I’m writing a book about lawyers and drug use Forum

[eilenez]

I’m a journalist who wrote ‘The Lawyer, The Addict’, a story that ran in the NYT in July about my ex-husband, Peter, who was a high-flying partner in Wilson Sonsini (the Palo Alto-based firm) and who died in 2015 an IV drug addict. Almost everyone in his life missed the signs. The story wound up with enormous traction and was the 55th most read story in the entire paper in 2017. It also generated threads of commentary on TLS, including this one:http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... 3&t=279754

I’m now writing a book based on that story for Random House. Although it is about what happened to Peter, the broader story is about the problem of substance use (and often abuse) in white-collar professions—especially law.

I am hoping that some of you will be open to discussing with me what you see and what you've experienced in your profession and professional environment, in terms of drug use and/or abuse. I’d like to use some of your comments in the book and will not know or need to know your names, so I hope you’ll feel comfortable being as candid as possible. I’m not here to make judgements, all I’m looking for is the truth about what’s going on. I'm interested in whatever you can tell me about drugs you are using or observe being used in your field: which drugs, what effects you see, any stories you have, any details you can share. For anyone who wants to contact me directly, I have a secure and encrypted email through ProtonMail: eilenez@protonmail.com. Thanks.

[RCSOB657]

Sorry for your loss. Never done drugs. State bars have mental illness units, perhaps you could try there as well.

[Anonymous User]

Isn't alcohol the poison of choice for lawyers, while coke is for bankers?

[sashafierce]

I remember reading the article a few months ago. I look forward to reading your book. Good luck!!

[eilenez]

Yes alcohol is the drug of choice, no question. But there is other drug use and I'm trying to figure out what that is and how pervasive it is. Opioids and coke seem to be used often to make a hangover bearable.

[Aergia]

I just wanted to say that your article was one of the most difficult things I've ever read. It was incredibly moving and fundamentally changed my perception of the risk of addiction.

[Anonymous User]

Work is the addiction and everything else is just derivative of that. Of course, some people have underlying substance abuse problems.

I know that a fair amount of lawyers use aderoll for focus. A lot of pot smoking and drinking.

In the end though, in firm life work is the addiction. You are a total slave to work.

[Monochromatic Oeuvre]

What *wouldn't* tempt someone at a big corporate firm to use drugs?

People are overstressed, miserable and or/broken at every level of the white-collar food chain. The wound-up students blearily remove their gaze from page 400 of a textbook before shuffling towards the vending machine for a 2 AM Red Bull pick-me-up, because the all-or-nothing hiring practice fast-tracks successful kids to a prestigious job and excommunicates the ones who wind up on the wrong side of the curve. New employees become intimately familiar with pressure under time crunches, pedantry, megalomania of superiors/clients, and constant exhaustion long before they've even put a serious dent in their hyperinflated loan balances. Progressing through their thirties, the survivors start to realize how they can get "stuck" making several hundred thousand dollars between the family-sized house in an expensive coastal suburb and providing the upper-class lifestyle they believe their spouse and (*gulp*) children deserve or are accustomed to, complete with the purchase of pointless frivolities serving as palliative gifts for their hard work. Finally, you reach an executive class comprised largely of people who believe the next million will finally leave them fulfilled (it never does) or otherwise grew to develop an identity hopelessly tethered to professional achievement and esteem. The large majority of people even pretending to be honest will admit it's mostly unpleasant, and most of them try to transition into less nightmarish roles when it becomes prudent to do so. The rest feel they can't leave, whether that belief is justified or not. If you rule out mind-altering substances, how do you suggest a person who's constantly busy deal with the anxiety, the ennui, and the disconcerting notion that all of the above is considered a successful and desirable life plan in modern society?

