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WORK TITLE: Girl Walks Out of a Bar
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://www.lisasmithauthor.com/
CITY: New York
STATE: NY
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
http://www.lisasmithauthor.com/about-lisa/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Married, husband’s name Craig.
EDUCATION:Northwestern University, B.A.; Rutgers School of Law, J.D.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Lawyer and writer. Former corporate finance lawyer; has worked in legal marketing since c. 2002. Greenwich Village Writers Room, board of directors.
WRITINGS
Contributor to periodicals and Web sites, including Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, AfterParty Magazine, and Addiction.com.
SIDELIGHTS
Lisa Smith is a lawyer and writer. She practiced corporate finance law before entering into a legal marketing career. Smith has published in a number of periodicals and Web sites, including the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and AfterParty Magazine.
Smith published Girl Walks Out of a Bar: A Memoir in 2016. In the book, she reveals how her reliance on alcohol and cocaine to get through her high-pressured job created even more tension, as she attempted to hide her problems from her employer and coworkers. Smith explains the process she went through in seeking help while attempting to keep a low profile. She also discusses the difficulties faced by lawyers who have problems with addictions.
In an article in the Washington Post, Smith talked about her life experiences as illustrated in the memoir. She recalled how she attempted to keep her addictions and other problems a secret from her associates at the law firm where she worked. However, after receiving some help and gaining the courage to begin confiding in others about her problems, Smith was able to open up. She related: “When I started to write publicly about my addiction and recovery, I told my colleagues. I trusted and respected them. I didn’t want them to learn my story on the Internet. It was difficult to share, but the response I received was overwhelmingly positive. I am lucky to be in a compassionate and supportive environment. Not everyone is so fortunate, though. I still recommend thinking long and hard before opening up in a law firm. But, I hope, that can change over time.” In the Washington Post article, Smith went into details about the problems lawyers face in their high-pressure jobs and the ease of turning to drugs and alcohol to release some of the tension. She insisted that law firms should be more proactive in creating an environment where employees can feel secure about seeking help if they need to. Smith remarked, “Law firm rigors and cultures aren’t going to change anytime soon. The best we can do is provide information and education that will help young lawyers understand that they might need help—and that’s okay.”
A contributor to Publishers Weekly commented that “readers will root for this extraordinary woman as she travels the path to recovery, healing, and triumph over addiction.” The same critic claimed that Smith’s “story will inspire.” Writing for the Jewish Book Council Web site, a reviewer found it to be a “darkly comic and wrenchingly honest story.” Reviewing the memoir in CounterPunch, Charles R. Larson observed that, following a sizeable description “of her addicted life, the part about her rehab is short and less convincing. She breaks her habits with one 72-hour rehab stay, which is remarkable. That’s not sufficient time for most addicts to make the shift. After those three days she attends extended group meetings at one support facility and frequent AA meetings, but this part of her narrative seems too easy.” Larson mentioned: “Perhaps her intent is to make rehab look easier than it actually is but the recidivism rates show a slightly different picture. Still, it’s a harrowing story.”
BIOCRIT
BOOKS
Smith, Lisa, Girl Walks Out of a Bar: A Memoir, SelectBooks (New York, NY), 2016
PERIODICALS
Publishers Weekly, April 4, 2016, review of Girl Walks Out of a Bar, p. 75.
Washington Post, March 24, 2016, Lisa F. Smith, “The Most Terrifying Part of My Drug Addiction? That My Law Firm Would Find Out.”
ONLINE
CounterPunch, http://www.counterpunch.org/ (August 5, 2016), Charles R. Larson, review of Girl Walks Out of a Bar.
Jewish Book Council Web site, http://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/ (February 21, 2017), review of Girl Walks Out of a Bar.
Lisa Smith Home Page, http://www.lisasmithauthor.com (February 21, 2017).
ABOUT LISA
Lisa Smith is a writer and a lawyer. Clean and sober for more than 10 years, she is passionate about breaking the stigma of drug and alcohol addiction, particularly for professional women. Girl Walks Out of a Bar is her story.
Prior to beginning her more than 15-year legal marketing career, Lisa practiced corporate finance law at a leading international law firm.
She is a graduate of Northwestern University, where she received a B.A. She received her J.D. from Rutgers School of Law, where she served on the Editorial Board of the Rutgers Law Review.
