The Lawyer, the Addict

A powerful Silicon Valley lawyer bites the dust. His ex researches, and finds a trap of illicit drug use in his calling.

I thought perhaps the pressure of his occupation as a legal counselor had at long last gotten to him, or that he was bipolar. He had been working over 60 hours per week for quite a long time, since he began graduate school and worked his direction into an organization in the licensed innovation practice of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich and Rosati, a conspicuous law office situated in Silicon Valley.

Then, at that point, for two days, Peter couldn't be reached. So I drove the 20 minutes or so to his home, to search in on him. Despite the fact that we were separated, we had known one another by then for almost 30 years. We were family.

I stopped in Peter's carport, utilized my key to open the front entryway and approached the parlor, a loftlike space with bamboo floors washed in daylight.

Quietness. A couple of sweets coverings littered a counter. Peter worked such a lot of that he seldom cooked any longer, supporting himself to a great extent on cheap food, snacks, espresso, ibuprofen and stomach settling agents. I made a beeline for the room, calling out to him.

The entryway was unlatched. A couple of folded and bloodied tissues were dissipated on the bedsheets. And afterward I turned the corner and saw him, lying on the floor between the restroom and the room. His head laid on a leveled cardboard box.

In my shock, I didn't see the half-filled needles on the washroom sink, or the spoon, lighter and squashed pills. I didn't see the pack of white powder, or the tourniquet, or the other lighter close to the bed. The police report from that day noticed a few safes around the room, every one of them open and pouring out clear orange pill bottles.

Peter, quite possibly of the best individual I have at any point known, kicked the bucket a medication junkie, felled by a foundational bacterial contamination normal to intravenous clients.

Of the relative multitude of deplorable subtleties of his story, the one that keeps on tormenting me is this: The set of experiences on his cellphone shows the last call he made was for work. Peter, regurgitating, unfit to sit up, sneaking all through cognizance, had made due, some way or another, to dial into a telephone call.