A little while ago one of the partners at my firm died and the firm paid commensurate lip service with the kind of distinguished obituary that screams out for annotations. He loved to travel (*and he hasn't had a work-free vacation in three years). He was an avid mountain biker (*and it had gathered dust in his garage for the past six months). He is survived by two daughters (*who he saw for maybe 15 breakfast minutes a weekday). I wondered if it would have been bad for morale for the firm to mention that he died at his desk. And I thought about Peter Munson's colleagues answering emails during his funeral when I wondered how many of the people that this partner spent the majority of his waking hours with gave him a second thought before they went back to moving commas around so some millionaire CEO can buy another Lexus. You'll excuse me for needing a couple fingers of bourbon to get through that one.

[glitched]

What *wouldn't* tempt someone at a big corporate firm to use drugs?

People are overstressed, miserable and or/broken at every level of the white-collar food chain. The wound-up students blearily remove their gaze from page 400 of a textbook before shuffling towards the vending machine for a 2 AM Red Bull pick-me-up, because the all-or-nothing hiring practice fast-tracks successful kids to a prestigious job and excommunicates the ones who wind up on the wrong side of the curve. New employees become intimately familiar with pressure under time crunches, pedantry, megalomania of superiors/clients, and constant exhaustion long before they've even put a serious dent in their hyperinflated loan balances. Progressing through their thirties, the survivors start to realize how they can get "stuck" making several hundred thousand dollars between the family-sized house in an expensive coastal suburb and providing the upper-class lifestyle they believe their spouse and (*gulp*) children deserve or are accustomed to, complete with the purchase of pointless frivolities serving as palliative gifts for their hard work. Finally, you reach an executive class comprised largely of people who believe the next million will finally leave them fulfilled (it never does) or otherwise grew to develop an identity hopelessly tethered to professional achievement and esteem. The large majority of people even pretending to be honest will admit it's mostly unpleasant, and most of them try to transition into less nightmarish roles when it becomes prudent to do so. The rest feel they can't leave, whether that belief is justified or not. If you rule out mind-altering substances, how do you suggest a person who's constantly busy deal with the anxiety, the ennui, and the disconcerting notion that all of the above is considered a successful and desirable life plan in modern society?

A little while ago one of the partners at my firm died and the firm paid commensurate lip service with the kind of distinguished obituary that screams out for annotations. He loved to travel (*and he hasn't had a work-free vacation in three years). He was an avid mountain biker (*and it had gathered dust in his garage for the past six months). He is survived by two daughters (*who he saw for maybe 15 breakfast minutes a weekday). I wondered if it would have been bad for morale for the firm to mention that he died at his desk. And I thought about Peter Munson's colleagues answering emails during his funeral when I wondered how many of the people that this partner spent the majority of his waking hours with gave him a second thought before they went back to moving commas around so some millionaire CEO can buy another Lexus. You'll excuse me for needing a couple fingers of bourbon to get through that one.

Geeze where do you work? Maybe it's time to consider switching firms.

[jd20132013]

Once attorneys realize they are workers and not owners there may be some interesting things coming

[oblig.lawl.ref]

What *wouldn't* tempt someone at a big corporate firm to use drugs?

People are overstressed, miserable and or/broken at every level of the white-collar food chain. The wound-up students blearily remove their gaze from page 400 of a textbook before shuffling towards the vending machine for a 2 AM Red Bull pick-me-up, because the all-or-nothing hiring practice fast-tracks successful kids to a prestigious job and excommunicates the ones who wind up on the wrong side of the curve. New employees become intimately familiar with pressure under time crunches, pedantry, megalomania of superiors/clients, and constant exhaustion long before they've even put a serious dent in their hyperinflated loan balances. Progressing through their thirties, the survivors start to realize how they can get "stuck" making several hundred thousand dollars between the family-sized house in an expensive coastal suburb and providing the upper-class lifestyle they believe their spouse and (*gulp*) children deserve or are accustomed to, complete with the purchase of pointless frivolities serving as palliative gifts for their hard work. Finally, you reach an executive class comprised largely of people who believe the next million will finally leave them fulfilled (it never does) or otherwise grew to develop an identity hopelessly tethered to professional achievement and esteem. The large majority of people even pretending to be honest will admit it's mostly unpleasant, and most of them try to transition into less nightmarish roles when it becomes prudent to do so. The rest feel they can't leave, whether that belief is justified or not. If you rule out mind-altering substances, how do you suggest a person who's constantly busy deal with the anxiety, the ennui, and the disconcerting notion that all of the above is considered a successful and desirable life plan in modern society?

