One MFT’s Story

I am a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in private practice in Northern California..  I was born in Eastern Europe, and immigrated to the United States at 15 with my mother through a Jewish refugee program.  My father re-married and stayed in my home country with his new wife and child.  My mother had a psychotic break when I was 18.  I was a freshman in college at the time.  I felt like I had little guidance on how to live my life, but I knew that I wanted to study and be successful in my career.

I started experimenting with drugs and alcohol in high school.  I did not think I had any risk factors to become an addict, because I thought I came from a good family and had no major trauma.  I was a good student during the week, and partied on the weekends.  In college, I continued to experiment with drugs.  When I was a sophomore in college, I started struggling with anxiety and depression.  I reached out to the psychiatry department, but did not find it helpful.  I discovered prescription drugs, and they helped me reach my study goals and even out my mood.  I majored in psychology and graduated with honors.  I improved my English and learned German.  After college, I learned Spanish and lived in Spain for 5 months.  I had a steady supply of prescription pills and life seemed manageable.  I even faked ADHD to get a prescription for Adderall.  I mixed it with other pills during the day to be productive, and at night I smokedpot, drank wine, and took sleeping pills.

Eventually, I was using and drinking around the clock.  It seemed innocent at first because thought I wasn’t using any “hard” drugs, not realizing the deadly potentiating effects of mixing alcohol with sleeping pills. Eventually I was  not able to function at all.  During that time I discovered 12-step recovery and started going to meetings.  I checked myself into an inpatient treatment center in Eastern Europe, and later attended an outpatient program in Northern California.  I could write a whole book on that time period, with all its ups and downs, going to rehab in Eastern Europe, being misunderstood by my family, and so forth.  Eventually I found my way and my life started to improve.  I worked the 12 steps many times over and discovered that I really enjoyed sponsoring women.  I started out in NA, but eventually switched to AA.  After 2 years of going to meetings and working the steps, I entered a Master’s program for Psychology.  Two years later I graduated with High Honors.  

After graduate school, I worked in several different drug and alcohol treatment programs for about 7 years.  It felt like coming full circle after being a client in similar programs for a few years.  I went to therapy and learned about myself and my past, as well as how to cope with life clean and sober.  I found other people in their 20s and 30s in AA, and we did all kinds of fun and exciting things together.  I made lifelong friends who are still in my life today. 

I started a private practice in 2014 which I enjoy to this day.  Every day I am so grateful to be working with clients in this capacity.  I now live with my husband and son in a small town in Northern California. and I am still very active in 12-step recovery.  I have not done recovery “perfectly” by any means, but I try to do my best every day. Eventually I came across Therapists In Recovery and I continue to attend TIR meetings on Zoom once or twice a month. I enjoy connecting with other therapists in recovery – it feels good to be of service, and it helps me maintain my own physical and emotional sobriety.  I’ve had several relapses, but as of this writing I am sober 10 months and continue to be active in my 12-step support groups.

Against All Odds

In 1976 I want to Synanon in Santa Monica, exited the program, and then wound up in Phoenix House.  Reluctant to do what they asked, I went to yet another program and was placed on methadone maintenance, and after that I quit using opiates.  While I continued to smoke marijuana and drink alcohol, and I was able to hold down a job, my incomprehensible demoralization progressed to the point that I was willing to find another way to live.  I turned to psychiatry and I was told that the only thing wrong with me was that I was an addict. 

I was fortunate enough to be introduced to people who were in recovery, and they took me to Narcotics Anonymous meetings. Initially I felt different from those in the rooms because I was raised in a Hispanic community and usually only associated with other Hispanics.  Indeed, my first exposure to people outside of my ethnicity occurred when I joined the military.  To cope with a marital dissolution, I entered psychotherapy, which helped me become amenable to try a new way of life.  With the help of therapy and Narcotics Anonymous I entered college and became licensed in multiple states, first as a Licensed Professional Counselor and then as a Licensed Clinical Social Worker.

Over 20 years ago I was introduced to Therapists In Recovery and I continue to be involved with TIR to this day..  TIR allows me to meet with other licensed clinicians who are in recovery from their addictions, and they share with me how they handle such issues as a fear of being ostracized by professional peers.  TIR provides me a platform where I can share my own challenges in recovery without the added concern of bumping into clients at 12-step meetings.  I have made some healthy connections with other TIR members who are not only involved with 12-step groups but who also pursue other avenues that promote healthy lifestyles and emotional recovery. 

If you are a licensed mental health clinician with an alcohol/drug problem, I encourage to join us at our virtual TIR meetings!

Recovery and Balance

I first questioned my drinking in the second year of graduate school when I noticed I wasn’t progressing on my thesis. When the one glass of wine I had intended to have before beginning my nightly studies was leading to an entire bottle and then some, I decided that I was reacting to the stress of graduate school and tried to control my drinking. I then quit drinking under the umbrella of “getting healthy”. Of course, I wouldn’t admit, to myself or anyone else, that it was out of hand, so I methodically eliminated from my diet one item a month: first alcohol, then caffeine, then fats, etc. By the time I graduated I was living on fish, broccoli and water!

I obtained my M.S.W. and went on to a new job. Within three months I was drinking again. What was most frightening to me was that it was now on a daily basis. I blamed it on the relationship I was in at the time, broke up with him and quit drinking again – for “health reasons”, I told myself. I set one year as a timeframe for no drinking, and after eleven months dry, I decided that was enough to prove I was in control. I resumed drinking and this time became a wine connoisseur, not only a “legitimate” reason to drink, but an elite one!

