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Explore your curiosity - Interesting people with fascinating stories.
Life consists of three things:
-The stories we tell others
-The stories others tell us
-The stories we tell ourselves.
Marybeth, welcome aboard to the show. Thank you so much for joining us today.
Speaker 2:And thanks for having me. Looking forward to it.
Speaker 1:And the thing that struck me profoundly about your story, and and we will share your story for the audience today, was that it feels like you're one in a million. The ability to pull yourself up by your bootstraps from maybe the lowest one can go to to where you've become just seems unnatural. Let me ask you this. Do you believe anybody can undergo such a transformation or is there something special about you?
Speaker 2:No. I know many people who have gone through very significant transformations. Maybe they didn't end up a federal judge, but that's actually not sort of the crux or the most important part of my story. They certainly have gone from being debilitated, whether it's from addiction or trauma or mental health and finding healing and finding sort of a robust, happy, productive life. The judge title is a little bit unusual, but the overall arc I think is is fairly common.
Speaker 2:People are able to get the help that they need.
Speaker 1:What was special about your journey where you were able to break a habit and kind of start really a new journey, a new road and stick with it?
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, will share an actual positive data point to put that in context, which is we hear these stories about how only ten percent of people that have an addiction ever recover or fifteen percent and that is just not true. That's really a number focused on for each effort and part of the reason that's low is that most people including myself can't be perfectly abstinent from day one. Right? And but if you look at lifetime in their lifetime, seventy five percent of the people who meet the criteria for having a substance use disorder, which is the modern name for addiction, they will recover to the point that they later don't meet that criteria. So I think we, we don't really understand that that positive number and I like to share it to give hope to the person struggling, but also their friends and family who can also feel very hopeless and debilitated about the whole thing.
Speaker 1:I love this battle so to speak. It's really about the whole war, whole journey not just that one battle that you're fighting.
Speaker 2:Yeah and I wasn't perfectly abstinent from day one either. I used three times in my first five months and three times in five months was like vast improvement, right? But some people would say I sort of failed failed failed succeeded and I don't look at it that way. You know, the reality is I know I was 32 years old when I started recovery. I've been using drugs since I was 12.
Speaker 2:I had a lot of trauma pain. I had PTSD and anxiety and I didn't know it. I didn't have the skill set to stay sober from day one. It's sort of it's it's really a challenge for a couple reasons. One is in early recovery.
Speaker 2:So you're taking the drugs away. So what's going to happen? All the pain that you've been shoving down or all the mental health symptoms you've been trying keep at bay, they all flood over you. They can be overwhelming. Plus you don't even have practice at doing positive good things.
Speaker 2:All of that can take time to develop. Perfect, perfect absence from day one happens, but it's not the norm and there's a lot of understandable reasons for it.
Speaker 1:Reading kind of between the lines that you would advocate not for perfect, like no, you can't touch it and if you've touched drugs you failed, but for incremental improvement.
Speaker 2:Well, think if somebody can be perfect, yay for them, you know, but the reality is most of us can't. And so I think having that understanding can take away some of the shame, some of the fear, some of the remorse and just really saying, you know, okay, so I had slip like I'm back on I'm going to get back on on schedule tomorrow or in the next day. And a lot of times what you see are patterns like somebody might start putting together longer periods of sobriety or their their relapses will be shorter, they'll be you know, four days instead of two months or whatever it might be. And sometimes you have to really look at that bigger picture. But the other side of it is every time when I say to a newcomer, somebody who's struggling when they have a you know, a relapse, what I say is what can you do to strengthen your plan?
Speaker 2:What can you do to strengthen and a lot of times what that means is they need things they're not getting like they need treatment for their trauma, they need treatment for their PTSD, not just addiction treatment, plus we don't actually have addiction treatment readily available for everyone either. And so, do they need more peer support meetings? Do they need to build up a stronger, closer relationships with other people in recovery? You know, there are things you can do to help you as you exit the relapse and start again. But at the same time, I'm not saying, Hey, go relapse, have fun.