Her writing has been published in The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, After Party Magazine and Addiction.com.
Lisa is on the Board of Directors of The Writers Room in Greenwich Village.
She lives in New York City with her husband, Craig.
The most terrifying part of my drug addiction? That my law firm would find out.
Lawyers have far higher rates of addiction than other professions, but we keep it to ourselves.
By Lisa F. Smith March 24, 2016
Lisa F. Smith is a writer and a lawyer in New York City. Her memoir, "Girl Walks Out of a Bar," will be published in June.
(Deb Lindsey for The Washington Post)
The morning before I got sober, my breakfast consisted of nearly a bottle of red wine and a few thick lines of cocaine. I got dressed, checked my teeth for lipstick and my nose for stray coke, put my laptop in its case and picked up the paper on the way out to work at my law firm. I felt sick, afraid and completely alone. I know now that I was wrong about the alone part.
A newly released study conducted by the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation and the American Bar Association Commission on Lawyer Assistance Programs reports an alarming statistic: Up to 21 percent of licensed, employed lawyers qualify as problem drinkers; for lawyers under age 30, it’s 31.9 percent. By comparison, only 6.8 percent of all Americans have a drinking problem. In addition to questions related to alcohol, participants were asked about their use of licit and illicit drugs, including sedatives, marijuana, stimulants and opioids: Seventy-four percent of those who used stimulants took them weekly.
More than 20 years ago, I became an associate at a big New York City firm and almost simultaneously spiraled into alcoholism and drug addiction. Top law firms are filled with academic overachievers who are realizing their dreams when they start work. Upon arrival, though, instead of making a brilliant argument before a judge, these young lawyers may find themselves competing with their similarly gifted peers for the privilege of proofreading documents for a high-ranking partner. If they do a great job, they may get to proofread all weekend. That’s what success can look like. Failure can look much worse. To cope with that life, many need an outlet. Over the years, I have known lawyers with eating disorders, out-of-control shopping habits and extreme exercise addictions.
While many professions have similarly cutthroat environments filled with high-achievers, young lawyers suffer from uniquely high rates of addiction — twice the rate of problem drinking among surgeons — and high levels of depression and anxiety.
When I was 25 years old with the ink still drying on my law degree, the work hard/play hard environment of a top law firm was intoxicating, literally. Everyone drank. Being able to hold your liquor was a badge of honor, especially for women. Long days in the office turned into long nights in the bars and clubs. Unfortunately, another long and stressful day in the office was always just a few hours away. It was a terrible dynamic for someone like me with a Type A personality and a then-undiagnosed depressive disorder.
Given the intensity and demands of the legal profession, it’s no surprise that lawyers turn to stimulants. Like me, lawyers I knew fueled their late night and early morning efforts with cocaine and other drugs. While there is no reliable data on the use of doctor-prescribed stimulants, such as Adderall, Vyvanse and Concerta, among lawyers, the soaring rate of prescriptions for stimulants generally and their widespread availability from drug dealers is telling. Students who pulled top marks in college and law school using stimulants are now busy practicing law, where the stakes only get higher. The drugs are bound to follow.
Making matters worse, the study also reports that the most common barrier to a lawyer seeking treatment for a drinking problem is concern that others will find out they need help. The stigma of alcoholism and drug addiction in law firms is real. When I bottomed out, I was using drugs and alcohol around the clock. Somehow, I never lost a job or even received a negative performance review. I kept odd hours, but so did many others. I checked myself into a hospital for a medicated detoxification only because I thought I might die.
When doctors strongly suggested a 28-day stay at a rehabilitation facility, I refused to go. It would have meant telling my law firm the real reason I had been out “sick.” Instead, I went to outpatient rehab two nights a week. One week and one day after checking into the hospital, I was back at work. It was not a smart approach after being diagnosed with a chronic disease.
What if I had told the truth and gone away for a month? When I returned, would I have been viewed the way I had been before I left as a smart, hardworking member of the team? I had seen many people take medical and parental leaves over the years. For the most part, upon their return, they seemed to pick up where they had left off. But taking a leave to go to rehab? I had never seen it done and wasn’t going to be the first to find out what would happen after coming back.
During the course of my career, I moved from active practice to working with partners on business development, in part due to being miserable practicing and in part to accommodate my downward spiral of substance abuse. After hitting bottom and going to detox for five days, I went back to the job I was in and kept quiet about my addiction. I stayed sober, and about a year later, I joined my current firm.
