Alcohol and business dinners: when drinking becomes part of the job

“Sparkling water? What, are you ill? Come on, tonight we’re celebrating.”

A dinner after a contract is signed. There are already three bottles on the table, the host keeps pouring, the waiter is standing by with the next one. Whoever declines has to explain why — driving, antibiotics, an early flight. Whoever drinks explains nothing. And when the taxi stops outside the house at midnight, another day lies behind them that began at six and ended with wine they never really decided to drink.

For people in senior positions, drinking is often not a private habit but part of the job. People drink at signings, at conferences, with guests from abroad, at Christmas parties, in airport lounges. That makes it hard to think of as a risk — after all, “everyone does it”. In this post I want to look at how drinking at work becomes normal, where the warning signs are, and where to turn when you start to have doubts.

A glass that comes with the job description

In Slovenia, alcohol is so woven into everyday life that we often don’t even notice it. We raise a glass at births, weddings, new jobs and funerals. I have written about how drinking quietly becomes normal in families in Alcohol in the Slovenian family: how it is normalised until it breaks. The business world follows the same rule, just in different clothes: the toast is made not with home-made brandy but with good wine, and not in a cellar but in a restaurant.

According to World Health Organization figures from 2018, alcohol is linked to around three million deaths worldwide each year — a little over five per cent of all deaths. In the same year, a large international analysis of the burden of disease reached a conclusion that surprised many: the amount of alcohol at which harm to health is lowest is zero. This doesn’t mean every glass is dangerous. But it does mean that the idea of “healthy” drinking is weaker than we were used to thinking. There is more on this in What is moderate drinking, and who can afford it.

For senior people, the trap is that drinking carries positive meanings. It stands for hospitality, trust, success. Someone who handles their drink well is seen as relaxed and “one of us”. Someone who doesn’t drink is suspect — or at least dull. When the glass is part of the role, it is hard to see it as something that could become a problem.

Why people drink differently at the top

In 2015, the Finnish researcher Marianna Virtanen and colleagues pooled data from more than a hundred thousand employees in several countries. People who worked more than fifty-five hours a week were somewhat more likely to drink at risky levels than those with standard hours. The difference wasn’t large, but it was consistent. Long hours, travel and responsibility are a layer that builds up on top of a drinking culture.

From conversations on this subject, I know a few patterns that come up again and again:

• Alcohol as a switch. After a day spent entirely on standby, a glass is the quickest way for the body to let go. It works — at least for the first hour.
• Alcohol as a reward. “After this week, I’ve earned it.” When every working week is hard, the reward comes every day.
• Alcohol on the road. The hotel minibar, the business lounge, dinner with partners abroad. Away from your home rhythm, there is no one to notice how much it was.
• Alcohol as company. It is lonely at the top — I have written about this in Loneliness at the top. A drink with someone is sometimes the only moment when a relationship is less formal.

None of these patterns is an addiction in itself. Together, though, they create an environment in which drinking can slowly grow without anyone — including you — saying that anything is changing.

A drink for sleep that spoils sleep

Of all the reasons for drinking, perhaps the most insidious among senior people is this one: “I can’t sleep without a glass.” Alcohol really does help you fall asleep faster. A review of research published in 2013 by Irshaad Ebrahim and colleagues showed that alcohol shortens the time it takes to fall asleep and deepens sleep in the first half of the night. In the second half, though, the picture reverses: sleep becomes lighter and more broken, and there is less REM sleep. You wake at three, sweaty, with your thoughts pounding.

There is a short explanation in the knowledge base under alcohol and sleep. What matters most for leaders is that this creates a loop: poor sleep increases tiredness and irritability the next day, the evening brings a need to unwind, the unwinding comes in a glass, and the glass spoils the night. I have written about what short nights do to judgement in Leaders and sleep.

Warning signs that aren’t about quantity

People like to measure drinking by the number of glasses. The number matters, but it often says less than questions about how you drink. A few signs worth pausing over:

• You often drink more than you meant to — “just one glass” becomes a bottle.
• You prefer business dinners to other meetings because there is alcohol at them.
• Before an event you have a glass “to warm up”, or afterwards you have another at home because you “didn’t really have anything”.
• The next morning you can’t remember parts of the conversation.
• Your partner or children have said something — and you reacted with irritation.
• You have to plan alcohol-free days deliberately, or they don’t happen.

You will find more questions like these in Am I an addict? Questions that say more than quantity. None of them is a diagnosis. But they are a signal that drinking has started doing a job it didn’t do before.

What the AUDIT questionnaire asks

Doctors around the world often use the AUDIT questionnaire, developed by the World Health Organization, for a first assessment of drinking. It has ten questions. I won’t give the scoring here, because the questionnaire is meant for a conversation with a doctor, not for self-diagnosis. But it is useful to know what it asks, because that alone tells you what professionals look at.

The questions cover three areas. The first is drinking itself: how often you drink, how much you drink on a typical day when you drink, and how often you drink a lot at once. The second is signs of dependence: whether you find it hard to stop once you start, whether drinking has kept you from doing what was expected of you, and whether you need a drink in the morning to get going. The third is harm: guilt after drinking, gaps in memory, injuries, and whether someone close to you or a doctor has already voiced concern.