Speaker 2:What I'm saying is, there's a good chance you can't be perfect. Let's just all acknowledge that and then figure out how to make sure you stay on track over time.
Speaker 1:And there was something really interesting. You were given an ultimatum basically go to AA or else you did something again, which definitely wasn't following the path. What was that?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So AA is 12 steps and there's other 12 steps narcotics anonymous and you know, cocaine and all the anonymous is and they can be that that's pure support and it can be a good fit for many but it's definitely not a good fit for a lot of other people And so for me when I was in rehab and this is in '93 but it still happens today. It still happens today and they did tell me they said 12 steps is it like this is the only way and I gave them multiple reasons why it wasn't a good fit for me and they still swore up and down that that there was no option and they told me like directly, you're going to fail Marybeth, you're not doing what we tell you you're going to fail. And that was a real like surprise, you know, like I wasn't expecting it. And so at first I just said, Okay, well, I'm going to look for the parts I think I can use and just ignore the rest.
Speaker 2:And so you know, I did what they told me. I read the AA big book and the NA text and I did all my rehab homework, you know, and all of that. But when I got home, and now it's January '94 and for probably you and definitely younger people I will emphasize there's no Google in January of ninety four ks. But I got home and I thought, I wonder if it's true that there's no other options. And so I got my car and I went to the library and it turned out there were other options.
Speaker 2:And so today those groups are like Lifering Secular Recovery which I'm on the board for. I use the parent of that. I'm on the board for She Recovers Foundation. There's multiple peer support options. And and for me, I don't care what people choose.
Speaker 2:I just want them to know they have choices so they can research it and find the group that's going to be most comfortable for them because then they'll have the best chance if they go where they feel like the philosophy is consistent with their worldview and the meeting format is one that they like and the people they're meeting sort of they're comfortable with that's going to give them the best chance.
Speaker 1:And keep me honest here you ended up building almost your own program through this process. What did, first of all where was the motivation to, I mean it's hard enough to go through a program but to build your own program seems like just like so much more difficult. Where did the motivation come from that? And then if you could share kind of the process of building your program, what did that look like?
Speaker 2:So more people do it today. In fact, today we talk a lot about individualized assessments for what's the right treatment plan for someone but I didn't know anyone else who did it in my day. I did it because I was sort of forced into it right because I they told me there was nothing else and that wouldn't work. And so I just always I viewed it as my job to listen and to consider because they knew more than I did. They knew more than I did.
Speaker 2:That didn't mean everything they were telling me was going to work for me. But some of it would some of it there were some good ideas there. I pulled some ideas out of 12 steps. I learned some things in rehab. So I, I would listen during the meeting smoke break if somebody said something that sounded useful, know, so I really viewed myself as having that I should be proactive and looking for ideas.
Speaker 2:But then I was the decision maker. I just always felt like I get to filter this. Is this gonna work for me? Is this an idea that I think a good fit especially right now something that I can use right now? And so I just always thought of it that way that I was the decision maker but I also had to be humble and admit that I don't know everything and I need to be looking for good ideas.
Speaker 2:And so that was sort of the crux of it. And today like Lifering calls that building a personal recovery plan. So it's definitely more common today than in '94. And I will say some people really prefer that to the structure of 12 steps. 12 steps is very much here's the 12 steps they go in this order, work them in this order.
Speaker 2:For some people that's a good fit. And for others, they just, they bulk at that, you know, so it's really just about what's going to work for the individual rather than trying to push them into the box that we know best or that we think they should be doing.
Speaker 1:There was an element of ownership, right? You built your program that means you owned it and when people own their decisions, then that creates what we call intrinsic design and intrinsic design we know creates much more powerful outcomes. So there's something almost trailblazing in the way you approached it.
Speaker 2:Well, mean part of when I was doing, although I didn't realize it at the time was sort of building up my confidence and my competence to sort of guide myself because when I when I thought about it later, I realized what I was sort of doing was like an analysis sort of like, who am I like recognizing who I was fundamentally trying to figure out what's my goal here? How do I think I can get there building a plan? Like for example, I had to prioritize what I was going to work on because I destroyed so much of my life like I couldn't possibly work on everything at once. Right? So there was that prioritization process.