Years later, when I started to write publicly about my addiction and recovery, I told my colleagues. I trusted and respected them. I didn’t want them to learn my story on the Internet. It was difficult to share, but the response I received was overwhelmingly positive. I am lucky to be in a compassionate and supportive environment. Not everyone is so fortunate, though. I still recommend thinking long and hard before opening up in a law firm. But, I hope, that can change over time.
When people learn that I’m in recovery, they often say that they wouldn’t have guessed “that” about me and that I don’t look like a drug addict. Somehow, I don’t think that similar comments are made to people with diabetes or rheumatoid arthritis. And just like people with those diseases, we look like anyone and everyone else. That mild-mannered lawyer down the hall? She might have poured vodka into her orange juice or tossed back a few wake-up pills this morning. I did everything right — got great grades, made the Law Review and succeeded in a big firm job. But my predisposition to addiction combined with the grueling and psychologically challenging life of a junior lawyer resulted in a brutal and damaging 10 years of substance abuse.
The conversation about substance abuse among lawyers needs to be structured and ongoing. The study tells us that those starting out in the profession are at the greatest risk of developing a problem. That was me. It may not have made a difference in the progression of my addiction or how I handled it, but if I had known about these statistics and the help that was available, at least I would have understood what I was up against and what my options were. Most employers, including law firms, offer Employee Assistance Programs that make confidential referrals to mental health professionals, including those who specialize in addiction. Law firms need to incorporate discussions about substance abuse and mental health challenges into their regular orientations for new lawyers, stressing the accessibility and confidentiality of EAP programs. Yes, it’s critical for a new lawyer to learn best practices for working with clients and how to get a duplicating job handled overnight. But it’s just as critical for them to know where to go when they feel overwhelmed or when they find themselves having those few extra drinks they never felt they needed before. Law firm rigors and cultures aren’t going to change anytime soon. The best we can do is provide information and education that will help young lawyers understand that they might need help — and that’s okay.
Girl Walks out of a Bar
Publishers Weekly. 263.14 (Apr. 4, 2016): p75.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
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Full Text:
Girl Walks out of a Bar
Lisa Smith. SelectBooks, $17.95 (288p)
ISBN 978-1-59079-321-3
At the onset of this gripping memoir, Smith readies for another day in the fast-paced world of Manhattan law, but after a few glasses of wine and hits of cocaine, she has an unexpected epiphany: if she continues to abuse her body with drugs and alcohol, she is likely to wind up dead. After a decade of using, Smith makes an impromptu decision to call her doctor and ask for admission to a detox program; by the end of the day she's in a locked-down facility with a commitment to stay for a week. The following chapters review Smith's evolution from a sweet Jewish girl from New Jersey, prone to compulsive eating, to a legal marketer at a Midtown law firm, where she routinely drinks and takes drugs while turning in stellar work. Even her friends (a caring but party-hard group) and family are unaware of the extent of her problem. Smith openly shares the lies, secrecy, depression, and isolation that define a life only made "livable" by alcohol. Her raw depiction unveils the pressures of her job (20% of lawyers have substance abuse problems, she reports) as well as the personal costs of addiction, including divorce, ill health, and self-loathing. Readers will root for this extraordinary woman as she travels the path to recovery, healing, and triumph over addiction; her riveting story will inspire both those who have been there and those who have not. June)
Girl Walks Out of a Bar
Lisa F. Smith
SelectBooks Inc. 2016
260 Pages $17.95
ISBN: 978-1590793213
amazon indiebound
barnesandnoble
Lisa F. Smith was a bright young, Jewish lawyer at a prestigious law firm in New York City when alcoholism and drug addiction took over her life. What was once a way she escaped her insecurity and negativity as a teenager became a means of coping with the anxiety and stress of an impossible workload.
Girl Walks Out of a Bar explores Smith's formative years, her decade of alcohol and drug abuse, divorce, and her road to recovery. In this darkly comic and wrenchingly honest story, Smith describes how her circumstances conspire with her predisposition to depression and self-medication in an environment ripe for addiction to flourish, presenting a candid portrait of alcoholism through the lens of gritty New York realism.