A little while ago one of the partners at my firm died and the firm paid commensurate lip service with the kind of distinguished obituary that screams out for annotations. He loved to travel (*and he hasn't had a work-free vacation in three years). He was an avid mountain biker (*and it had gathered dust in his garage for the past six months). He is survived by two daughters (*who he saw for maybe 15 breakfast minutes a weekday). I wondered if it would have been bad for morale for the firm to mention that he died at his desk. And I thought about Peter Munson's colleagues answering emails during his funeral when I wondered how many of the people that this partner spent the majority of his waking hours with gave him a second thought before they went back to moving commas around so some millionaire CEO can buy another Lexus. You'll excuse me for needing a couple fingers of bourbon to get through that one.

Samesies 100%

[eilenez]

Wow. What a profoundly well written tirade against the profession. And yes, I totally understand the use of substances. It's a punishing profession. The first thing I said to Peter's boss when I saw him was that the firm had killed him. (This was before I saw the track marks... but still...)
Thanks for your candor.

[Clytemnestra3]

I also read your article and am very sorry for your loss. I work at a top law firm and have never witnessed any issues with drug or alcohol abuse. But I can see the stress that this job often causes. And I am pained to say that I know one young associate who died while working at a different law firm (partly due to stress I understand, not substance abuse).

It's easy for me to understand the pressure on young associates (debt, addiction to luxury, high cost of living areas that make saving difficult, status-consciousness, limited alternatives during a recession, punishing billable hour requirements, tedious work, difficult clients/co-workers, etc). But there is one question I would be very interested to see you answer: what precisely prevents stressed out biglaw partners from just quitting? The question may seem glib, but I'm sincerely curious.

By the time you make partner, you have had the opportunity to save and invest a great deal of money. As a partner for even just a few years, you can save and invest even more. Reasonably invested, the money you save could generate enough passive income to support a family at a comfort level many times that which is enjoyed by the average American. And if a partner wants more, he or she could quit and find a lower-paying, but less stressful/consuming job to supplement that income.

I understand that some of the same factors that make it difficult for associates to quit also make it difficult for partners to quit (addiction to luxury, status-consciousness, failure to save, peer pressure to not seem like a 'failure', etc). But I'm curious which one of these reasons, if any, is the actual reason. What is keeping high-earning lawyers in jobs that are killing them when the *opportunity* to become financially independent and not need that job is available to them?

I do not mean to be judgmental. I'm not saying what any lawyer should or should not do. I am just curious what precisely is causing people to do something that is harmful to them when they have the opportunity to escape.

[Taco]

The article you wrote was compelling, but it seemed to gloss over the impact that a divorce might have had on your ex-husband's mental health. Will your book discuss this issue in greater detail? From the statistics I have seen, in addition to having disproportionate rates of substance abuse, lawyers are also at higher risk of familial discord such as divorce. I think it is easy to imagine how someone in your ex-husband's shoes (if not necessarily your ex-husband himself) could find himself at an intersection of divorce and substance abuse. I'm sure the article you wrote was space-limited, hopefully in your book you will touch on this topic.

[jd20132013]

I also read your article and am very sorry for your loss. I work at a top law firm and have never witnessed any issues with drug or alcohol abuse. But I can see the stress that this job often causes. And I am pained to say that I know one young associate who died while working at a different law firm (partly due to stress I understand, not substance abuse).