Speaker 2:What's my first goal? What's my first plan? What's my second goal? When can I start working on this other thing that's not on the highest priority list? So it was that process that it turned out actually applies to pretty much everything.
Speaker 1:Everything in life.
Speaker 2:Yes. So it sort of, it made me feel more comfortable that after all those years of seeing my life, making choices that caused my, me to be going, you know, down, down, down that I was finally figuring out how to, build a foundation that was going to move me forward. And so it did help me. It was wrong of them to tell me there was no other way that put my recovery at risk. In the long run taking ownership as you say did actually help me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this is brilliant. I mean, there's, there's so much beauty in your story that is not necessarily intuitively visible so I deeply appreciate that. Where was the moment where you understood okay I need to make a change?
Speaker 2:Well I will first caveat it with we don't really emphasize this rock bottom idea anymore because we don't because we don't want people to think you have to have a horrible rock bottom in order to recover because that's just not true. And it's actually advantageous to address any substance use disorder or addiction that's coming up at an earlier point. And so today we talk about let's let's deal with it at the mild or moderate level before it gets that severe. But for me, I did have what would be traditionally categorized as a rock bottom. I mean, I started using it 12 I was shooting meth methamphetamine by 17 I did a little better in college.
Speaker 2:But at the end of college, I started using meth again on a regular basis. Did not get sober till 32. So it's a really long haul. It's a lot of years. And by 32 I had in my my terminology is I had worked my way down.
Speaker 2:Down the corporate ladder.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that. That was my next question.
Speaker 2:Because I couldn't hold a job because I was using meth all the time. Right. And, but more than that, I was having physical problems. I was feeling very help hopeless very much in despair very trapped like you know in this little miserable box and nothing was was going right. I hadn't felt happiness or joy in a long time.
Speaker 2:I didn't really see a way out. I didn't believe there was a way out because I thought my trauma pain which was, you know, deep and and vast. I mean, I had a lot of different types of trauma starting as a young girl. I didn't think there was another way to manage that pain and so it kept me stuck for a very long time. And then at 32 also I was with a good partner finally, finally a good partner and he was done like he was ready to throw me out and so it was all of that together that finally made me say, you know, well maybe I ought to go to rehab, you know, maybe I ought go to rehab and it's not that I thought I want to get sober and everything's going to be great.
Speaker 2:I thought maybe I can figure out how to make it better. Like maybe not good but better than this And that was like sort of as far as I could think. Is there a way to make it not this bad? Use less, have less chaos, have less misery. That's that was the edge of my ability to think beyond where I was.
Speaker 1:I love that. The baby steps. Let's just take one step forward. That's beautiful. So now fast forwarding, you're at the end of recovery and you're like, well maybe, maybe there's something that comes next.
Speaker 1:What were you thinking? What was that maybe?
Speaker 2:When I went into rehab I was thinking a couple things and part of it was just yeah let's see if I can figure out how to how to not you need to use the drugs on a daily basis how to not be at this level But I will say the other side of it was that I always knew that the violence that the all the different you know, I had child physical and sexual abuse, multiple other sexual thoughts, violent boyfriend, I'm putting me it was a lot. I always think that was sort of underneath my drug use. And so part of it was thinking, well, part of the fear, but also part of the knowing what was, you know, going to be necessary was that I would have to address that. And so it's fearful because I didn't think I could address it without maybe committing suicide or ending up you know in the mental hospital or something like I didn't know that there was actually healing available to me. I didn't I didn't know if that was going to be possible and so that is fear.
Speaker 2:Can I if I take away the drugs, how am I going to deal with this pain? If I take away the drugs, is that going to make me handle the pain in a way that's actually worse than the way I'm handling it now? Or is there really any way forward from here? So I didn't always know that those were connected. And that is a very common, you know, connection by the way, especially for women to have trauma and addiction be tied together.
