What image comes to mind. Probably not any. That image is inaccurate, but at least we have one. There is not the more accurate image of the hard driving lawyer who was on the law review, went to work for the big firm and had the perfect family, but before he was forty-five, lost them all to chemical addiction. For the last ten years a significant number of the students enrolling in our law schools have been women.
Chemical addiction is an equal opportunity disease.
Research data suggests that it may affect as many as one lawyer in five in our state at some time during the years of his or her practice. Obviously many women lawyers have or will be affected by this disease, and yet most of us have no idea, not even an incorrect idea, of what this means. The focus of this issue of the Bar Quarterly is to explore the unknown and untalked about facts around women and addiction. I have only just begun to learn how alcohol affects women differently from men. Physiologic research shows alcohol is not oxidized as efficiently in women as in men.