Recovering Attorney Lily Shanks

My guest this week is Lily Shanks from Dallas. Lily describes herself as a recovering attorney. After graduating from a top tier-law school, Lily practiced commercial litigation in a Big Law firm but although she was able to indulge her passion for expensive cars and shoes the stress resulted in a daily wine habit. She got sober and left her corporate job to train as a coach. These days Lily specializes in recovery and relationship coaching and coaches her clients to create their best, most fulfilling lives, starting from the inside. In this episode Lily discovered alcohol at a young age – via the liquor cabinet of one of her friends parents. It tasted disgusting but she knew it would change the way she felt…so she persevered and found ways to disguise the taste As a shy teenager who wanted to be popular she found that alcohol gave her the liquid courage she needed She was the only child of older parents she felt she had to be perfect… to do everything right.. Lily also felt she had to be independent and not ask for help These two beliefs led to a feeling of loneliness – a feeling that continued as she grew older The loneliness was a feeling that would last until she got into recovery and learnt how better to connect with people – when she learned that connection was the opposite of addiction As a straight A student Lily would worry about the possibility of getting a B Her drive for perfectionism helped her to graduate, get through law school and get a highly paid job at a top firm However she was always chasing the next thing, the next box to be ticked – buying a new car and more shoes even though she didn’t need either – she thought it would make her feel better which it did but only for a very short time She was doing the same with alcohol – drinking more and more in the hope that it would make her feel better but of course as it’s a depressant it only made her feel worse. Like many of us Lily was under the illusion that alcohol was glamorous and fun and cool..until one day it wasn’t. As early as 5 years into her legal career Lily started to sense a misalignment.. she wasn’t feeling fulfilled in her job and thought that the alcohol was helping to ease this uncomfortable feeling She took a years sabbatical and got her yoga teaching qualification and taught full time which she really enjoyed Yoga had helped her cope with her stress and she loved the fact that she was able to share that with her students Eventually Lily felt under financial strain so she returned to practicing law – (yet her finances always ran to buying wine!) She was using wine at the end of the day to self medicate her stress and eventually she could feel it affecting her work performance – some days she struggled to get to work as she was battling a severe hangover Like many of us Lily became an expert in disguising her drinking problem – so much so that former colleagues and friends were surprised to hear she’s in recovery Like many of us she did a lot of her drinking alone on the sofa at home In Jan 2018 she tried to take a break for Dry January but couldn’t notch up more than a few alcohol free days…and she always intended to go back to drinking at the end of the month Doing a challenge like Dry January is when a lot of people realise for the first time that they are dependent When you join Tribe Sober the first thing we do is put you on a 30 day alcohol free challenge so that we can help you to assess your level of dependence and what kind of help you need Short challenges are great to test your dependence but the true benefits of sobriety don’t come in until you’ve been alcohol free for a few months so it’s important to push through and keep going Like most of us Lily imposed some rules around her drinking as she tried to moderate – yet of course after 2 or 3 drinks there was no off switch She finally ended her drinking career in 2018 – finishing it with a few months of intentional heavy drinking before accepting that she would have to ma