Who I work with
The stress is real. The solution isn't.
You are not drinking because you are weak. You are drinking because it works, immediately, on a genuine problem. That is precisely why it is hard to give up.
Some of this will sound familiar.
- The first one is at the point where the day stops, and you have started moving where that point is.
- You have made a decision after eight in the evening and defended it the next morning out of pride.
- Client dinners are load-bearing for you in a way you have never said out loud.
- You are the person everybody depends on, which means there is nobody to tell.
- You have justified it as the cost of the work, which is the same argument you would fire somebody for making.
Why it takes the business, not the health, first
You are not paid to lift things. You are paid to decide things. Decision quality is the entire product, and it is the first thing to go, long before your liver.
The insidious part is that it does not feel like impairment. It feels like conviction. The decisions get faster and more certain, and the doubt that would have saved you is exactly the thing the drink removes.
I lost a company this way. Not in a dramatic night. In a slow run of confident calls made by somebody who felt sharp.
The client dinner problem, solved practically
Everybody in this position asks the same thing: how do I do the dinners? Here is what actually works, and none of it is a speech about your recovery.
Order first, and order decisively, because the moment of risk is hesitation. Have a drink in your hand at all times, because an empty hand is an invitation. Have one sentence ready and use the same one every time, so it becomes boring to you and therefore convincing to everyone else. Almost nobody asks a second question. The ones who push are telling you something about themselves, not about you.
There is nobody above you to notice
An employee who drinks like this eventually meets a manager, an HR process, or a colleague who says something. A founder meets nobody. Everyone around you is either paid by you, invested in you, or dependent on you, and all three of those make people careful rather than honest.
That is the actual structural reason this goes on longer for business owners, and it is why an outside person who has no stake in your company is worth more here than the same person would be to somebody else.
Before you change anything
If you shake in the morning, sweat through the sheets, feel sick until the first drink, or have ever had a fit when you cut down, talk to a doctor before you stop drinking. Alcohol withdrawal can be dangerous, and it is treatable. That is a medical decision, not a coaching one.
United States and Canada: 988 (call or text)
United States, SAMHSA: 1-800-662-4357, free, 24 hours, confidential
United Kingdom and Ireland: 116 123 (Samaritans)
United Kingdom, drugs and alcohol: 0300 123 6600 (FRANK)
Netherlands: 113 or 0800 0113. Alcohol Infolijn: 0900 1995
Australia: 13 11 14 (Lifeline). Alcohol and drugs: 1800 250 015
Anywhere else: findahelpline.com gives you your country's number in about ten seconds
This site is not emergency care. If you or somebody else is in danger, call your local emergency number now.
Questions people ask me
Will stopping hurt my business relationships?
Far less than you expect, and the fear is doing more damage than the reality would. What tends to happen is that one or two drinking relationships cool off, and they were usually relationships with the drinking rather than with you. Everything else carries on, and you start showing up to the next morning's meeting as the sharpest person in it, which is worth more than any dinner.
Can I keep this private from my team?
Yes, and you are under no obligation to tell anyone anything. You do not owe your staff a disclosure and there is no version of this where you have to make an announcement. Most people I work with tell nobody at work at all.
I do not have time for weekly sessions.
Then be honest about that rather than buying something you will not use. Sixty minutes a week is not the real constraint for most founders, though. The constraint is that the hour is a commitment to look at something, and the calendar is the most respectable place to hide from it.
What if I only drink to sleep after a hard week?
Worth knowing: alcohol reliably gets you to sleep and reliably wrecks the second half of the night, which is the part that does the recovery. So the thing you are using it for is the thing it is taking. If sleep is genuinely the problem underneath this, that is worth raising with a doctor rather than solving with a nightcap.
Fifteen minutes, free
There's nothing at the end of it to buy. If I'm not the right person for you, I'll say so and I'll tell you who is.
Peer recovery coaching, not medical or mental health treatment.
Also worth reading
Nothing has gone wrong yet. That's the trap.
You function. That is exactly what makes this so easy to keep doing, and it is why nobody is going to stop you.
The two hours that are supposed to be yours.
It starts as a reward for getting through the day. Then it becomes the reason the day is survivable, and those are not the same thing.
Cheap beer, no structure, nobody who knew you before.
It is not a coincidence and it is not a character change. Almost every brake you used to have was environmental, and you left all of them at home.