Speaker 2:So I was thinking those things were in the back of my mind. But there was a lot of fear. I remember when my husband was driving me to rehab, We're like, you know, halfway there and I looked at him and I go, I don't remember deciding to do this. Don't remember remember I deciding to do this. He gives me a look like you're doing it, you know, and it was but it was just the fear was overwhelming me.
Speaker 2:What are they going to expect from me? You're taking something away. What am I going to do without it? Like just not really, having trust or faith that there was a path forward.
Speaker 1:When did the law come into the mix? When did the whole, I'm guessing you first became a JD, right? That's a, the first step.
Speaker 2:Yes. Yes. Well, will. So all my stories tend to have complications. All right.
Speaker 2:So, I graduated from Berkeley and, and I had, I had done a little better and I say better, not good, better on drugs for the first couple of years of college, but I started using meth again in January of my senior year of college. I had been accepted to Berkeley Law, a top 10 law school to start in the fall. By the time I got there in the fall, I was in no shape to do it. I was so strung out. I couldn't get to class.
Speaker 2:You know, it was terrible. I ended up having to withdraw. I handed back a top 10 law school because of my addiction and I knew it and it was agony. So that's sort of where it started going to law school had been my original intention when I went to college. That was my goal.
Speaker 2:So that I lost it. I mean, I had to give it back because I knew I'd never finish. So now I get sober at 32. I have a Berkeley degree and actually good grades but an embarrassing resume for the last ten years, right? I mean, it's you know, it's embarrassing.
Speaker 2:So my first professional goal was literally let's not get fired again. I mean like honestly that was my goal because I needed to start where I was law school, being a lawyer, being a judge that was you know way in the background as a as a long ago goal that I had lost my connection to.
Speaker 1:And how did you reconnect to it?
Speaker 2:So I started working and I mean, literally started working like a part time temp job like that was where I started. And then gradually, you know, went into full time work, permanent work, worked my way into like a supervisory job at a high-tech company in Silicon Valley, which is where I lived. And then at six years sober, I finally thought, well, first I was getting older, right? I mean, I was, you know, I sober at 32. So I'm getting 38 in my late 30s.
Speaker 2:And it's really like, well, am I ever going to try to go to law school for real? And it felt like I either needed to do it or to admit I wasn't going to do it. Like it was sort of at that point in my life. But it was scary because I had ruined it, you know, the first time. And so when I was six and a half years sober, I started law school when I was 39 years old and, and I graduated from Berkeley Law when I was 42.
Speaker 2:So that's how it sort of played out.
Speaker 1:Wow. So, so there must, I'm guessing that there must have been a fear that well how can I be a lawyer who represents the law with my background? Was there somebody kind of helped you overcome that? Did you do it on your own? What did that what did that look like?
Speaker 2:Well I actually had a criminal record but but it had been so so right after high school, a month before I was supposed to go to college and I grew up in New Jersey and I came to California for college. I graduated from Berkeley. A month beforehand I got arrested for, methamphetamine and, hypodermics. And so I actually couldn't go to college because I wasn't allowed to leave the state. I ended up my trial yet.
Speaker 2:So I had a college all for a year. And then I went to college and but they treated me very lightly like they knew I didn't have a like a juvenile record that I hadn't been in trouble. I was I've been in the newspaper for winning the most scholarship money in my high school. Mean, you know, it was a small town. They knew who I was.
Speaker 2:And so in my sentencing order, it said that if I didn't get arrested again, I think it was for five years that I could get my record expunged, which means erased basically. Usually people have to go through this whole big process to get their record expunged. But in my sentencing order basically said no more, you know, arrest, you know, expunged. And so I just had to file like a declaration. I haven't been arrested.
Speaker 2:Please explain my records. And so that was there. But that was that was a race. But, I was worried a little bit like what kind of drug questions will the bar ask or whatever. But the way it goes is like the California bar does not say have you ever done drugs because they get way too many yeses, right?
Speaker 2:They're not going to ask that. It said it said something like in the last five years, have you ever had a problem with drugs or done illegal drugs, something like that? But but I already had like nine years sober when they asked me that. And then when I later I worked for a big law firm. And then later I worked for the federal government.
