Dr. Adam Hill MD | From Alcoholic to Author & Advocate for Depression & Addiction in the Medical Community
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Dr. Adam Hill grew up on a small Indiana farm, with hardworking parents, his father was a counselor that worked with students with mental health issues. Adam saw this at a young age and credits this as influencing his professional arc to eventually join the medical field. His childhood had lots of bullying, with mental and physical abuse that he didn’t start dealing with until his late 20’s. He was an all-state tennis player, ran track & did very well in school. But on the inside, he was very fragile and broken. He started drinking at the age of 14, and enjoyed the numbing of his pain and fitting in with society. He noticed that while his friends were having a couple of beers, he would finish off a whole case. He didn’t realize how bad it was getting until medical school. Even in medical school, binge drinking was very popular. During his medical school at Duke & Butler Universities, he started to experience the high pressure & stressful environment that came with his profession, and it started to take its toll on his physical and mental health. Depression became a major part of his life, with sleep deprivation and anxiety making it worse. During his residency, is when he really started to notice. This led to depression in his case, and eventually to a more developed form of alcoholism. When he started his residency & practice as a doctor, his drinking really got worse. He started drinking every day. He would use alcohol to cope with tragedy, death & trauma that he would experience every day in his profession. He points out that this situation is not unique to the medical profession, but military, police & EMT communities. When he was battling addiction, he felt that he was inadequate in his profession, by not performing the level of care that he knew he was capable of doing, and the drinking was preventing him from doing so. His wife eventually had to give him the stern intervention that he needed to get help. He realized it wasn’t himself that had the problem necessarily, but the environment he was in that was making it worse. During his addiction & alcoholism, Adam lost 5 colleagues and doctors to suicide. These were doctors and professionals that he worked with every day, and Adam saw this as an opportunity to bring this to light in his community, in hopes of saving more lives. There is a stigma attached to medical professionals, where they feel like they can’t report their problems in fear of repercussions or punishment. Adam points out that we have to do a better job of taking care of our caregivers as a society. Professions with long hours, lack of sleep, and lack of personal care really need to have the attention and focus to make sure they are taking care of themselves. This is one of his main points of focus now, as he tries to help them deal with these issues. Now he is the author of the book “A Long Walk in The Woods”, where he talks about suicide, depression, and drug use in the medical field. He makes the point that we need to realize these professionals are people as well, and they are not immune from the problems we all experience. He also points out that we need to have more community resources to combat mental health at its core and remove the stigma associated with it. He says he wanted to get all of this out of his head, and hopes that it reaches the people that need to hear a message of hope. This is Dr. Adam Hill in his own words, on Knockin’ Doorz Down. For Carlos Vieira's autobiography Knockin' Doorz Down https://www.kddmediacompany.com/ For 51FIFTY use the discount code KDD20 for 20% off! https://51fiftyltm.com/ https://www.facebook.com/51FIFTYLTM https://www.instagram.com/51fiftyltm/ https://twitter.com/51fiftyltm For PodCorn go to https://podcorn.com/podcasters/ and tell them you hear about them on the Knockin’ Doorz Down podcast. For more on the Knockin' Doorz
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