My First Legal Job and My Mental Health: Deputy Prosecutor
I graduated in 2009 in the middle on the recession. There were very few law graduates with job offers. I did not plan to move back home to Lafayette but I did not have options. I took the only job offer I had—-with the Tippecanoe County Prosecutor’s Office.
I have learned that I don’t deal well with transitions. And graduation, bar exam, moving to a new city, starting a new job all packed into a few months was a lot of transition. When I was in Lafayette I went to a psychiatrist and he started me on a new medicine, which was a mood stabilizer. I lived in an apartment by myself a block from the office.
The medicine did have some positive effects I did feel much more even with my moods. There was less swinging from a down and depressed mood where everything was a struggle to an elevated mood where I felt invincible and needed little sleep. But the medicine also made me want to sleep all the time.
After work on Fridays, I went to a bar across the street from the Courthouse, Chumley’s, which was the local watering hole for attorneys. I became friends with the young attorneys who worked in the prosecutor’s office, the public defender’s office, and in private practice. I started drinking again like I had in college. I would usually start drinking at Chumley’s at 5:00 PM and stay out all night.
When I really drank hard, I would have incredibly intense hangovers because of the medicine. I ended up stopping the mood stabilizer medicine because of how sleepy it made me. Sometimes, I could barely wake up in the morning—even if I went to bed early the night before.
I started in juvenile court. I liked working in juvenile court. It got me in court right away. When I first started, there were two other deputy prosecutors in juvenile court. One was very experienced and was my supervisor. He was a great mentor and I felt very supported. I became very comfortable in court and did some bench trials on my own. After about a year, I was moved to traffic court. I also enjoyed working in that court and also had a very experienced supervisor who was accessible. I don’t remember many times that I felt the work affected by mental health up to that point. However, when I was transferred to major felony court everything changed.
I would wake up in the middle of the night in a panic and sweating. I remember handling a hearing on a petition to revoke probation and this wave of energy came over by body. My brain was rebelling and it made me feel unstable. I remember walking on the street downtown thinking that I should not be feeling this way and handling this type of work. I felt like an imposter.
A few weeks later, I handled two major felony jury trials on my own. I was really scared and overwhelmed. Once the first trial got underway, the symptoms lessened and I was able to perform. While I was preparing for the second trial, my brain was triggered. My sleep became disturbed. I started waking up in the middle of the night in a panic and could not fall back asleep. The stress and lack of sleep affected my brain chemistry. I was able to run on adrenaline to get through the second trial.
I was struggling so much that I asked my boss to be moved back down to lower court (not major felonies). My boss said that he wanted to stick with major felony work for a while and then we could reassess. The stress continued to build over the next few months. I decided to leave the prosecutor’s office and to go into private practice as an associate at a small law general practice law firm.
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