It's easy for me to understand the pressure on young associates (debt, addiction to luxury, high cost of living areas that make saving difficult, status-consciousness, limited alternatives during a recession, punishing billable hour requirements, tedious work, difficult clients/co-workers, etc). But there is one question I would be very interested to see you answer: what precisely prevents stressed out biglaw partners from just quitting? The question may seem glib, but I'm sincerely curious.

By the time you make partner, you have had the opportunity to save and invest a great deal of money. As a partner for even just a few years, you can save and invest even more. Reasonably invested, the money you save could generate enough passive income to support a family at a comfort level many times that which is enjoyed by the average American. And if a partner wants more, he or she could quit and find a lower-paying, but less stressful/consuming job to supplement that income.

I understand that some of the same factors that make it difficult for associates to quit also make it difficult for partners to quit (addiction to luxury, status-consciousness, failure to save, peer pressure to not seem like a 'failure', etc). But I'm curious which one of these reasons, if any, is the actual reason. What is keeping high-earning lawyers in jobs that are killing them when the *opportunity* to become financially independent and not need that job is available to them?

I do not mean to be judgmental. I'm not saying what any lawyer should or should not do. I am just curious what precisely is causing people to do something that is harmful to them when they have the opportunity to escape.

anyone screwed up enough to become a partner can't quit it for the exact same reason

[carsondalywashere]

The article you wrote was compelling, but it seemed to gloss over the impact that a divorce might have had on your ex-husband's mental health. Will your book discuss this issue in greater detail? From the statistics I have seen, in addition to having disproportionate rates of substance abuse, lawyers are also at higher risk of familial discord such as divorce. I think it is easy to imagine how someone in your ex-husband's shoes (if not necessarily your ex-husband himself) could find himself at an intersection of divorce and substance abuse. I'm sure the article you wrote was space-limited, hopefully in your book you will touch on this topic.

This

[Anonymous User]

I think drug use is important to highlight (alcohol is the big one, but I self medicate with marijuana), but I think drug use and stress go hand in hand with a bigger red flag which is mental illness. I've seen first-hand how people completely change their personalities (mostly for the worse) when they get swept up in the stress of the job and the need to please their bosses/clients. I went from someone that was pretty care free my whole life to someone that would have 2 am panic attacks. Add in the amount of student loans you have and it almost feels like you are buried alive with toothpick to dig you out. I've seen people that went to some of the best schools in the world start to loose their hair from the stress, or stay up three days straight and have a nervous breakdown. I mean, people that are highly intelligent and successful, just becoming shells of themselves.

I don't really blame the profession either. I worked in consulting and while the hours weren't as bad, it was just as stressful between deadlines and traveling. Ultimately my wife and I had to leave NYC and move to a smaller market where people just balance work and life better. After moving around between firms, consulting, in-house, I realized that NYC is just a stressful place to exist. This move probably saved my legal career for the time being.

Think there is a reckoning coming in America soon. Between the debt, the shitty healthcare, rising housing costs, people my age are starting to feel extorted. Either slave away your best years or never succeed in the first place. A few lucky ones start companies and do well, or buy a place at the right time, but all my friends in those situations had family wealth to fall back on.

[Anonymous User]

By the time you make partner, you have had the opportunity to save and invest a great deal of money. As a partner for even just a few years, you can save and invest even more. Reasonably invested, the money you save could generate enough passive income to support a family at a comfort level many times that which is enjoyed by the average American. And if a partner wants more, he or she could quit and find a lower-paying, but less stressful/consuming job to supplement that income.

I understand that some of the same factors that make it difficult for associates to quit also make it difficult for partners to quit (addiction to luxury, status-consciousness, failure to save, peer pressure to not seem like a 'failure', etc). But I'm curious which one of these reasons, if any, is the actual reason. What is keeping high-earning lawyers in jobs that are killing them when the *opportunity* to become financially independent and not need that job is available to them?

You could say that about a lot of people in any high end white collar profession.

A lot of executives could "support a family at a comfort level many times that which is enjoyed by the average American" yet they're choosing to work long hours and high stress jobs.

