Client Success Stories : Dr. Brown

DR "BROWN" SAYS HIS STORY IS A "LITTLE more extreme than your average doctor" but not unusual in the general AA community. In the 1990s while living in another state and drinking heavily, he surrendered his license after the discovery that he was using intravenous opioids.

SERVICES

By Jean Colley
Editor, WSMA Reports

He went six years without a medical license, repeatedly trying to break his twin addictions to opioids and alcohol. By 2000 he was drinking a half gallon of vodka every two days and working as a grocery store clerk. “I was very concerned whether I would live through my alcoholism,” he said. “It’s worse than most chronic diseases. It’s hard for someone who’s not an alcoholic to understand, but there is this profound loss of control. There’s a huge compulsion and obsession in the brain. The brain is actually malfunctioning. And it eliminates the ability to control what you’re doing.”

His turning point came on a morning at home when he walked down the hall and noticed his young daughter sitting alone in front of the TV watching Sesame Street. He said, “It was an incredible feeling that came over me, that I would never be the kind of father she deserved unless I could get into recovery.”

Within a few days Dr. Brown checked into treatment. Even though he did not want to drink anymore he found it very difficult to get through the cravings and the compulsions that accompany the physiological process of getting sober. He feared that it would get too bad and that he would leave. But after a month, the compulsions lessened, and within three months, they diminished significantly.

He asked the Washington Physicians Health Program for help with his aftercare although he was outside WPHP’s usual purview since he did not have an active medical license. WPHP staff, who had tried to help him years earlier without success, told him they would take him on as a client if he could remain sober for a year and undergo regular counseling.

At one year of sobriety, they admitted him into their program but, he said, “I didn’t know if I was ever going to practice medicine.” After three years of sobriety, Dr. Brown began to miss medical practice, and WPHP officials encouraged him to apply for a license. He filled out the application, including details of his history of drug addiction. “I figured at least I’d have to go down and stand before MQAC and maybe have all these stipulations on my license for many years,” he said. “WPHP went before MQAC and talked about me. On the strength of their recommendation and the documentation of my several years of sobriety they gave me a license. It was an incredible thing. I took the license to my WPHP recovering doctors’ meeting.”

Now practicing again, Dr. Brown finds medicine more satisfying than ever before. “Helping other people is key—that’s part of the 12-step program. My whole reason for living now is serving humanity. It makes practicing medicine so much better. I can make a huge difference.”

Reprinted from November/December 2006 WSMA Reports with permission of Jean Colley and the Washington State Medical Association