Alcohol, Careers, and the Quiet Question

Deep work on your relationship with drinking when the whole system treats alcohol as part of the job

In your world, alcohol is not a “vice.” It is infrastructure.

Client dinners. Closing celebrations. Offsites. Conference bars. Airport lounges between red-eyes. Friday debriefs that slide into “one more round.” For many, the rituals started earlier: university teams, fraternities and sororities, post-game beers, shot traditions, a social life built around being “up for it.”

Fast forward a decade or two and those same habits now travel under a different logo: global bank, asset manager, law firm, pension fund, advisory shop. The uniforms changed. The rituals didn’t.

From the outside, it looks normal. From the inside, a quieter question starts to form:

Is this still who I want to be?

When “part of the culture” starts to cost you

You know how to think about risk for portfolios and projects. You are less honest about risk for yourself.

Maybe your drinking is “fine” by the usual standards. You show up. You deliver. You haven’t had a dramatic rock bottom. And yet:

• Sleep is shredded more often than you admit.

• Mornings feel thick with anxiety and vague shame.

• You replay one conversation from last night and wince.

• You handle stress by looking forward to the next glass.

Or the costs are sharper: an HR warning after an event; a near-miss behind the wheel; a fight at home that only happens when you drink; a colleague quietly cooling toward you after a trip; a younger version of you in the team who is clearly copying your habits.

On paper, nothing is “serious enough” to justify making alcohol a topic. In your body, you know something that your CV does not say: this isn’t harmless anymore.

The hidden risk calculation

If this were an investment question, you would be ruthless: map the downside, estimate the upside, stress test, walk away if the payoff is not worth the risk.

With alcohol, the calculation is different, because the costs of changing are real:

• You risk losing an easy way to belong.

• You risk being the “weird one” at dinners.

• You risk discovering which friendships were just shared hangovers.

• You risk seeing how much of your job satisfaction depended on being half-numb.

Quitting or even cutting back is not free. There is a loss of ritual, of identity, of default social life. In some circles, there can be a loss of status. If you have built part of your reputation on being “the fun one,” you may have to let that reputation die.

At the same time, the risk of not changing is also real: health, judgment, reputation, family, career. You have seen people lose all of those. Some of them were cleverer than you.

This is the tension we work with: not “alcohol is evil,” but “Is your current relationship with alcohol still suitable for the life you want now?”

Seeing both sides

I do not come to this as a scold or a stranger. I spent years in the same world: long-haul flights, conference bars, client events, and the subtle expectation that serious professionals can “hold their drink.” I also spent years sober, looking back at what passed for normal and seeing the cost more clearly.

That means I can see both sides:

• The way a glass at the end of the day feels like earned relief.

• The way a deal dinner feels easier with wine in the bloodstream.

• The way a weekend can feel flat and exposed without the usual blur.

And also:

• The way your thinking sharpens when you are not constantly recovering.

• The way your evenings stretch when they are not engineered around a bottle.

• The way you start to see certain relationships, jobs, and habits for what they are once they are not lubricated.

I am not here to take a side for you. The point is to be in a room where you can finally be honest about both.

What our conversations are for

We are not ticking boxes for a program and we are not reading from a script.

Our work together might include:

• Putting real language around what alcohol is doing for you and to you.

• Tracing how old rituals from teams, fraternities, sororities or early career still drive your choices now.

• Looking at the specific situations where you feel you “need” to drink: client events, loneliness in hotel rooms, Friday exhaustion, networking you quietly dread.

• Naming your fears about changing: social, professional, marital, internal.

• Exploring what “better” might look like: less, different, or none.

You bring your agency. I bring questions, patterns from others I’ve walked with, and a refusal to shame you or minimise what is at stake. If you suspect physical dependence or withdrawal risk, I will encourage you to speak with a doctor or therapist as well. Health comes first.

The work is incremental. You try experiments: a dry month, a different way of handling client dinners, a change in who you spend time with, going home at ten instead of two. We pay attention to what actually happens, not what your fear predicted would happen.

The costs of quitting, and what you might gain

We do not pretend this is easy. When you change your relationship with alcohol, you are also changing your relationship with:

• Comfort

• Company

• Celebration

• Avoidance

Some nights will feel lonelier before they feel freer. Some colleagues will find you less convenient. Some stories you told about yourself will no longer fit.

And yet, on the other side, people often find:

• A clearer sense of how suitable their current work really is when they are fully present.

• A different kind of confidence, not based on bravado but on being able to trust their own judgment again.

• New forms of social life that do not require paying with tomorrow’s energy.

• A gentler relationship with themselves: fewer mornings starting in regret.

This service is not about turning you into a different person. It is about letting the person you already are come out from under a habit that once helped and now quietly harms.

If this is the question you are carrying

If you work in a world where alcohol is everywhere, and you have begun to suspect that your own pattern is no longer harmless, this is part of what my practice is for.

You do not have to label yourself, make declarations, or impress anyone with a perfect streak. You simply need enough honesty to say, “This is not quite working anymore,” and enough curiosity to ask, “What might better look like for me?”

From there, we think together. Carefully. Kindly. And step by step, in ways that fit your life as it is now, you decide what you are willing to change.