Interview By Jose Vito, MD

JV: What was it like being the NY County DB President in 2007-2008?

PL: Overall, I would say it was a pretty smooth year.  And it was so smooth and productive because of the hard work of so many committed members of the Council.  Seth Stein, Esq., Donna Gajda, our Executive Director, and Dr. Hunter McQuistion, our treasurer, did a great job keeping us in the black.  Dr. Ann Sullivan made sure that we are always abreast of state and local legislative issues so we always felt we had a voice when it mattered most.  You and Dr. Jack Drescher put together an outstanding newsletter, both on paper and on the web.  And of course, Drs. Kenn Ashley, and Herb Peyser provided invaluable wisdom and guidance for my year as president.

JV: What was the toughest challenge you faced?

PL:  While the Council is truly an extraordinary group of enthusiastic psychiatrists, we have been chronically challenged in our efforts to engage the general membership.  This past year, we dedicated the bulk of our efforts on how to best get our members—and especially our members-in-training and early-career-psychiatrists—to feel that they are part of the APA.  We revamped some “tried and true” educational, political, and social events, like the Legislative Brunch, the Annual Meeting (formerly known as the Night of the Committees), and numerous Movie Nights under the leadership of our dynamic duo of resident representatives, Nina Urban and Alan Schlechter.  Inspired by the awesome energy of Drs. Henry Weinstein, Ann Sullivan and Silvia Hafliger, we started an Ethics Conference and a mentorship get-together, which hopefully will become a tradition at the District Branch.  Finally, the Information Technology Committee has also been meeting frequently and working very hard to bring the website up to speed as another avenue for networking and exchanging ideas among our members.

JV: You recently published a new book, Sober Siblings: How to Help Your Alcoholic Brother or Sister—And Not Lose Yourself (DaCapo Books/Perseus, 2008, www.SoberSiblings.com). How did this project come about? What message did you want to convey to your readers?

PL:  In 2005, Pat Olsen, a freelance New York Times journalist, had interviewed me for an article in an airline magazine about problems faced by people in the broadcast industry who suffer from alcoholism ().  We then became friends, and she told me she had two brothers who suffered from the disease while she had somehow managed to “dodge the genetic bullet,” as she put it.  I told her that I frequently find sober siblings to be the most helpful members of an alcoholic’s family.  They tend to combine genuine empathy for their ill brother or sister—more than a mere friend would, but at the same time retain a considerable (and immensely helpful in family therapy sessions) measure of objectivity—especially when compared to parents, spouses, and children of alcoholics.  We both agreed that although the sober-alcoholic sibling relationship is a very special one, little has been written in either the scientific or popular literature.  So we agreed there was a real need for this book.  Pat interviewed a number of sober siblings and related their stories, and I added comments from the medical and psychiatric perspective.

The core message of our book is the “not losing yourself” part.  While we offer practical information about the disease and its treatment, we also provide step-by-step advice to the sober sibling on what to do, what to say, and what not to say when confronted with such a devastating illness in the family.  In other words, we teach the maintenance of basic boundaries and motivational interviewing techniques to the non-clinician.  Sometimes it was difficult to avoid veering into more technical aspects of psychotherapy and psychopharmacology but Pat was amazing at translating what would be obscure to the layperson and bringing us back to the “self-help” mission of the book.

JV: NY County DB had a successful ECP mentor/mentee dinner night this year. What kind of advice would you give an ECP?

PL:  The first step is to identify a role model or two.  We live in such a wonderful city, full of wonderful psychiatrists of all kinds of flavors.  We have colleagues who write, colleagues who talk, and colleagues who mostly listen.  Some are analysts, some are researchers, others are both.  Private practice, pharmaceutical consulting, academic prominence, academic obscurity, politics, arts, administration, public psychiatry, with children, without children, per diem, part-time, double-time, happy, and not-so-much.  Ask them how they did it.  I have yet to find a psychiatrist who does not respond to an ECP’s inquiry of “how can I be like you?”

You may also like to identify an anti-role model.  Who is the kind of psychiatrist you don’t really care very much for?  Who represents what you dislike about our profession?  Well, here the work you have to do is a little different.  Don’t go up to him or her and ask for anti-advice.  Just observe closely, give the anti-mentor candidate the benefit of the doubt, see if you can extract any redeeming features, but, ultimately, be vigilant not to imitate your anti-role model’s career (and sometimes personal) choices.

JV: You have been busy with book signing, TV interviews, lectures, and teaching members-in-training. How do you find the time and keep your sanity?

PL: I ask for help.  I ask for lots of help with pretty much every project.

JV: So, what exciting projects are you cooking up this coming year?

PL: The American Psychiatric Publishing, Inc. (APPI), asked me to write the motivational interviewing (MI) book for psychiatrists.  Most MI textbooks have been written for and by psychologists, so this is a unique opportunity to write a manual catering to the special needs of the psychiatrist.  Dr. Bachaar Arnaout, who was a Chief Resident at St. Luke’s and Roosevelt Hospitals and just completed his fellowship in Addiction Psychiatry at Yale in June, is my co-editor.  Together, we’ll be asking for a lot of help from our friends in putting together “Motivation and Change.”

Petros Levounis, MD, MA, is the director of The Addiction Institute of New York and Chief of Addiction Psychiatry at St. Luke’s and Roosevelt Hospitals.