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High-Functioning Alcohol Dependency: Why Success Can Make the Problem Harder to See

Warmly lit executive office with a nearly empty bottle of alcohol and a glass on the desk, with framed professional awards and certificates in the background

You haven’t lost your job. Actually, you may be doing quite well.

Because every morning, you get up, answer emails, make decisions, and take care of your family. You do everything that needs to be done. Maybe you run a company or manage a team of people. People depend on you, and from other people’s perspective, your life looks pretty good.

You also drink every night.

Let’s say you’ve started wondering about that.

The problem is, every time you wonder if you’re drinking too much, you have plenty of evidence to prove that you’re fine. Because you went to work today, you made dinner, and you remembered the appointment. Nobody has taken away your car keys or sat you down for an intervention.

People with drinking problems don’t live like this.

Do they?

What does “high-functioning” actually mean?

High-functioning alcohol dependency isn’t a separate medical diagnosis from alcohol use disorder (AUD). AUD can range from mild to severe, and plenty of people who meet the criteria seem successful from the outside looking in.

This is part of what can make the problem so difficult to recognise.

As a society, we have some pretty dramatic ideas about what alcoholism is supposed to look like. We imagine someone who drinks in the morning or can’t hold down a job. Maybe we picture a DUI, jail time, or someone whose family has finally given up.

If none of that has happened, it is easy to look at your own drinking and decide you aren’t there yet.

You may tell yourself these things:

I never miss work.

I only drink at night.

I’ve never had a DUI.

I could stop if I really needed to.

Maybe all of that is true, but it still doesn’t tell you much about your relationship with alcohol.

Success can cover a lot

The very qualities that help someone become successful can also make it easier to function while something isn’t right.

High-achieving people tend to be good at pushing through. They work when they’re tired, and they compensate when something goes wrong and keep moving because there are people waiting for them to get things done.

You can do that with a hangover, too. You can lead a meeting after sleeping badly. You can answer emails while anxious and shaky. You can get through a workday knowing that when it is finally over, there is a bottle of wine waiting at home.

If you keep doing all of those things reasonably well, it becomes easy to believe that drinking isn’t really a problem.

Sometimes the signs are more subtle. You start thinking about that first drink earlier in the day. One glass becomes two, and then two becomes most of the bottle. You decide you’re only going to drink at weekends, but Wednesday was awful, so Wednesday counts this week.

Let’s say that you take a month off to prove you can, and you do. But after 30 days, you go right back to drinking. Nothing has fallen apart, but alcohol is taking up more room in your life than it used to.

The rules around drinking

The rules we make around alcohol can tell us quite a lot.

Think about these: 

Only wine.

Never before five.

Not on weeknights.

Only when I’m with other people.

I’ll take January off.

I’ll cut back after this trip.

Making a rule doesn’t necessarily mean someone has an alcohol problem. But if you are constantly making rules about your drinking, breaking them, and making new ones, it may be worth asking why alcohol requires so much negotiation in the first place.

There is also comparison. Someone else drinks more, someone else has been to rehab, and then there’s someone else who lost everything.

There will almost always be someone whose drinking looks worse than yours. Finding that person can be reassuring, but it can also keep you from looking too closely at your own life.

When alcohol cecomes the way you switch off

For some high-functioning people, the amount they drink is only part of the story. There is also the question of what alcohol is doing for them.

Maybe you spend all day making decisions and being responsible for other people, and your brain does not switch off easily. You finish work, but work doesn’t necessarily finish with you.

Alcohol works remarkably well in the short term. It slows things down, and it creates some distance between you and the day. It can quiet anxiety and make a very clear dividing line between I am still working and I am finally done.

It may have become the way you manage stress, sleep, anxiety, loneliness, or the pressure building up that you have spent years learning how to carry.

Taking away the alcohol without looking at that leaves a fairly obvious problem: You still have to find another way to live with all of it.

You don’t have to lose everything first

Sometimes people talk about addiction as if everyone has a rock bottom waiting for them.

That’s understandable. For some people, a major consequence becomes the final thing that makes the problem impossible to ignore. A marriage ends, or there is an arrest or a scary medical result. Someone they love says they cannot do this anymore. Whatever it is, life before that moment becomes different from life after it.

It is true that sometimes pain gets our attention.

But we should not have to collect enough consequences before we are allowed to change.

The idea of rock bottom can become confusing for someone who is still functioning well. If you believe things have to get really bad before alcohol is a real problem, there is always a reason to believe you aren’t there yet.

There are plenty of reasons people wait to ask for help. Research has found that stigma, not believing treatment is necessary, and wanting to handle the problem on your own can all get in the way (Farhoudian et al., 2022).

Then something happens, and you adjust again.

Well, it wasn’t that bad. At least I didn’t lose my job. At least nobody got hurt.

There is almost always another bottom available if you are determined to find one. You don’t have to destroy a life before deciding you would like to keep it.

If you’re wondering about your drinking, there are other questions you can ask besides Am I still functioning?

Are you drinking more than you used to?  Do you regularly tell yourself you’re going to cut back and then don’t? Do you need alcohol to relax at the end of the day? Are you hiding how much you drink? Does the thought of giving it up completely make you uncomfortable?

And how much time do you spend thinking about drinking, planning it, recovering from it, or trying to control it?

Those answers probably tell you more than your job title does.

Success and alcohol dependency can exist in the same life, sometimes for years. You can be good at your job and worry about your drinking. You can love your family and hide things from them. You can be the person everyone else depends on and still need help yourself.

Getting help before rock bottom

At Algarve Wellness, we work with people whose lives may still look very successful while alcohol has become harder to control. Treatment is private and individualised, with attention not only to drinking itself, but also to what alcohol has come to do for that person.

Maybe rock bottom is where some people begin, but it doesn’t have to be where you begin.

Contact us today to start the conversation.

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