Health / Wellness

Profile In Recovery: From Prison To The Bar Exam

Christopher Poulos is an attorney who has overcome addiction to achieve his dreams. His story is inspiring.

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Christopher Poulos

Christopher Poulos

I decided it would be informative and empowering to every now and then profile a lawyer or law student who has overcome addiction to achieve their dreams or lay a path to achieving them.

I can’t think of a better person to start with than Christopher Poulos. He is a 2016 graduate of the University of Maine School of Law.  Chris took a non-traditional path through extreme circumstances into long-term recovery and the passing of the Maine bar exam.  He has a sobriety date of January 1, 2009, so he is coming up on eight years of long-term recovery! His journey is made even more unique in that, with everything he went though, he received security clearance to work at the White House.

Where have you been in life?

Growing up, I had lots of advantages and lots of challenges. I had a loving mother and grandparents who were incredibly caring, supportive, and well-educated. We were able to travel a lot and I was exposed to lots of different cultures as a child. My mom was also a single mother and I had no relationship with my birth father while growing up. Addiction and mental health issues are prevalent on both sides of my family.

My addiction began with prescribed ADHD and sleeping meds and quickly grew to include alcohol, pot, other pills, and eventually cocaine and opiates. By the time I was a senior in high school, I had been hospitalized several times, experienced homelessness, and caused a lot of wreckage.

I also had several misdemeanor arrests and citations during my teenage years and early twenties, all directly related to my substance use. At age 19, I tried my first case, defending myself pro se. I had always wanted to practice law, but my dream was disrupted by addiction. It was not until years later, when I witnessed an injustice while sitting in county jail, that my dream of practicing law began to transform into a vision and a plan. None of my early run-ins with the law, hospitalizations, episodes of homelessness, or harm to my family provided me with the ability and willingness for me to seek help.  I thought I was a bad person, a loser, and a “junkie.” I had no idea that I had a treatable condition. By age 23, I was selling cocaine to support my habit. I sold cocaine regularly for a period of months during late 2006 and early 2007.

In May 2007, I came to a place internally where the alcohol and drugs were no longer providing me any relief to the emptiness I felt inside. I did not know how to sit comfortably in my own skin and I made a decision to seek and accept help. On May 14, 2007, I began my journey in recovery. It is no coincidence that as soon as I achieved sobriety, I immediately stopped breaking the law and have remained a law-abiding citizen ever since. It is now approaching eight years since I have used any mood-altering substance whatsoever, and close to 10 years since I have drank alcohol or used an illegal drug.

Several months into my recovery, my past behavior came back to haunt me. I was indicted on federal drug distribution and firearm possession charges. I ultimately served 2.5 years in federal prison as a result of the decisions I made during my active addiction and faced a myriad of other concurrent and collateral consequences.

Once incarcerated, I decided that the positive changes I had made in my life would not be disrupted by my current circumstances. I remained in recovery and began the process of getting back into college and eventually applying for law school. I found that college and law school were incredibly challenging without the aid of ADHD medications, but I applied the tools I learned in recovery and willingly asked for help and guidance when necessary.

Where are you in life now?

I recently graduated from law school and passed the Maine bar exam. During law school, I served on several city and state taskforces on addiction and criminal justice policy and served at both The Sentencing Project and the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. I currently serve as executive director of Life of Purpose Treatment at the University of North Texas. Life of Purpose at UNT is the only addiction treatment center located in an academic hall in the United States and, as far as I know, the world. Rather than attempting to simply push people who are facing addiction away from alcohol and drugs, we pull them toward discovering their own reasons to stay sober, which are often found through higher education. Our theory, which has proven successful, is that challenging young people early in recovery to find their passion, their fire — while also providing quality treatment and peer-to-peer recovery programming — the person is much more likely that sustain long-term recovery than they would be simply putting along and focusing on nothing except remaining abstinent. I also remain engaged in policy work at the local, state, and federal levels.

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What is your hope for the future and message to others?

My hope for the future is that our country keeps moving in the direction of providing increased resources for prevention, treatment, and recovery. One way to help build the partnerships necessary to obtain the resources required to truly address the epidemic we face is to continue reducing stigma. If policymakers see those facing addiction as their own people rather than as “others,” they are exponentially more likely to support efforts to address the issue.

A major way to reduce stigma is if the millions of people living privately in recovery were to embrace their recovery openly. The active addiction side of the equation is constantly showcased, but the recovery side is not. What I have concluded is that we have very little room to complain about a lack of political influence and therefore resources, when we keep a huge part of ourselves secret and don’t do anything to advocate for change. Of course I understand that this is always a personal decision, but I have seen that being open literally helps shift policy at the macro level and save lives at the micro level. For me, that leaves little doubt that I made the right decision by being open.

As for my journey from federal prison to law, the White House, and serving as an executive director specifically, my message is that the key elements to this happening included my willingness to constantly seek help, guidance, and to follow advice, and my belief in refusing to define myself by the acts of my distant past. I suggest that when we find something we are passionate about, we pursue it, even if it may seem delusional. When I was being escorted around the country in a jumpsuit, fully shackled, and surrounded by armed federal marshals, the idea of practicing law did seem a bit far-fetched. But by accepting my past as things I had done and experienced rather than who I am, I was able to go from sitting in federal prison watching Obama get elected to serving in his White House. I was able to go from sitting on that prison bus in shackles, to practicing law and representing children facing criminal charges in the very same courtrooms where I was once the defendant. I am not unique, all I did was become willing to ask for and follow advice and refuse to quit no matter what.

  1. http://www.americanbar.org/groups/lawyer_assistance.html
  2. http://collegiaterecovery.org/programs/
  3. http://www.aa.org/
  4. http://www.smartrecovery.org/
  5. http://www.celebraterecovery.com/

BrianCubanBrian Cuban (@bcuban) is The Addicted Lawyer. A graduate of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, he somehow made it through as an alcoholic then added cocaine to his résumé as a practicing attorney. He went into recovery April 8, 2007. He left the practice of law and now writes and speaks on recovery topics, not only for the legal profession, but on recovery in general. He can be reached at brian@addictedlawyer.com.

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