Chris Poulos - From Prison to Law School to Mountain Rescue

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Chris Poulos was already in the middle of recovery when he landed in federal prison.
Chris began using drugs and alcohol at around 12 years old. For about a decade of his life, using substances would help all of his internal anxiety, pain and fears “melt away.”
By the time he was 24 years old, he was at the “very low bottom, terrible, highly late stage chronic substance use disorder and doing whatever I could to just stay alive [and] pay rent.”
Eventually, “I got to this point where I was still ingesting all these substances, but I could find no relief from them,” he said. “I was really at a point where I felt so, so broken and desperate and in such pain that I knew I needed to either seek help or no longer continue living.”
That internal pain and external pressures from law enforcement gave Chris “some degree of willingness to ask for help.”
Chris brought himself to a doctor and for the first time in his life, he told “most of the truth” about his daily misuse of alcohol, cocaine, opiates and more. Due to what Chris calls a “peculiar mental twist that comes with addiction,” he couldn’t honestly tell the doctor when he last used those drugs.
“I had the ego of an elephant and the self-esteem of a mouse,” Chris said. “I was too ashamed to tell the doctor.”
He told him it had been two weeks, but really, it had “probably been about 20 minutes” since he last used one substance or another. As a result, the doctor suggested he attend an outpatient program instead of going through detox or an inpatient program first.
“And my heart dropped because I’d never really fully experienced a withdrawal,” Chris said. “I didn’t know what I was signing myself up for, but I knew it wasn’t going to be good.”
After several miserable, sweat-drenched nights, he said he finally got everything out of his system. Several months later, he found a job and even began taking some college courses. Chris was starting to change his life.
Around this point in his recovery, federal agents surrounded his mother’s home in Portland, and Chris was indicted on five federal drug trafficking and gun charges.
“And here I am, you know, having had this internal change already and in the middle of it,” he said.
His court-appointed attorney didn’t even attempt to get Chris out on bail, so he hired a private lawyer. When he left jail, “I became committed to becoming an attorney on that day.”
Chris still had to serve his federal prison sentence, but he said there was a positive side to it. Being imprisoned helped him finally end his prescription drug abuse, which began in seventh grade when he was prescribed Ritalin and eventually Adderall as well.
“In my formative years, my brain developed [while] highly stimulated on amphetamines every single day,” Chris said.
Chris believed he “couldn’t even tie my own shoes” without those drugs. Slowly, he learned how to read a sentence, then a paragraph, then whole books without the use of those stimulants. He continued working through recovery and planning for his future.
“Getting through that ultimately led to being able to complete both college and law school, both with honors, and pass the bar exam without needing Adderall,” he said.
Thanks to his recovery experience, Chris found ways to advocate and stand up for himself in positive ways. When the dean of the law school he ended up attending showed skepticism about his application, Chris said he was crushed and could have easily reacted by turning to drugs or alcohol.
“My dream of becoming a lawyer started when I was walking out of a county jail cell all those years earlier,” Chris said. “I nurtured that for every day through jail, through federal prison, through reentry, through college.”
Instead, he said to the dean, “The judge didn’t give me a life sentence. Why are you sentencing the rest of my life to exclude me from this career?”
Chris successfully completed law school and is now a nationally recognized leader in recovery advocacy. He primarily works in prison reform and in supporting reentry into society.
“Now my life is really full of gifts, full of blessings,” he said.
He got married during the pandemic in a small COVID-compliant ceremony. Chris also has joined a mountain rescue team. He said wanted to “grow and be part of something completely independent of prisons, completely independent of addiction, just totally separate.”
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[@danielp3692]

Thank you for sharing your story. This disease surely doesn't discriminate based upon color, profession, socioeconomic status, etc. It happens to good people and you're the proof. It's so important to get stories like yours out there. Wishing you the best.