It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when my alcoholism began, but it was certainly in full swing throughout my twenties. The worst years were from age twenty-six to twenty-nine, which not-so-coincidentally overlapped my time in law school.
I drank almost every single night that I was in law school. The only (extremely rare) exceptions were when I tried to get sober and would go a day or two before relapsing.
Despite all of the drinking, I did great in school. However, my alcoholism was taking its toll on other parts of my life. By the time I graduated, my social life was dead, I had gained over fifty pounds, and my mental health was an absolute wreck.
I quit drinking shortly after taking the bar exam. I knew that I had reached my limit, and I think that part of my initial motivation for getting sober was to go into my new career without my addiction looming over me. I was moving to a new city and working a new job. Sobriety naturally fit into this fresh start.
Getting sober was hard, and so was being a lawyer. That year was, without a doubt, the most difficult of my life.
I hated getting through each night without drinking, and I hated working my high-stress public interest job even more. Although I had managed to land exactly the job I wanted, I quickly realized that I wasn’t cut out for the life of a lawyer. Within a month of starting the job, I felt sure that I had made a mistake, but I ended up sticking it out for a year, after hearing a lot of advice about how things would improve.
Nothing improved. I only hated the job more with every passing day. Right when I hit the year mark, I quit.
I felt like a total failure. It had been a rough year, and quitting my job seemed like the ultimate low point.
At the time, the narrative I had been telling myself was that going to law school, passing the bar, and getting the job I wanted were all steps in becoming more and more successful. Then, I saw hating my job and quitting as failure. I thought I had gone from being on track to a perfect life to being totally lost and aimless.
I saw it as if my graduation from law school was going to be the peak of my life, and that it was all downhill from there. Now I see that time in my life in exactly the opposite light.
When I think back on my twenties, I recognize my academic success, but I also see how much I was destroying myself with addiction. Graduating from law school was a huge accomplishment, but that was also when I was at my lowest.
Quitting my job as a lawyer was actually a huge step toward a far better life. I left behind the stressful, high-anxiety field that had fueled my addiction, and went into the far less stressful world of tutoring and writing. Making that change was absolutely necessary to protect my sobriety, and protecting my sobriety was absolutely necessary to improve my life.
It’s been nearly a decade since then, and my life is better in every way—including my career. I initially changed jobs because I couldn’t balance the stress with my sobriety. Since then, however, I’ve realized that writing and tutoring are way better fits for me anyway. Becoming a lawyer fit the classic definition of success, but it wasn’t what success truly looks like for me.
I’ve found that staying sober requires a lot of hard decisions that can feel like sacrifices, but which, in the long run, turn out to be better for us anyway.
To protect myself from going back to drinking, I’ve changed habits, moved states, switched jobs, found different friends, and more. These are big changes, and they often seemed like too much at the time.
However, each one has been great, even aside from the benefits they’ve had on my sobriety.
I think that many of the lifestyle decisions that we make to stay sober tend to just be good lifestyle decisions in general. Happy and healthy habits tend to go well together.
Ever since I quit my legal job, I’ve kept an active bar license just in case I want to go back to it. It’s cost a few hundred dollars a year, and I’ve needed to do some continuing education, but none of that has felt like too big a sacrifice. This year, however, I’m finally thinking of just letting it go.
I don’t really have any doubts left about having left the profession. It’s been great for me, and I just can’t see any situation in which I’d realistically ever want to go back to it. It’s hard to walk away from a job that I worked so hard for, but the reality is, I’ve been out of school for about three times as long as I was in it. It’s time to happily move on.