Drinking, Health / Wellness, Law Schools

My First Law School Roommate

Can an alcoholic be able to make it through the gauntlet of 1L?

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Dave and I met early as 1Ls at Pitt Law and ours was an arrangement of convenience. We both needed a roommate, and we were both fairly quiet, reserved people. But it turned out that we were like oil and water. Him: preppy, conservative, socks and shirts neatly organized by color. By that first day together, he made sure I knew the top shelf in the fridge was his food. Bottom shelf, my food. For an alcoholic and active bulimic such as myself, such food boundaries were meaningless. I ate his food regularly, often after coming home drunk. Heading straight to the bathroom after binging on his food, turning on the shower and faucets full blast to cover the noise of bulimic retching.

For Dave, law school was real. It was competitive. It was one step toward something: life as a successful prosecutor maybe, or a judge, or even a life in politics. Maybe Biglaw. For me, it was a step away from figuring things out for myself.

Soon, Dave proved he was not only an incredibly tidy and organized roommate, he was also a good student. He got in with the top study group. He got good grades. He seemed to want to spend evenings in quiet study, and I never saw him drink. I was beginning to suspect there was something seriously “wrong” with Dave. The problem was that he was not like me.

What I wanted to do was sit around watching television and drink whenever possible. Isn’t that what people our age were supposed to be doing? In the evenings, a time Dave seemed to think was appropriate for his quiet book reading, I chose to do high-impact aerobics (popular at that time) to music in the living room. Hey, you live your life, I’ll live mine, I thought. Soon, he was spending more and more time at the law school library while I did endless knee kicks and jumping jacks in the living room to the song “Footloose” by Kenny Loggins. Our new arrangement was fine with me. I ruled the roost.

More than that, to see him was to be reminded of what I was not. I was a slob (OK, I’m still kind of a slob), but it was easier to pretend I was living that way on purpose when he wasn’t around. Dressers and closets were mere ornaments — the floor was a more efficient clothes storage system. Sweaty running gear sat piled up near my door, ready for wear at a moment’s notice. Empty six-packs of passion fruit wine coolers added a festive, tropical note to most rooms in the apartment. I would drink the entire case after going on a long run. And it seemed like fun little pranks to leave dishes piled up in the sink for him (I knew he’d wash them eventually) or gobble down his healthy, expensive grocery purchases when I came home intoxicated. Aren’t we an odd couple! Can’t wait to see the look on his face when he has to take off his cufflinks and scrub the day-old mac n cheese out of the saucepan!

In short, I was a constant source of irritation to Dave. And that was even before I started having to dig around under the couch cushions to find rent money. Even though Dave demonstrated incredible patience, I started to become paranoid about what he thought of me. After all, the evidence of my dysfunctional life didn’t require much investigation. When I’d see him at school, my mind would run wild with his imagined plot to ruin my life for being such an awful roommate. I had it in my mind that he was telling everyone else what a slob, a drunk, and a loser I was. But of course, he was just a law student trying to survive and excel in the hardest year in law school.

As we both grew to hate the arrangement, I spent more and more time away, sometimes staying with my parents. When I wasn’t at the apartment, I’d go to the local bars alone or at night or pull my pre-exam study binges at a local 24-hour Roy Rogers restaurant (with their unlimited salad bar to keep me fueled) so I didn’t have to interact with Dave. In fact, I didn’t want to interact with any of the students who were even a little like him — motivated, organized, and looking forward to promising careers. I didn’t want to hang out with any of them and be reminded of what I’d never be: a real lawyer. So while Dave and my other fellow first-year classmates studied, hung out, and even dated, I stayed to myself and nursed my own obsessions — exercise, alcohol, and avoiding looking myself in the mirror.

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The amazing thing was, even after I’d reestablished my unhealthy habits and alienated peers like Dave, I was still surviving as a student. And that may be true of many who go to law school with substance-use problems or other mental-health issues. While some who struggle might drop out, it’s possible for others to do well despite underlying issues. Some of us give less than full effort and squeak by. Fate is certainly not predetermined by addiction and other mental-health challenges, but probabilities of success (however you define that) are certainly affected.

Starting that first year of law school, I went the “squeak by” route, and getting through that tough first year without the consequence of outright failure was enough justification to me that I was doing well enough, and that my problems weren’t really problems at all. Can an alcoholic be able to make it through the gauntlet of 1L? I wondered. The answer, of course, is yes, and just being able to get by isn’t confirmation that the problem isn’t real, it just means the consequences are being put off until later, when the consequences of failure may be much greater and affect clients, family, and career.

Brian Cuban (@bcuban) is The Addicted Lawyer. Brian is the author of the Amazon best-selling book, The Addicted Lawyer: Tales Of The Bar, Booze, Blow & Redemption (affiliate link). 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 [email protected].

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