Berks Barrister Winter 2018 - 14

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Targeted Residential Treatment
for Impaired Lawyers:
At Your Back Door
By Link Christin, JD, MA, LADC
Introduction
Like most times, the personal informs the professional. In my
case, this is especially true. A high-functioning alcoholic civil trial
lawyer for most of 25 years, I held onto my career and met my
professional responsibilities at the cost of all other aspects of my
life. As I drank heavily daily (but not during the day, until the end)
I permitted key elements of my life to slide away: relationships,
hobbies, exercise, diet, sleep, balance. My self-esteem was tied to
my identity as a lawyer, and as long as I sustained this persona
I was able to deny to myself that I had a drinking problem. Or,
at least rationalize that I was able to control it when necessary,
allowing me to identify and normalize the hard-working/hardplaying culture of law school and my profession.
This all came crashing down in 2004, when after months of
personal turmoil, drinking during the day, and black outs, I found
myself alone and hopeless. My wife had left, I had totaled my car,
my assets had been removed from my control, and I had been fired
from my job. I lay alone, in my empty house, on the floor with a
half gallon of vodka and a portable DVD player. At that moment,
I made the threshold decision to ask for help, and after months of
residential treatment and sober living I began the climb back. It
was during this journey that I made a career choice to help other
lawyers who were on the same path or in danger of joining me. I
entered a Masters program at the Hazelden Betty Ford Graduate
School of Addiction Counseling and, after obtaining my degree,
started the first national Legal Professionals Program there in
2010.
In August of 2016, at the invitation of Caron, I packed my
car and moved to Pennsylvania to serve as the executive director
of the first major legal professionals program on the East Coast.
This was especially timely because more than one-third of the
nation's lawyers practice within the geographically small corridor
from Boston to Washington, D.C. Combined with recent studies
which had concluded that lawyers were at least twice as addicted
as other highly-educated populations and more than four times as
depressed as the general population, this was the next logical step.
With the overwhelming support of Caron and its vast clinical
and regional resources, I was able to hit the ground running in
September with the program described herein.
14 | Berks Barrister

The Nuts and Bolts of the Caron Legal Professionals
Program
First and foremost, this program is supplemental to the full
Caron residential treatment services, which have been in place
for nearly 60 years. With its main campus in Wernersville, PA,
an entire team of specialists - including a primary counselor -
treat the patient and family for substance abuse and co-occurring
disorders, while providing psychiatric, psychological, mental health,
medical, chronic pain, spiritual, and recovery resources. The legal
program joins a number of other specialized Caron addiction
programs - including health care professionals, older adults, and
executives - which focus on specific demographics and recovery
issues.
The legal program is customized treatment for attorneys,
judges, law students, and paralegals, addressing their unique
addiction and behavioral health issues (an article for another day).
Lawyers who no longer practice (or graduated from law school but
never practiced) are also eligible to participate.
A summary of the program itself, and the services that I or my
trained staff provide, are as follows:
Pre-Entry

* Pre-admission calls with the executive director of the legal
program to answer questions, provide suggestions, discuss
specifics of the program
* Streamlined admissions process
* Discussion of specific professional needs while in treatment
to assure no disruption in practice

Residential Treatment

* Legal program executive director coordinates with treatment
team for treatment planning
* Customized Educational materials for the legal professional
* Weekly one-on-one meetings with the executive director
* Facilitated weekly legal professionals group meetings
* Group trips to lawyers-only AA meetings in Philadelphia
* Exposure to outside lawyers in recovery
* Guest speakers on topics of relevance to legal profession
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Berks Barrister Winter 2018

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