Speaker 2:And when I worked for the Fed the first time they just asked, I think they asked about seven years and I had fourteen. And even when I became a judge, they only asked me about ten years and I had twenty. When I became a federal judge, had twenty years sobriety. So I was always able to tell them nothing and tell the truth at the same time, which was perfect. But when I was a judge, I did disclose to them about my history, not the details, but that was in recovery, because I joined the board for life ring.
Speaker 2:And that's like an outside activity and I had to run it through ethics. So that was sort of the way my legal history interplayed with my legal career. It was and even now part of the reason it's sort of easier for me to talk about my drug history is that I was sober for many years before I became a lawyer right so there's I couldn't have messed up any cases or you know anything like that which makes it a little simpler for me to talk about.
Speaker 1:Appreciate that. Of all I mean you're sharing such personal information publicly. I just want to say thank you for your humility and vulnerability that you're, you're, you know, sharing with the audience. Let me, let me ask you this, I'm assuming there were people that helped you along the way. Do you have any kind of story that you can share of somebody that your life would not be where it was without them?
Speaker 2:Well I would definitely say my partner now now husband. So so when I went into rehab, he was really like at the end of his room. Like in rehab, they do these family sessions, know, and so he would come for those sessions and he was saying things like I think it's too late. She's burned too many bridges. You know, I don't I can't trust her.
Speaker 2:Like he was really scaring me because he was like really, really done. But he did let me come home from rehab, which so I had a safe environment to go home to which not everybody does. And so that's an advantage. That was an advantage for me and stabilizing my recovery. He wasn't making any commitments or promises, but he sort of stood back to see what I was going to do.
Speaker 2:And then we start, we did do couples counseling. Plus I was in individual therapy, of course for that trauma. So and I it's not just that we survived it. It's that as he saw my hard work, and as he saw that I was moving forward, he became like my number one fan, you know, my number one supporter. Like when I was applying to law school again, he was confident I'm getting in like to me it's like oh no, they're never gonna let me back, you know, but it's really I mean part of what I want to say is I had some advantages in my recovery.
Speaker 2:I lived in a safe neighborhood. I lived in a stable household. I had a partner who while he was hesitating was ultimately on my side and supportive and who was willing to do the work with me to make our relationship to heal our relationship and to build a strong And so without that, probably many people make it without that. But those were definitely factors that really helped me especially in my early recovery.
Speaker 1:When you, I have a hard question for you. When you look at the social environment, the legal environment, the kind of cities and facilities, if you had supreme power for the day, what would be the one thing law structure facility what would you change if you could change just one thing?
Speaker 2:I would decriminalize all personal use of drugs and I would recommit the monies that are spent on policing and incarcerating which you know is billions of dollars every year and I would reinvest them in treatment, harm reduction, housing supports, employment supports, other mental health treatment, know, so that what we call co occurring disorders are also helped. In other words, to give people the best possible chance at building a good sober life for themselves. I think that would be better. I mean, the truth is, I think a couple reasons. One is that a high percentage of the people arrested for drugs actually do have an addiction which you know, our own government says is a medical condition, right?
Speaker 2:It's a mental health disorder, but you're throwing people in jail for it. Well, that's a contradiction. But also if people are just using for recreation, I don't really care like why should I care as long as they're adults, and they're not hurting other people, but it's just also a vast waste of resources. We could treat three or four people for every one person we incarcerate that's what the numbers tell us and we act like we sort of have treatment on demand. Anybody who wants treatment can get it but we're nowhere near that.
Speaker 2:We're nowhere near that and so it's one thing let's decriminalize but it really leads to so much more because we'd have so we'd free up so much money that we could put to a better purpose, a more effective purpose. I mean even if all you care about is effective use of your tax dollars, this would actually work better.
Speaker 1:Right. So, so let's play the devil's advocate together. Sure. So the argument would be that if it's not criminal, then more people will do it. So more people would go down that rabbit hole.
Speaker 1:So there is a function of their criminalization to actually prevent. Is is that true? Is that merit? How do we disassemble that argument?
