The Executive Stress Syndrome Diagnosis from the Mayo Clinic 🤣 – Jim M.

About This Speaker Tape

A quart of slow gin and a half-pound of Spanish peanuts at age twelve; a cold chicken leg and Mad Dog wine on a kitchen floor twenty-five years later. These are the bookends of Jim M.’s drinking life. A former federal prosecutor and state senator, Jim spent years falling off upholstered bar stools and treating dinner as a hard-boiled egg and pepperoni from a dirty bottle. After a car wreck killed his wife, he fled to California, where he practiced law while passing out under his own conference table.

The Mayo Clinic once diagnosed his wreckage as "executive stress syndrome," a label he used to justify a cocktail of Valium and booze until he hit a wall. He describes his early AA experience as a clash between "big shot" Beverly Hills meetings and the "genetic misfits" of Oxnard. Eventually, Jim climbed from the alleys to the Superior Court bench, utilizing a Higher Power to survive the grit of dependency court.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Introduction and the 'bookends' of his drinking life.
• 5:15 Recounting his battle with polio and the push toward law school.
• 11:30 His time as a federal prosecutor and the transition to 'upholstered bar stools'.
• 16:45 The 'executive stress syndrome' and the blue Valium tablets.
• 21:00 The car accident that killed his wife and the subsequent 30-day bender.
• 26:30 First encounter with AA at the Sarah Retreat House and the 'good cop/bad cop' old-timers.
• 32:15 Meeting his wife and the 'Boy Meets Girl' warning in the 12 and 12.
• 36:00 Working the steps with a Turkish prizefighter sponsor.
• 40:15 The judicial appointment process and the 'rigorous honesty' about his sobriety.
• 45:00 The loss of anonymity after a defendant thanked him in open court.
• 50:00 Discussion on ordering defendants to AA and the friction with old-timers.
• 55:00 His evolution of a Higher Power and the 'healing power of Alcoholics Anonymous'.