Meanwhile, I had moved from San Diego to Palm Springs to San Francisco and then to Los Angeles within a period of sixteen months. Ostensibly my moves were always for a better job, but I realized later that I was on the run – from myself, from my feelings and from the inescapable emptiness within me that no job, no man and no amount of drinking could fill. In Los Angeles I applied for a counseling job and was hired with the understanding that I would learn to counsel alcoholics. My new boss, a recovering alcoholic therapist himself, advised me to attend at least twenty AA meetings and to familiarize myself with the book Alcoholics Anonymous. Wanting to be a shining star, I dutifully attended several meetings a week and I studied the books Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions and Alcoholics Anonymous as if they were textbooks.

As I did this, something inside me began to respond to the stories I heard in meetings that sounded like me, to the wisdom in the pages of the literature, and especially to the joy, love and laughter of the people in AA. Finally, after six months of attending meetings, I raised my hand when the question was asked, “Are there any other alcoholics here tonight?” The relief I felt was tremendous, as was the shame and defeat. Here was I, who had pushed herself through school, pridefully earning her own way and never asking anyone for a dime, now weeping and admitting she couldn’t go it alone any more. At that very meeting, a woman employed by the same company for which I worked was in attendance. She came over to me, offered comfort and strength, and subsequently become my first sponsor.

That was 34 years ago. My life has since changed in ways I never imagined! I own a consulting business, I am married to another member of Alcoholics Anonymous, and I have a balanced life of friendships, work, play and recovery. Best of all, I no longer have that aching emptiness that followed me wherever I went. Now I can sit still and enjoy the pleasure of my own company. I can set limits on the number of hours I work without panicking that I won’t have enough. I can allow love in my life, and look at myself honestly within a relationship and admit my shortcomings without melting into a pool of self-loathing at my lack of perfection.

Today I am a fellow among fellows, and it is a comfort to know that there are other therapists who have gone through what I have and who now share a common solution with me, through Alcoholics Anonymous and through the added support of Therapists In Recovery. By working an ongoing program, attending AA meetings weekly, sponsoring, reading and writing about the Twelve Steps regularly, and through the shared experience of my peers, I am finding a new happiness and a new freedom, just as the book Alcoholics Anonymous promises.

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!

A Social Worker’s Recovery

Having grown up in a strict religious family where my grandfather was a preacher and we attended church three times a week, I had always believed that I was immune to the “evils of alcohol”. I learned differently when I was fifteen years old and planning to move away from my hometown and my lifelong friends. They threw me a going-away party, complete with warm malt liquor and cheap pop wine. I drank alcoholically from this day forward as I couldn’t believe the exciting feelings and giddy sensuality of that high. I also discovered the consequences of my drinking on that day as the police arrive to raid the party and we all raced away to avoid being arrested. I remember walking for many hours afterward and sadly saying my good-byes to the neighborhood and my many memories of the park and my childhood companions. Drinking and loss have always been synonymous in my life.

I hit bottom during the summer of my sophomore year of college. I was dating one in a series of alcoholic women and we were having a close relationship with our friend alcohol. During that summer, I received news that my grandmother had died. She was the person who I loved most dearly as she had raised me and cared for me when I was a child. I binged for days after learning she was gone and lost a job at a fast-food restaurant because I didn’t bother to show up for several days. I couldn’t believe how unfeeling my manager was being, and I loudly told him so as I stormed out that last day. Later that month, I began to have severe stomach problems and was admitted to the emergency ward at the university hospital for a bleeding ulcer. I had no clue that this could be related to my drinking nor did the multiple internists suggest my alcohol abuse was what brought me in. Yet, some part of me must have known because I swore off the booze after being discharged. Still not seeing the obvious, I switched addiction easily to pot and hashish.

I completed undergraduate and then graduate school and moved to California in 1980. Two years later the drugs also stopped working for me. A very dear friend of mine, a drug and alcohol counselor, was killed in a car crash two weeks before I was to visit her at Christmas. I fell into a severe depression and stopped functioning in my work and my relationships. I broke up with my girlfriend and later quit my job as I had started drinking heavily again. A job and relationship change were the quick fixes that allowed me to continue my addiction. I became obsessed with work and had frequent run-ins with my supervisor and co-workers. I also began to have multiple medical problems again and found myself missing many days of work.

It was at this time that I was encouraged to take some substance abuse counseling courses. The director of the program was a marvelous mixture of knowing mentor and compassionate friend, and she helped me to confront my denial about being an alcoholic/addict. She related that being in the helping professions and trying to recover is one of the most difficult tasks, but that others have been able to share their strength and hope in the field. That was when she recommended that I talk with a member of Therapists In Recovery. I called him and we had a pleasant lunch during which he shared his story and I reluctantly shared mine. He invited me to join the group and see if it would be helpful to me. He also shared with me something that I had not known until then: I didn’t have to recover alone.

That was over two years ago and I am very grateful to the director and Therapists In Recovery for being put in my life at the time I needed them. I have found a men’s group that is my home group and a sponsor who I call regularly. I have a wonderful marriage and a thriving private practice of psychotherapy, employee assistance counseling and drug/alcohol program consulting. I encourage any mental health professional who is struggling to recover from alcoholism/drug addiction on their own to take advantage of Therapists In Recovery. Keep coming back – it works!