Talking About My (or Your) Addiction (with apologies to The Who)
Last week, I outlined why my word for 2025 was going to be “simple.” Our lives—and tech—are increasingly complex. Feelings of overwhelm are common.
This week, though, I want to talk about something else on the continuum of simplifying our lives: less is more, particularly in the context of substance use and other addictive behaviours.
Every January, many Albertans and many lawyers consider the excesses of the holiday season: the food, the desserts, the beverages, the lack of sleep, the shopping, the visiting. The list goes on and on. We look at the scale, or at the circles under our eyes, and we vow to make changes to our lifestyle so that we feel better.
When I was a junior lawyer, one of the senior partners at my firm had a unique spin on holiday excesses and how to respond. He enjoyed holiday season parties and events, and then on January 1st, he began his lifestyle modification. His was simple (there is my word for 2025 again!). He gave up alcohol until he lost the weight he had gained. This usually took until about April, and then he resumed his regular activities until the following January.
This was considered a valid reason for tee-totaling in law firm culture where alcohol featured prominently. Everyone understood his winter abstinence, and because he was a senior partner, no one critiqued this practice.
I haven’t been a junior lawyer for a long time now—I am thinking back to the late 1980s and early 1990s—and apart from one lawyer who was an abstainer, everyone else faced questions about why they weren’t drinking alcohol if they were spotted with a coke instead of a glass of wine or a beer. The colleague who didn’t drink was understood to be “religious” and even in those bad old days, people generally gave a wide berth to any conversations which could involve discussions of religious tenets.
I have written before about the strategies used by pregnant-but-not-yet-showing lawyers which haven’t really changed over the last few decades. You didn’t want to disclose pregnancy any earlier than you had to because of both implicit and explicit biases respecting file assignment and potential promotion. So, we pretended to drink, employing a variety of subterfuges.
According to Statistics Canada, more than 77% of Canadian adults consumed at least one alcoholic beverage during 2023. This means that 23% did not consume alcohol in that twelve-month period, meaning that almost one-quarter of Canadians may be abstainers.
Do one-quarter of Canadian lawyers also abstain? I haven’t been able to find data on this point, but the National Study on the Psychological Health Determinants for Canadian Legal Professionals (2022) reported high rates of alcohol consumption by Canadian lawyers. Forty-two percent of female and 36.5% of male Canadian lawyers have possible alcohol dependence, as determined using a well-respected tool called the AUDIT-10, which put us slightly ahead of American lawyers in the ABA 2016 study (as well as ahead of Ontario paralegals and Quebec notaries) But Canadian data were collected during the pandemic, which could have impacted drinking behaviour.
This finding is consistent with other studies. Approximately 15-24% of lawyers in various jurisdictions have substance use issues.
A 1994 Canadian study about alcohol and drug use among Canadian professionals found that lawyers were more likely to drink alcohol and use tobacco than physicians and pharmacists and that professionals whose training occurred outside of Canada, the US and the UK were less likely to use drugs. This study also found that “[h]eavy drinking among lawyers is associated with increased professional involvement in drug offences and drinking and driving offences.”
So, as lawyers who value prudency as part of our skillset, we need to be aware that our profession has high rates of alcohol consumption and possible dependency.
And, if we are aware that our colleagues may face high rates of possible dependency, we may want to know what to do when we realize that someone in our midst appears to be at risk due to their alcohol consumption.
Here are some signs that an individual (referred to as “you” in this publication by CBA-BC) may be having issues with their drinking:
- have temporary memory loss and blackouts;
- drink to cheer up;
- have tried to quit drinking but can’t;
- drink to be “normal” or “fit in”;
- have trembling hands;
- drink in secret or lie about your alcohol intake;
- have anxiety, insomnia or nausea when you stop drinking;
- drink in the morning;
- have problems at work because of your drinking, such as being late or not going in at all;
- drink in risky situations, such as before or while driving a car;
- get hurt or you hurt someone else when you are drinking;
- have given up other activities so you can drink;
- feel guilty after drinking;
- make excuses for your drinking or do things to hide your drinking, such as buying alcohol at different stores;
- worry that you won’t get enough alcohol for an evening or weekend;
- are having problems with family members as a result of drinking; and
- have flushed skin/broken capillaries on your face.
Knowing what to do next is tricky but Assist can help. You can call our professional counselling service for help crafting a conversation with your colleague, but given the season, Assist has joined forces with our sister organizations in Manitoba and British Columbia (with the Law Society of Saskatchewan connecting us to their lawyers) for our first Western Canadian Webinar on January 24th. We will have three lawyers sharing their personal histories and how to have a conversation that works with someone whose drinking is problematic. We will also link to resources to help.
If you are concerned about your own drinking, we can help. We can connect you with our professional counsellors who can conduct an assessment and discuss options with you. We can also connect you to the lawyer 12 step community who provide excellent peer support and strategies (and are among the most wonderful lawyers you could ever meet.) You may want to attend the International Lawyers In Alcoholics Anonymous conference in Banff in October, organized by the Calgary lawyers in AA group—watch for more information!
And we know that not everyone who is concerned about their consumption is an alcoholic or has a substance use disorder. Many people opt to go “dry” for a month, like Dry January—or Dry February if you missed kicking off your dry month already. There is no reason that your dry month has to begin on the first of the month and follow the calendar in any event. And there is no reason that you have to limit your dry period to one month!
Alcohol use and addiction are common in the legal profession. But we lawyers, like other human beings, are impacted by a variety of addictions, including drugs, gambling and sex. At Assist, we see lawyers (and students) every year for these less well-known addictions—and we help.
My personal dopamine stimulator that can get out of control is shopping. Like many other things in our world, there is a continuum from enjoyment to dependence/addiction, and so far, I don’t think I have crossed into the world of dependence. I began to use shopping as a reward when I ran my own small practice. I hated preparing and sending invoices and would avoid that job as long as possible. And then I would make a deal with myself that if I prepared and sent invoices, I could go shopping and buy some things that would make me happy. And it has continued since then.
I am not quite having Dry January as I allowed myself one great sale visit on January 2nd. But it has been two weeks, and I have not made a retail purchase since. This may not sound like much for those of you who do not use shopping for your dopamine hits, but given the post-Christmas sales and my personal proclivity, this is an accomplishment. I haven’t set a time period for my shopping-free initiative, and I am employing the AA “one day at a time” motto. But if I make it to Groundhog Day—February 2nd—I may have to try repeating the experience!
Some of the strategies we discuss at our webinar on January 24th may relate only to alcohol addiction—but some may be helpful for you, and the people in your circle, who struggle with other issues. Or perhaps you just want to learn more about addiction conversations proactively, so that you will feel equipped if a situation arises at work, with a client or with a friend or family. Everyone is welcome to join us at the first Western Canadian Webinar!
And note that I am referring to it as the first joint webinar. We’re highlighting the historic cooperation among our sister organizations, but we are also hoping to continue to share resources and work together. If there is a topic that you would like to see covered in an interprovincial webinar, please shoot us an email! Larger webinars feel safer and more anonymous—so we want to make these opportunities available.
For those of you who are trying Dry January (or planning a different dry period), we are here to cheer you on and provide encouragement. For those of you who are concerned about your own, or someone else’s drinking, we are here with a webinar, professional counselling and peer support. And if you are concerned about any other type of compulsion, you are not alone, and Assist is here to help. We are only a phone call away: 1-877-498-6898 for professional counselling and 1-877-737-5508 for peer support.
If you are inspired by the speakers on January 24th and would like a presentation at your workplace from a lawyer in recovery, we can do that too!
We are here, just ask.
Loraine