With senior people, I notice that they often look only at the first area — and because they drink “in a civilised way”, with good food and in good company, they feel everything is fine. But it is the second and third areas that show whether alcohol has taken on a role in your life that doesn’t belong to it. Addiction is not a matter of willpower or character; the post Addiction is not weak will explains why well.

How it sounds in conversation

The conversation below is a composite, not a real person. But it is very similar to conversations that often happen in stories like these.

“I don’t drink much. At dinners, like everyone.”
“How many dinners were there this month?”
“Nine. Maybe ten.”
“And at home?”
“At home a glass to calm down. Otherwise I can’t sleep.”
“What would happen if, for one week, instead of a glass in the evening you told someone how your day had been?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think I’d have anyone to tell.”

Often it is only in a conversation like this that it becomes clear alcohol is not just chemistry but also a stand-in for a relationship. The glass is the one that listens without asking questions. And as long as that is the case, banning drinking as a solution is incomplete, because it leaves an empty space that alcohol used to fill.

And it isn’t only about you. At home there is often a partner who has long noticed that evenings end with the same scene, but doesn’t know how to raise it without starting a row. Children who see that a glass is part of the end of every day learn something from it about how adults cope with tension. And a team that knows the “real” decisions are only made after the second bottle gets a message about what the company truly values. As a leader you are a role model even when you don’t want to be — and drinking is no exception. So the question of how much you drink is also a question about the atmosphere you create around you.

Exercise: a month of noticing

This exercise is not a programme for cutting out alcohol. It is a way of getting a clearer picture of the role alcohol plays in your working life. You can start it today.

1. Keep a record for four weeks. Every day, note in your calendar or a notebook whether you drank, how much and on what occasion. No comments and no judgement — just the record.
2. Add one word to every drink. What were you feeling or needing at the time? Tiredness, tension, boredom, celebration, loneliness, pressure from others. After a few weeks, a pattern emerges.
3. Decide in advance before your next business dinner. Decide how much you will drink at home, not at the table. Prepare one sentence for saying no (“Not tonight, thanks — I’m driving early tomorrow”) and say it without apologising.
4. Order your first drink alcohol-free. When you already have a glass in your hand, waiters and hosts push less often. The post Sober in a drinking culture has more ideas.
5. At the end of the month, look at the record with someone. Your partner, a friend or a doctor. Ask yourself: would you be glad to see a record like this for someone you love?

An important warning: if you drink heavily every day, don’t stop suddenly on your own. With physical dependence, withdrawal can be dangerous — more on this in Withdrawal: why it deserves to be taken seriously. In that case the first step is a conversation with your GP, not an exercise.

Where this story doesn’t hold

I don’t want this post to read as a condemnation of every glass at a business dinner. A few limits need to be stated.

Not all drinking is a problem. Many people occasionally have a glass of wine with dinner, and alcohol plays no particular role in their lives. This post isn’t meant to make an addict of everyone. It is meant for those who felt slightly uneasy while reading it.

Sometimes alcohol is the answer to a different question. Behind drinking there may be depression, anxiety, trauma or chronic stress that no one has named. In that case, cutting down on its own solves nothing — rather, it reveals what lay beneath. That is not a reason not to cut down, but a reason not to stop there.

Lecturing doesn’t help. William Miller and Stephen Rollnick, the authors of motivational interviewing, have shown that people almost always feel ambivalent about changing a habit — part of them wants change, part doesn’t. Pushing on that ambivalence with warnings usually makes the other person more defensive. That is why this post doesn’t tell you what you must do. It is about what you can notice.

For some people, moderation isn’t the way. For people with established dependence, the goal of moderate drinking is often out of reach, and going back to “just one glass” leads back to where they were. Whether abstinence is the only safe option is something to decide with a professional, not alone.

Where to find help

Your first port of call is your GP. They can assess your drinking and your health, order tests and, if needed, refer you to a psychiatrist or a specialised addiction treatment programme. You don’t need proof that “it’s really bad” — it is enough that you are worried.

In Slovenia there are also clubs for treated alcoholics and Alcoholics Anonymous groups. I have summarised what research says about such programmes in Alcoholics Anonymous and other programmes.

Psychotherapy can help with what lies beneath the drinking: loneliness in your position, pressure no one sees, relationships at home that have slowly drifted apart between work and the glass. In relational family therapy, in which I am training, we often also look at the role alcohol played in the family you come from — who drank, who stayed silent, who covered up. This view across generations is at the heart of the longer session A Look into the Past, in which we draw your family genogram together. I also work with English-speaking clients.

If thoughts that nothing makes sense any more have come up alongside the drinking, don’t wait: call the mental health crisis line in Slovenia on 01 520 99 00 (daily from 7 pm to 7 am) or the Samaritans helpline in Slovenia on 116 123 (24 hours). In an emergency, call 112.

What to remember

• For senior people, drinking is often part of the role — which is why it is hard to see it as a risk.
• Long hours, travel and loneliness are a layer that builds up on top of a drinking culture.
• A drink for sleep helps you fall asleep but spoils the second half of the night.
• Questions about whether you are still the one deciding, and what drinking already costs you, say more than the number of glasses.
• If you drink heavily every day, don’t stop suddenly on your own — the first step is a conversation with your GP.