Zuckerberg could retire today many, many, times richer than even the richest attorneys at the age of 33. Instead, he's answering questions about Facebook's privacy issues on CNN and constantly being attacked by media. He could live on the world's biggest yacht and do whatever he wants for the rest of his life (run for the presidency, go full time into philanthropy, have his own venture capital firm). But he doesn't, instead he goes to work at Facebook.

Steve Jobs could have retired a multi-billionaire decades before he died of cancer. He could have left Apple (where he had people proudly working 90+ hour weeks) and retired an icon like Woz.

People staying in high stress jobs when they could retire financially independent isn't anything unique to lawyers. You can ask this question basically of any exec or startup founder where they become billionaires in their 30s, and could retire and do whatever they want.

[Clytemnestra3]

I agree that my question could be asked of anyone in a high end white collar profession, but start-up founders and CEOs of large corporations are a different case. I can see how running a company you started that's innovative or constantly in the news would be extremely satisfying. Working 90 hours/week when you are top-dog in your company, globally famous, surrounded by support in your professional and home life, and working on projects you find meaningful is a very different experience from working 90 hours/week on typical biglaw partner BS. I'm curious which of the many possible reasons motivates someone to continue to endure that misery to the point they become addicted to drugs.

[Anonymous User]

What *wouldn't* tempt someone at a big corporate firm to use drugs?

People are overstressed, miserable and or/broken at every level of the white-collar food chain. The wound-up students blearily remove their gaze from page 400 of a textbook before shuffling towards the vending machine for a 2 AM Red Bull pick-me-up, because the all-or-nothing hiring practice fast-tracks successful kids to a prestigious job and excommunicates the ones who wind up on the wrong side of the curve. New employees become intimately familiar with pressure under time crunches, pedantry, megalomania of superiors/clients, and constant exhaustion long before they've even put a serious dent in their hyperinflated loan balances. Progressing through their thirties, the survivors start to realize how they can get "stuck" making several hundred thousand dollars between the family-sized house in an expensive coastal suburb and providing the upper-class lifestyle they believe their spouse and (*gulp*) children deserve or are accustomed to, complete with the purchase of pointless frivolities serving as palliative gifts for their hard work. Finally, you reach an executive class comprised largely of people who believe the next million will finally leave them fulfilled (it never does) or otherwise grew to develop an identity hopelessly tethered to professional achievement and esteem. The large majority of people even pretending to be honest will admit it's mostly unpleasant, and most of them try to transition into less nightmarish roles when it becomes prudent to do so. The rest feel they can't leave, whether that belief is justified or not. If you rule out mind-altering substances, how do you suggest a person who's constantly busy deal with the anxiety, the ennui, and the disconcerting notion that all of the above is considered a successful and desirable life plan in modern society?

A little while ago one of the partners at my firm died and the firm paid commensurate lip service with the kind of distinguished obituary that screams out for annotations. He loved to travel (*and he hasn't had a work-free vacation in three years). He was an avid mountain biker (*and it had gathered dust in his garage for the past six months). He is survived by two daughters (*who he saw for maybe 15 breakfast minutes a weekday). I wondered if it would have been bad for morale for the firm to mention that he died at his desk. And I thought about Peter Munson's colleagues answering emails during his funeral when I wondered how many of the people that this partner spent the majority of his waking hours with gave him a second thought before they went back to moving commas around so some millionaire CEO can buy another Lexus. You'll excuse me for needing a couple fingers of bourbon to get through that one.

Geeze where do you work? Maybe it's time to consider switching firms.

Honestly, the above post sounds like it could be an law firm anywhere.... the concept of constantly being available makes the above scenario applicable to any lawyer, any practice area, anywhere.

[Tls2016]

Work is the addiction and everything else is just derivative of that. Of course, some people have underlying substance abuse problems.

I know that a fair amount of lawyers use aderoll for focus. A lot of pot smoking and drinking.

In the end though, in firm life work is the addiction. You are a total slave to work.

