Introduction
The way plaintiff’s employment attorney Gary Gwilliam tells it, he began the final
descent that would lead to an intervention — resulting in almost 22 years of
sobriety — after losing a product liability trial.
It was not just any trial. A horrific auto accident case that left one man dead and
his wife severely burned, a fiery crash at 80 miles an hour. It was, in retrospect,
he says, an unwinnable case, and Gwilliam made it more unwinnable by convincing the
judge midway through trial that one of the jurors was biased against his client and
thus to have her excused (It turned out that she was the only juror who favored his
client). To make matters worse, Gwilliam’s senior partners had entrusted him with a
dazzling amount of money to sink into the case. After the verdict was announced, he
could not bring himself to call those people who trusted him and tell them what had
happened to their investment. After polling the jury and attending to his distraught
client, he went down into the garage where his car was parked, and he began to drink.
For many additional reasons, within a year Gwilliam was going out to bars after work
and slamming up to 16 shots in four hours — “I figured that was only one drink every
fifteen minutes,” he recently recalled. Already on his second marriage, he became
serially unfaithful to his wife. One night after drinking and carousing he blacked out
and drove his car across the median of the highway, into a field on the other side of
the road. His wife then arranged an intervention. Although the confrontation enraged him,
within a week he was sober.
“Most lawyers aren’t truthful about their real lives, especially not about their losses,”
Gwilliam says. “Loss is part of our life. Relationships end. People die. Lawyers lose cases.
I decided long ago I had to start telling the truth about my life.”
Thinking About the Possibility of Losing
These days, Gwilliam, who takes maybe 1 in 100 cases, takes the time to sit quietly before
any potentially dispositive hearing or trial, and he gets used to the idea of failure.
“I contemplate losing, the possibility of losing. It’s beyond my control, anyway. I open
myself up to the possibility that the jury won’t like me, or my client, or that a witness
will go south, or that the judge will do something I can’t control. I feel much better for
it. I will do the best I can, but trials aren’t just about the performance of the attorneys.
This idea of me, me, me is not realistic. So much is out of our control.”
He suggests that attorneys who are feeling a tremendous amount of stress, and who may or may
not also be abusing drugs or alcohol, try to adopt the same approach. While he has talked to
thousands of people over the years about his own experience with alcohol abuse and sobriety,
he likes to think that his message is not limited to recovering alcoholics, as well as not only
about accepting loss as a fact of life. His message is about pursuing a quality of life, “answering
the important questions for yourself, like ‘who am I?’, ‘Where is this all leading us?’” His candor
makes some people uncomfortable; many others have found solace in his way of laying himself out bare
for his audiences. “There is an unburdening in the telling of truth,” Gwilliam says.
We do not, Gwilliam seems to suggest, have to accept a “win at any cost” attitude. As litigators,
we do not have to be tough and nasty, although “the global society is increasingly tough, and the
law mirrors it…But [focusing solely on] competing and winning results in a loss of values, a loss
of meaning,” Gwilliam says.
When is Social Drinking Too Much Drinking?
Gwilliam cites the stress of litigation as a main factor in his own drinking. A child of generations
of alcoholics, Gwilliam belonged to a gang as a teenager, experimented with heroin, and drank heavily
as a rite of passage. Even when it tapped his performance, he was loathe to give it up. Drinking was
fun. It had always been there. Over time, he noticed that he was no longer drinking because he wanted
to, but because he needed to. He drank alone. As a quick stress reducer, alcohol may be unparalleled
in efficacy, but it’s only a temporary analgesic. The stress returns. Even for lawyers who don’t drink
at lunch, or keep a bottle in their desk, and who may pride themselves on their ability to abstain a
couple of nights a week, “If you are asking yourself, ‘Do I drink too much,’ you have asked yourself
a rhetorical question, and you’ve already answered it,” says Gwilliam. “If it’s a concern to you, it’s
a concern, period.”
Work Hard, Play Hard?
As members of an often despised profession, and in an atmosphere where there can be only one winner,
many lawyers experience tremendous stress on a daily basis. You may ask: What’s the problem with
working hard all day, and then having a few drinks to calm down in the evening? So long as I’m not
drinking in the office, what’s the problem? As long as work and booze stay separate, who cares what I
do, and whose business is it, anyway?
The problem with that way of thinking, Gwilliam says, is that work and drink can’t stay separate,
because alcoholism is a deteriorating disease. Even when you’re not actively drinking, alcohol affects
your memory, your ability to organize your thoughts and plan strategy, maintain your stamina, or even focus.
Alcoholism and Office Dynamics
If you have ever wondered if one of your co-workers is drinking heavily, or if they are aware that
you
imbibe on occasion (or many) during the work day, Gwilliam says the signs of alcohol abuse may appear
in the form of a lack of responsibility. Even top performers who are drinking or doing drugs eventually
put out less work of reduced quality. They may make more mistakes. They forget appointments, fail to make
court appearances, offer feeble excuses. Or an alcohol abuser may appear to be experiencing a tremendous
amount of stress in the absence of obvious stressors. You may see someone you suspect of alcohol or drug
abuse at social functions where he or she drinks more than the social occasion calls for, getting completely
inebriated when others are not. That’s another clue.
Poor or erratic functioning, the appearance of high stress, and excessive drinking at office functions are
all signs to look for. It’s just as common, though, for alcoholics to remain invisible to co-workers. Drinkers
and drug users are adept at hiding their behavior, says Gwilliam, and on account of that it is often difficult
to know who’s drinking or abusing drugs. The spouse of a heavy drinker is most likely to be aware of the scope
of the problem, and Gwilliam recommends that if co-workers are planning an intervention, they should gain the
cooperation of the spouse and family, and approach the problem drinker as a unified front.
That’s what happened to Gwilliam, and although it made him angry that his family and co-workers thought he was
a drunk, the humiliation sobered him up pretty quickly. “Interventions strip you of denial,” he says.
Where to Go For Help
“The Other Bar” is an organization that offers services to lawyers, judges, law students, and their families
who are having trouble with alcohol. In a confidential setting, and based on the structure of Alcoholics
Anonymous (emphasis on sponsors, 12-step program), The Other Bar has weekly meetings held around the state,
that many legal professionals attend as a supplement or alternative to AA. For more information, call The
Other Bar at 800-222-0767 or visit
www.otherbar.org. Ed Caldwell,
the founder of The Other Bar, “saved my life” and the lives of hundreds of others around the state, Gwilliam
says. Ed Caldwell, who practices law in San Rafael, can be reached at (415) 259-2900, and is available to
speak to anyone who wants more information about The Other Bar.
Where to Go For Help
Some alcohol or drug abusers may hesitate to confide in Human Resources about a wish to enter rehabilitation
because they fear privacy incursions and/or reprisals. Says Gwilliam, it’s a violation of employment law to
disclose information about an employee’s alcohol and/or drug addiction, or to take any adverse employment
action against an employee who seeks or enters rehab. Such a violation of fair employment laws leads to
causes of action for disability discrimination, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and retaliation,
among others. Bottom line: if you are drinking, fear of the consequences should not deter you from seeking help.
And if adverse consequences do occur, find yourself a good lawyer.
Gary Gwilliam is the moderator of the CEB program
Am I Drinking Too Much? A Rhetorical Question which will be
screened at various sites in November and December and again at the CEB Winter MCLE Fairs.
Check
ceb.com for more information.
Print
