When the sun goes down every Wednesday evening inside the nondescript office building at 2080 Silas Deane Highway in Rocky Hill, about 20 former and current attorneys gather around a table to talk about their addictions.

Inside Room 204, they pick a topic and take turns talking, as long or as little as they like. Some cry. Some laugh. All come for the love and support of fellow attorneys.

Their group is Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers Connecticut Inc., which also sponsors attorney-only meetings in New London, New Haven and New Canaan.

In the past 13 years, more than 2,000 attorneys have contacted its office for help.

“This is a safe place,” said Beth Griffin, a former insurance in-house counsel who took the helm of the nonprofit more than a decade ago, becoming its first executive director in 2006.

Griffin understands the importance of a haven. She drank for decades, from age 14 to about 40, when she became an attorney. All that time, she said she felt lonely and frightened, until she graduated from the University of Connecticut Law School in 1990.

“Isolation is a hallmark of addiction,” she said. “You have no control over the basic parts of who you are.”

Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers seeks to change this. It uses a 12-step program similar to Alcoholics Anonymous to battle drug, alcohol, sex, gambling and other addictions.

But very little else is known about the group or its members, who often fear that the discovery of their addictions by law firms, opponents or clients could cost them their careers.

One lawyer addressing the issue head-on is Hartford and Greenwich attorney Mary Alice Moore Leonhardt, who stopped drinking in October 1984.

“The LCL meetings present an opportunity for a lawyer who is struggling with alcohol or addiction to bond with other lawyers who suffer from the same disease,” Leonhardt said. “It allows for the development of relationships with people who completely understand the suffering addict and who can be empathetic to that person.”

Leonhardt regularly attends AA meetings and, on occasion, will sit in on the Rocky Hill Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers group. Her reasons are threefold: fear of relapsing; the fellowship opportunity with fellow attorneys; and the chance to give hope to others for their own recovery.

“The feeling of acceptance from the lawyer in recovery is a critical component to help that suffering lawyer be able to assemble some self-esteem and self-worth,” she said.

Griffin agrees, and suggests her career in law helped her work toward sobriety.

“I was sick and tired of being sick and tired,” she said. ”It wasn't, for me, about being drunk or buzzed. It was about maintaining a level of not being comfortable, and it was not fun.”

To get help, or for more information on Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers Connecticut Inc., call Griffin weekdays from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. at 860-563-4900.