AUGUST 5, 2016
Review: Lisa Smith’s “Girl Walks Out of a Bar”
by CHARLES R. LARSON
No secret that many successful people hide their addictions to alcohol and drugs—often for many years—but, then, either die young or crash. Lisa Smith assumed the former and writes in this painful account of her years of addiction, “Nobody knew that I had stopped contributing to my 401(k) because I fully expected to be dead by forty. No one would have guessed that I never got manicures anymore because no matter how much I drank I couldn’t keep my hands from shaking. And I had to work harder to convince myself that the paranoia didn’t mean I was going crazy. I lived in constant fear of being found out, and that made me more and more reclusive. The less time spent with people, the less chance of being discovered. But snorting cocaine alone on my couch made me feel like a degenerate. Thanks to addiction I was desperate to be alone and I dreaded being alone.”
Booze is the easiest; our culture turns on it. It’s especially the social glue of our youth. Ordering cocaine to be delivered to her apartment in New York City was as easy as Amazon’s one click order option. Although this is a side remark, the failure of our drug policies is so overarching that it isn’t even a concern here. Ditto Smith’s assumption girlwalksoutthat twenty-percent of the people at the prestigious law firm she worked at were similarly addicted. And as any of you who have had experience with high functioning addicts already know, they’re past masters of concealing their habits. Worst of all, nothing will change until they make the decision that it’s time to face reality and change (too often after a horrible crash where those around them are finally in the know). So this is not a pretty story. Girl walks out of a bar and stumbles home, reaching that destination when she’s still lucky.
Smith’s account of her addictive years begins when she is 38, and a highly successful lawyer specializing in corporate law: “Shit. It was 7:00 Monday morning and I needed wine. In two hours I’d have to be at work, which meant that I was going to have to steady my shaking hands.” She crawls out of bed, runs into the bathroom and vomits, noticing blood in the bowl. After steadying herself, she makes it into the kitchen where she begins drinking. And smoking. Then coke. Then a shower, followed by more wine. She leaves her apartment, returns, and calls a friend, finally admitting to herself, “I think I need help….” Then she thinks, “Even if I wanted to quit, I seriously doubted I could go for five hours without booze or coke. I had resigned myself to being an alcoholic and cocaine addict who would eventually drown in a puddle of vomit.” But something on that morning makes her decide it’s time to save her life.
Then, more classic revelations of the addict. Regarding her parents, “They believed they knew me well. They didn’t.” Assuming she could succeed in getting clean, “What would I do with myself sober all day?” And still later, “I knew that alcoholism would probably mean an early death, but that was a hell of a lot better than life without booze. That would be an early death.”
As a child, Smith had observed her parents drinking but never considered them addicted. She was an unhappy child, pudgy, mostly sticking to herself. At age ten, when her parents had guests over and served them alcohol, she would sneak sips of the mixed drinks, believing she was simply tasting them. By 15, she was binge drinking with friends. Cocaine came early, too. By 18, she was—in her own terms—“a blackout drunk,” but at Northwestern, it was easy to drink and still keep up her grades. Then there was random sex, after heavy drinking, and a law degree, from Rutgers in 1991, followed by her successes at a major law firm. Yet the high-functioning alcoholic admits, “I was starting to spend more and more nights home alone, drinking and then crying myself unconscious.”
The pattern continues for several years. The blackouts become worse. The mornings after, she has no memory of the nights before. There’s a brief marriage, and she manages to conceal the extent of her addiction from her husband. Finally, she describes herself as an around-the-clock drinker. Of the coke, she says she’s got it hidden all over her apartment. Her lipstick case makes it easy to carry around a bump in her purse. Her friends drink and do drugs but not to her excess. We all know that some people can control their intake and not become addicted.
After a lengthy account of her addicted life, the part about her rehab is short and less convincing. She breaks her habits with one 72-hour rehab stay, which is remarkable. That’s not sufficient time for most addicts to make the shift. After those three days she attends extended group meetings at one support facility and frequent AA meetings, but this part of her narrative seems too easy. When her story ends, all that’s left is her brief bio, indicating that she’s been sober for ten years and has worked much of that time to help other addicts, especially professional women. Congratulations for that. Perhaps her intent is to make rehab look easier than it actually is but the recidivism rates show a slightly different picture. Still, it’s a harrowing story.
Lisa Smith: Girl Walks Out of a Bar
SelectBooks, 288 pp., $17.95