Let me be straight with you: if you're using alcohol to deal with work stress, you're putting a band-aid on a wound you haven't looked at.
I've done it. I grew up watching my dad crack a beer after work to unwind. I saw commercials selling us that image of the ice-cold beer and the sigh of relief after a long day. It's baked into our culture. But now that I know what I know, I can't ignore the cost of that habit, especially for men who want to perform at a high level.
This isn't an anti-drinking lecture. This is a performance conversation.
Alcohol Is a Depressant. Full Stop.
Alcohol numbs your senses. That's why it works as a social lubricant and why it feels like it takes the edge off after a stressful day. For me growing up, it was the fastest way to get out of my own head in social settings. I was anxious, I feared judgment, and a few beers would settle that noise.
But here's what I learned: the more I drank to stay in that zone, the worse the outcomes got. And the underlying problem, the anxiety, the discomfort, never got addressed. I was just pushing it down and hoping it would go away.
It doesn't go away.
The Band-Aid Problem
When you use alcohol to de-stress, you're robbing yourself of the opportunity to understand what's actually causing the stress. And if you don't understand the cause, you can't manage it or minimise it.
Think about that. You come home from a hard day, crack a beer, and the stress fades for an hour. Then it comes back tomorrow. And the next day. And the cycle continues because you never sat with the discomfort long enough to ask: what specifically is stressing me out? Is it workload? Is it a conversation I'm avoiding? Is it financial pressure? Is it a relationship that needs attention?
People who deal with chronic stress are usually avoiding something. Alcohol is just one of the avoidance tools. Gambling, porn, even over-exercising can serve the same purpose. But alcohol is the one most of us grew up believing was acceptable.
What High Performers Actually Do
High performers don't need alcohol to feel comfortable. They don't need it to have a good time. They don't need it to deal with stress. They acknowledge what's there, they learn to manage it, and they find strategies that actually serve their goals.
When your body is in a stress response, it's activating fight or flight. Cortisol is up. Focus is down. Energy is being sapped by internal tension you're not addressing. Now layer a depressant on top of that, and you're further degrading your cognitive ability, your mood stability, your memory, and your recovery.
As someone who considers himself a high performer, why would I voluntarily make myself worse?
What I Do Instead
I'm not going to pretend I have this perfectly dialled in. There are days where I sit in stress, grind my teeth, and go to bed furious. I'm aware of it, but I'm not always perfect with it. That's the reality.
But here's what works when I actually do it. Going for a run or a walk without my phone. Just disconnecting and moving. Practising breathing exercises. Meditating or sitting with a playlist I enjoy and just being present. Calling a mate for a yarn and a laugh. Sometimes that 15-minute phone call does more than any beer ever could.
And the most important thing: removing the temptation. If there's beer in the fridge when your willpower is lowest after a long day, you'll reach for it. That's not weakness, that's human nature. Remove it. Replace it with sparkling water, with a walk, with music, with silence.
The Standard You Set
If you're a man who wants to be elite at what you do, whether that's in business, in your health, in your role as a father, then you need to look at every input through the lens of performance.
Alcohol after work isn't helping you recover. It's stealing tomorrow's output. It's numbing the signal that's trying to tell you something needs to change.
Set the standard. Find better tools. Sit with the discomfort long enough to learn from it.
That's what it means to perform at a high level. Not just at work, but across your entire life.
If you're ready to raise your standards and build better habits, explore my 1:1 coaching program for high-performing men.
Start by taking the free Own Your Week Scorecard to see where you stand across the four pillars that matter most.