FROM DEALER TO HEALER: A PSYCHOLOGIST’S STORY

I am a psychologist and owner of an outpatient mental health facility. Not many years ago I was in private practice; that is, privately practicing alcoholism and drug addiction. Like many other alcoholic/addict psychotherapists, I was convinced that I had no problem with my drinking and using. With years of academic and occupational success, I was convinced that there was no chance that I could be addicted. I was convinced that I was inoculated from the disease of chemical dependency because I was a professional in mental health who had the skills to assess “things” within. Is it not amazing how we can diagnose denial in others and not in ourselves?

I started drinking abusively at thirteen years old; smoking pot at sixteen; LSD at seventeen; cocaine at nineteen; mushrooms, peyote and mescaline at twenty-one; and dealing at twenty-one. I paid my way through my Master’s program by dealing large quantities of marijuana, hashish, hash oil, and cocaine. As a successful psychology student, I was convinced that I was a walking example of excellent, modern mental health. I drank, smoked, and snorted with many of my associates in school. I used drugs with my internship supervisor and sold marijuana to a couple of professors. I genuinely believed that such activities were lending me credibility, bonding, friendships, and good laboratory partners. Curiously, I deeply wanted to be recognized for my excellent therapeutic skills, my intelligence, my creativity, my wit, and my profound caring about people. I later discovered that my peers instead recognized me for having ethereal thought content, loose associations, and short-term memory loss. They were all willing to look the other way as long as I had a ready supply of “quality” drugs or alcohol.

As the disease progressed, I regularly risked losing my family, my very successful career, my license, my mind, and my life. I wasn’t even convinced that I had a problem after a drug-induced suicide attempt! I just quit that individual drug, convinced that individual drug was the problem…not my overall pattern of drinking and using! Following graduation I was fired from my first mental health position after only a few months on the job. “My supervisor’s brain is twisted, not mine!” I cried. I would not accept that my alcohol and other drug use was negatively impacting my thought processes. My employer had given me two chances to break through my denial. I gave myself no chance.

I began spending larger amounts of my free time with “friends” who could be counted on to have handy unlimited supplies of alcohol or other drugs. Granted, some of these people were bright, creative and terrific, but I was using them as an excuse to drink and use. Ludicrously, many of my psychotherapist friends shared my belief that our drug use during off hours actually expanded our ability during working hours to understand and help patients who had drug problems. These patients had paid us for our entrusted role as therapists. They wanted to resolve their problems. Today, I recognized that I had merely been a professional enabler.

After twelve years of drinking and using, I somehow broke through my denial. I began to see that, indeed, I had a problem. Unfortunately, without participating in any support system or program of recovery…seven more years of relapses followed. I had become an intermittent or binge alcoholic/addict, stopping for weeks or months at a time, only to relapse by utilizing various rationalized excuses for engaging in a “low consequential binge” with one or more of my professional “buddies”.

Eventually, I was very fortunate to be introduced to the Twelve Step programs by a mental health paraprofessional who was in recovery. She did not shame, blame, or therapize me. Having lived many experiences similar to mine, she accepted me for who I was, gave straight forward direction, and lovingly educated me about recovery. I began going to Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, and Cocaine Anonymous meetings regularly. I began to learn practical information that helped me to understand my problem. I became comfortable talking openly at meetings about anything…except my profession. At such meetings, unless pointedly asked, I don’t reveal the nature of my profession for reasons of ethics and conscience. I want to ensure that my motives for going to meetings are clean and that I’m not there to “pick up some business”.

After five years of continuous recovery I ran into another alcoholic/addict mental health professional in recovery who told me about a group of psychotherapists who were beginning to meet regularly meeting to deal with their chemical dependency issues. The name of the group was aptly called Therapists In Recovery (TIR). Plus, unlike at open Twelve-Step meetings, they talked openly about topics relevant to our profession. I walked into my first meeting with an old emotion: insecurity. I shuddered: “These people are therapists! They could turn me into the State Board or my professional association’s ethics committee!” Suddenly, a bright flash of the obvious hit: these people were there for the same reason I was! Their stories, albeit different from mine, were also very similar. They, too, were experiencing the consequences of their alcoholism, drug addiction, or both.

Finally, I had a place to interact with other therapists in recovery who without hesitation could empathize together about the multitude of value-laden topics that we are commonly confronted with in Twelve Step meetings with non-therapists. We could talk freely about personal and professional dilemmas that would be inappropriate to discuss in an open AA, NA or CA meeting. To be clear, TIR is not a replacement for my other Twelve Step meetings; it just exquisitely augments my overall program of recovery. Today, I look forward to TIR meetings. At every single meeting I learn tools for understanding the common fears, doubts, and shame of being a former impaired professional caregiver. TIR helps free it members from the isolation of private suffering. I am a psychologist in private practice, now endeavoring to practice recovery in all areas of my life. And what a life it has become! Welcome home!