“I drink wine because I don’t like to keep my problems bottled up.” “I drink wine because punching people is frowned upon.” “Keep calm and drink wine.” These are real slogans on T-shirts you can buy online by Googling “funny party T-shirts.” What is deadly serious is that these slogans also reflect the daily, real-life struggles with alcohol facing too many in our legal community.

The findings of the landmark study of 13,000 currently practicing lawyers by the American Bar Association Commission on Lawyer Assistance Programs and the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation (ABA/Hazelden study) published in the American Bar Journal in 2016 and elsewhere, revealed that between 21 and 36 percent qualified as problem drinkers.