Speaker 2:So, the data doesn't show that. So for example, there are states that have more punitive criminal laws around drugs and other states that have more liberal laws around drugs. The states with the more punitive laws around drugs don't have lower drug use rates, don't have lower addiction rates and don't have lower overdose death rates. So that would be my response to that. The other thing is if we weren't using those dollars for incarceration and police that we could actually spend some of that money on preventative measures because the one thing that would really help us reduce our addiction rate which is one of the highest in the world by the way, would be early intervention with use for trauma and mental health because the reality is that the two most common pathways to addiction are untreated trauma or untreated mental health disorders.
Speaker 2:So if you want to talk prevention, let's take some of the money and actually spend it where it would have the result of reducing the likelihood of addiction.
Speaker 1:So that path seems very reasonable to me, right? Deal with the pain in a more, you know, conventional way, not through bearing it under drugs. That makes sense to me. Let me go one step backwards preventing drugs on the streets.
Speaker 2:Well, don't mean to say we should spend nothing on trying to keep drugs out, but the reality is we have, we haven't been able to do it so far. We've had this, you know, so called war on drugs since the seventies. And the reality is that I and I've been sober for thirty one years drugs are more readily available and cheaper today than they were when I got sober thirty one years ago. So I'm not saying let's open you know let's do nothing to try to stop you know the importation of drugs but at the same time that that isn't that's not the majority of the money we spend. The majority of the money we spend is on incarcerating people for personal use and so that's the money that I'm really talking about.
Speaker 2:Let's not punish the individual. The other problem with the the criminalizing it is that we have a really vast racial disparity in the way we enforce our drug laws. So we don't even enforce our drugs logs fairly like white people use drugs at the same rate as people of color but people of color are, you know, many times over more likely to get arrested or for the charges to be a felony instead of a misdemeanor and the sentences are longer. We have a really unfair system on top of all the other problems.
Speaker 1:Marybeth, thank you so much for joining the show. I appreciate you. There's only one question that we ask every single guest that's scripted and it's a difficult one because it's very personal. If you had to go to the absolutely most difficult moment of your life, what would be the advice you gave yourself?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I guess the probably the most difficult moment would be when we moved in with my stepfather. That was like the beginning of things turning much, much worse. And I guess the advice that I would think about giving her would be to try to find help for the emotional impact of living with that level of violence, you know, because I didn't I didn't tell like let's say a teacher or trying to find if there was a counselor. It just didn't occur to me to do any of those kinds of things. And so if there would have been someone to help me through that pain, even if they couldn't have stopped it, they could have helped me, handle it better, that could have made a huge difference.
Speaker 1:You wrote a book about this experience and I want all of the audience to to go buy it. Tell us the name of the book.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the book is called From Junkie to Judge One Woman's Triumph Over Trauma and Addiction. And I will say I really tried to make the book useful, which is my goal with everything that I'm doing now that I'm retired. But the first third of the book is sort of my pre drug childhood because I wanted to show where it comes from because I don't think people really appreciate that or have a deepest understanding as would be helpful. And then it's sort of the middle of the usual, you know, chaos and misery of the drug addiction. But the last third is recovery, my first three years of recovery, because I wanted to show it's sort of a more, a more realistic example.
Speaker 2:But also how did I build that sort of individual plan? What strategies or techniques might be useful to other people? So that's sort of how I thought about the book. How can I, how can I make the book helpful to others? That was sort of a big part of the goal.
Speaker 1:Can just anybody learn something from the book?
Speaker 2:Yeah, because I mean, look, it's really a story of overcoming challenges, right? And so we all have different challenges in our life, but it can, it can be a story about how to address those challenges, how to move past those challenges. And a lot of the strategies that I used are applicable to pretty much any anything anything that you might be in recovery from and most people have something whether it's you know food or gambling or just grief or you know or pain of some type. So I think in that sense, is universally useful to see it as a story of finding a way out.
Speaker 1:Mary Beth, thank you so much for joining the show today. Appreciate you.
Speaker 2:Mary you. Thanks. It's been a great discussion. I appreciate it as well.