This is the point you should be addressing.
I

[jd20132013]

Work is the addiction and everything else is just derivative of that. Of course, some people have underlying substance abuse problems.

I know that a fair amount of lawyers use aderoll for focus. A lot of pot smoking and drinking.

In the end though, in firm life work is the addiction. You are a total slave to work.

This is the point you should be addressing.
I

maybe write your own book and stop trying to write hers

[Anonymous User]

I agree that my question could be asked of anyone in a high end white collar profession, but start-up founders and CEOs of large corporations are a different case. I can see how running a company you started that's innovative or constantly in the news would be extremely satisfying. Working 90 hours/week when you are top-dog in your company, globally famous, surrounded by support in your professional and home life, and working on projects you find meaningful is a very different experience from working 90 hours/week on typical biglaw partner BS. I'm curious which of the many possible reasons motivates someone to continue to endure that misery to the point they become addicted to drugs.

Doesn't that come down to perspective and work attitude?

The engineers at Apple or Blizzard want to spend 90+ hours a week on programming their software. To some, it might be "typical tech software BS", but to some of them, they love it. They'll sleep in the office to get their work done. So, isn't the difference just their outlook, maybe not the work itself or the fame or being constantly in the news?


https://www.theringer.com/2018/3/30/171 ... t-turns-20

On one bleary day among many during the development of StarCraft, Blizzard VP of research and development Patrick Wyatt, who ranked third in the company’s hierarchy, walked into the office of StarCraft lead designer James Phinney. “I came to ask him for some design clarification on something, and he’s like, ‘Hang on a second,’” Wyatt says. “He leans over, and he vomits in a trash can because he’s been working so hard. And then he’s like, ‘OK, what was your question?’ So yeah, it was pretty physically taxing.”



“Crunch” is the industry term for the round-the-clock, all-hands-on-deck mad dash for the finish line that sometimes precedes the release of a game—often with harmful effects, as Phinney found out. “There were multiple nights where I slept on the ground in the office and woke back up and got at my desk, so 80-plus hour weeks were very common,” Sigaty says. A combination of youthful energy, professional fervor and, possibly, Stockholm syndrome kept the team’s morale from fading. “I didn’t think of it as a bad quality of life, honestly,” Sigaty says. “It was just being dedicated to what we were trying to get done.” Wyatt remembers that the team maintained slightly irrational expectations of its own productivity throughout the extended development, which acted as a bulwark against disappointment as each provisional deadline blew by. “The bulk of it was just optimism that we could get it done, and that we were just a few weeks away,” Wyatt says, laughing. “Or, you know, maybe several months away, sort of forever.”

Morhaime says his first inkling that StarCraft was going to be big—really big—came on April 1, 1998, the day after StarCraft came out. When he went into work, he found the office full of people playing the game, including the programmers and QA testers who’d just spent sleepless months finishing it. In theory, they should have been sick of StarCraft. But there they were. “For them to come into the office on their own time just to play the game, I thought that was the best sign that you could possibly see about a game,” Morhaime says.

[Tls2016]

Work is the addiction and everything else is just derivative of that. Of course, some people have underlying substance abuse problems.

I know that a fair amount of lawyers use aderoll for focus. A lot of pot smoking and drinking.

In the end though, in firm life work is the addiction. You are a total slave to work.

This is the point you should be addressing.
I

maybe write your own book and stop trying to write hers

Maybe this is an underlying point that she’s missing? The work addiction that prevails must be an underlying factor in the drug addiction of her ex and other people. Work addiction is behind almost every partner and senior associateI’ve ever known. Maybe a handful of super talented partners aren’t work addicts.

[shock259]

Geeze where do you work? Maybe it's time to consider switching firms.

Could be just about any firm. I read the quoted post 3 times and it is nearly perfectly summarizes my experiences at 3 different biglaw firms. It's depressing, but it is what it is. Better to go at it with eyes open, in my opinion.