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24 Winter 2016 The Mississippi Lawyer Outpatient Program at Bridge to Recovery in Ridgeland Mississippi. There I began to learn the value of community and was surrounded by supportive people long- ing to see me succeed. I also began to realize that I was not alone. I finished the program and attended aftercare for approximately the next two years. This whole time I was being monitored by a mentor attorney with whom I would meet two to three times monthly to discuss how everything was going. Moreover I was randomly drug tested to maintain my accountability. In short when I arrived on the steps of the Mississippi Bar Center in 2010 I was a sick broken man with no direction in life. LJAP provided me the direction and guidance that I needed to get my life back. Everything I engaged in from the begin- ning of my contract to the end was kept in the highest confidence and was treated with the utmost professionalism. Along this path I have made lifelong friends and have discovered that I am not alone. My life today is better than anything I could have ever dreamed. Through the assis- tance of LJAP I have discovered a way to live a reasonably happy life practicing law. I really do not believe I would have survived if it were not for the efforts of the staff at LJAP. Thank you. Crawling from the Wreckage It always started in late November.The shorter days and the cooler temperatures acted like an unwelcome alarm clock waking an increasing sense of unease and anxiety. In a five-year span I had under- gone two previous bouts of depression each stemming from a personal crisis both of which took place coincidentally or so I thought in late November and early December. It was four years since my last episode and while I had seeming- ly recovered well from both incidents the time of year right around Thanksgiving made me wary. Maybe it was just the end of football season I thought. Or maybe lingering PTSD from law school exams The fall of 2006 brought about the same old symptoms difficulty sleep- ing and getting out of bed generalized anxiety having to force myself to go to work withdrawal from social situations and an inability to make even the sim- plest decisions for work or otherwise. In the past the resolution of my personal crises always led to the resolution of the depression. However this time some- thing was different. There was no crisis. My life personal and professional was good. Why did I feel so bad I continued on not telling anyone not even my wife because I felt sure the situation would get better. It was my typical method of dealing with a problem ignore it until it either goes away or makes you collapse. Eventually my wife began to see the symptoms in me but I assured her that I would soon be better. Its just that time of year I said. One day I had to travel out of town to a mediation that had been scheduled for months. It was a standard mediation and my client really didnt even have that much of a stake in the outcome. However as it went on and nothing was getting accomplished I began to feel a sense of panic. I was sitting by myself in a small room and I gradually began to believe that I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. Even though I had participated in prob- ably dozens of mediations over the years the jig was finally up. The other lawyers were clearly much more clever than me and they were taking advantage of my total incompetence. I was blowing it. My client had a fool for a lawyer. It was all I could do to prevent a full panic attack. I had to pull over several times on the drive back home. I couldnt face a return to the office so I went home. I knew I had a problem and I had to get help. Somewhere sometime I remember read- ing that The Mississippi Bar had an assis- tance program for lawyers. Well thats probably just for alcoholics and addicts I thought Im neither. However I looked up the program on the Bar website and found the telephone number. Like a boy nervously calling a girl for his first date I called the LJAP program several times and hung up. I finally made the call and got an appointment to see the Director. Making that phone call was one of the most difficult things I had ever done but it was a first step. My wife came home and found me slumped in front of the computer Perspectives from MS Lawyers