself I knew that one pill would never be enough and that if left to my own devices I would be incapable of giving up all mood-altering substances. And so it began. And it wasnt pretty. I felt and was forced to accept powerlessness for the first time when I became aware of the harm I had done to others and realized that there wasnt a damn thing I could do to fix or undo the damage. My words meant nothing I would have to become a living amends. I learned that intelligence is not an attribute in recovery and that the smartest choice to be made was to stop my analysis of what went wrong and to just do what the nice people told me to do. Even if I thought the direction was stupid and pointless. I gained humility and accepted that my addiction was not unique. The same things that worked for thousands of other recovering alcoholics and addicts could and would work for me. I didnt know why things like get- ting into a routine something I used to despise and now rely upon or sharing with a group worked but they did and I gradually became healthier. Before I thought that meditation and other non- narcotic techniques were pointless for me but humbly learned that once I became willing I could do things like relax and sleep and focus and have energy without chemical assistance. Prayer and spirituality became my anchors. I suf- fered a great deal of loss after getting sober but each time I went through grief and fear I was taught that using the right tools I could make it to the other side without the unhealthy coping mecha- nisms I had curated before and during my active addiction. Most importantly I experienced the fellowship of being in a group of recovering alcoholics and addicts. There were many turning points in my recovery but the most crucial and healing might have been realizing the power of sharing a vulnerability with another person and having them say me too. I was not alone. A quick note about depression for people like me who did not or do not understand what the illness involves being depressed does not simply mean being sad all of the time. I told counsel- ors repeatedly that I wasnt depressed I loved my relationships and laughed and had many blessings in my life . . . I had no reason to be depressed so therefore I wasnt. One day someone shared the physical symptoms of depression which include trouble with sleeping waking extreme fatigue loss of focusconcentra- tion etc. . . . all things that I had expe- rienced for years but had attributed to either laziness or being my own worst enemy. If these symptoms sound famil- iar please ask for help and be patient. About a year into recovery when therapy AA and medication fully synced a mir- acle happened. It was as if I had been albeit contentedly running a marathon and mid-way someone removed an air- way obstruction I didnt know existed and then sent me back to running. I did not realize just how hard things had become until they werent anymore and it was life-changing. Burning your life down can be a won- Perspectives from MS Lawyers