You can be successful at what you do and still be struggling with alcohol or drugs.
You show up for clients. You meet deadlines. You manage difficult situations and make consequential decisions. From the outside, your career may look exactly as it should. But you may also know that your relationship with alcohol or drugs has changed.
Private, individualized counseling for Alabama attorneys who are questioning their relationship with alcohol or drugs, working toward sobriety, or navigating life in recovery.
“I genuinely don't know where my life would be if I hadn't started talking to Dr. Thompson.”
Alabama
“You don't have to wait for everything to fall apart before getting help.”
Why lawyers struggle.
Deadlines. Billable hours. Client expectations. Adversarial relationships. High-stakes decisions. Long days. Professional competition. The expectation that regardless of what is happening personally, you will continue to perform.
Alcohol or drugs can become an easy way to turn that pressure off.
And because attorneys are often exceptionally capable of continuing to function under difficult circumstances, a substance use problem doesn't necessarily look the way people expect it to. You can be successful and struggling at the same time.
The legal profession has a drinking problem. Alabama attorneys aren't exempt.
The Alabama State Bar's own Lawyer Assistance Program points its members to this same landmark research on U.S. attorneys:
For attorneys, asking for help can feel like a professional risk. It doesn't have to be. Your career is built around protecting your clients' confidences — Counsel in Confidence exists on the belief that you deserve a private place to address your own.
Sources: American Bar Association & Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation, The Prevalence of Substance Use and Other Mental Health Concerns Among American Attorneys (2016) — the same research ALAP's own director has cited to Alabama lawyers in The Alabama Lawyer. Local program data: Alabama Lawyer Assistance Program, Alabama State Bar.
You don't have to call yourself an alcoholic or addict to have this conversation.
You don't need to arrive with a diagnosis. You don't need to have hit rock bottom. And you don't need to know whether you're ready to stop drinking forever.
You may simply know that something isn't right. That is enough reason to start a conversation.
- You regularly drink or use more than you intended.
- You've started thinking about alcohol or drugs more than you used to.
- You use alcohol or drugs to shut your brain off after work.
- You've made rules about when or how much you'll drink or use — and repeatedly broken them.
- Your spouse or someone close to you has expressed concern.
- Your drinking or drug use hasn't destroyed your career, but you're beginning to wonder what it could eventually cost you.
- You've stopped before but haven't been able to sustain it.
- Or you're already sober and want support building a life and career in long-term recovery.
Recovery without stepping away from your identity.
For many attorneys, the fear isn't simply “Do I have a problem with alcohol or drugs?” It's this:
“What happens to the rest of my life if I admit that I do?”
Treatment doesn't have to begin with abandoning your professional life or adopting an identity that doesn't feel like yours.
Individual counseling creates a private setting to understand what's happening, determine what needs to change, and develop a realistic approach to recovery that accounts for your career, relationships, responsibilities, and goals.
Meet Ben Thompson, PhD, LADC
Ben combines clinical expertise, academic scholarship, and personal experience in recovery. He holds graduate degrees in theology and in science and religion, a PhD in neuroscience, and advanced training in addiction and recovery from Yale and Harvard — a rare, integrative background that shapes how he works with clients.
There is a difference between understanding addiction academically and understanding what recovery asks of a person in everyday life. That combination — the academic training and his own long-term experience with recovery — informs an approach that is direct, practical, and compassionate, grounded in the reality that getting sober is only part of the work. Building a life that makes continued recovery possible matters too.
For attorneys accustomed to being the person others turn to for answers, therapy offers something different: a place where you don't have to perform, persuade, manage the situation, or already know what comes next. You can simply start by being honest about what's happening.
Private by design — not a program, not insurance-billed.
This isn't inpatient treatment, and it isn't a group outpatient program. There's no facility, no cohort, no shared waiting room — which matters more for attorneys than it might for most people. Treatment programs draw from the same regional pool of professionals you already know: opposing counsel, a former client, a judge you've appeared in front of. Sitting in group treatment across from any of them is a real risk, not a hypothetical one.
Billing through insurance creates its own paper trail — a diagnosis code, a claim your employer's plan administrator can see, sometimes a record relevant to bar character-and-fitness questions down the road. Paying directly keeps the entire record between you and Ben.
This site is informational and does not constitute legal advice. Questions about bar admission, discipline, or reporting obligations should be directed to the Alabama State Bar or the Alabama Lawyer Assistance Program.
Alabama Lawyer Assistance Program (ALAP)
Alabama's confidential lawyer assistance program has served more than 1,000 lawyers, judges, and law students since 2000. ALAP preserves participants' anonymity, does not disclose participation to other State Bar departments, and poses no risk to admission or licensure — independent of the bar's disciplinary process.
alabar.org/alap →You don't have to lose everything before you make a change.
If you're questioning your drinking or drug use, trying to stop, returning to recovery, or looking for support maintaining sobriety, you don't have to figure it out alone. Private counseling available to clients in Alabama.