It's 8:40 on a Tuesday, the deal team has finally gone dark for the night, and you're standing in the kitchen still replaying the call with the client's CFO, wondering whether your answer about the timeline sounded as defensive to them as it does to you now.
Your partner is telling you something about the weekend, and you're nodding along while you check your phone one more time. Then you pour a glass of wine, and somewhere around the second sip, the replaying stops: you can actually hear what your partner's saying, and for the first time since 6am, nobody needs anything from you, including you.
It doesn't feel like a problem now, and on most nights, it's just one glass, or maybe two. But lately you've noticed how much you look forward to it, and how hard it is to picture the evening going well without it.
In short: drinking to unwind after work often seems to work, at least at first, because alcohol gives you a feeling of being off duty that can be hard to find any other way. But doing well at work can't tell you whether your drinking is safe, and over time, relief can slowly turn into reliance.
The most useful next step is usually an honest look at both what you're drinking and what the drink is doing for you, with medical or specialist addiction care involved whenever it's needed.
Why Drinking to Unwind After Work Feels Like Such a Relief
For a lot of people, drinking after work isn't about getting drunk. They're trying to stop working, and for a lot of high achievers, that's surprisingly hard to do on purpose: the laptop's closed, yet your mind is still drafting the email, rehearsing tomorrow's meeting, or running through everything that could go wrong on the deal, the case, or the surgery.
Alcohol can seem like a fast way to turn the volume down on all of that, without your having to decide anything.
A run or a meditation app asks you to do one more thing well, while the drink just happens to you, and for someone who's been "on" for twelve hours, a lot of the appeal is the permission it seems to grant: the parts of you that are constantly evaluating, anticipating, and responding finally get to clock out.
None of that means that every after-work drink is a symptom of something deeper, and the pressure in finance, law, medicine, and running a company is very real. On our page about therapy for finance professionals, we describe drinking more than you'd like as one of the ways that stress tends to show up long before anyone calls the drinking a problem, and we see the same pattern with lawyers, physicians, founders, and executives, where it often co-occurs with burnout.
But if alcohol has become the only thing that lets you stop monitoring yourself and everyone around you, it's worth asking yourself what's been keeping you so on guard in the first place.
Sometimes it's the job itself, or a job you've been meaning to leave for years now (which we've written about in our post on golden handcuffs), sometimes it's high-functioning anxiety that doesn't switch off when the workday does, and often it's a bit of both.
And so if you've caught yourself thinking that the drink is the best part of your day, it doesn't automatically mean that something's wrong, but it does suggest that drinking has started doing a job that nothing else in your life is doing right now.
Can You Have a Drinking Problem If You're Still Doing Well at Work?
Yes. If you're still getting promoted and still showing up sharp for the 8am meeting, it's easy to assume that your drinking can't be a real problem, but professional success and safe drinking are two separate questions, and doing well at one doesn't address the other.
What "High-Functioning Alcoholic" Does and Doesn't Mean
You've probably heard the phrase "high-functioning alcoholic," usually used to describe someone whose drinking is concerning while their career, finances, and outward life seem intact. It's an informal phrase as opposed to a clinical diagnosis, and it can feel like a label that either fits you completely or doesn't fit at all.
Clinicians use the term alcohol use disorder, which the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism says is diagnosed when a person has two or more of a specific list of symptoms in the past year, and which can range from mild to severe.
Those symptoms include drinking more or for longer than you meant to, trying to cut down and not managing it, drinking even though it's causing trouble with people you love or making you anxious or depressed, and needing more to get the same effect.
Several of those can happen to someone who's never missed a deadline. In our work, the earliest signs are often private ones: an internal rule about only drinking on weekends that's slowly become a rule about only drinking after 7pm, the mental math about how many glasses your partner has actually seen you pour, or a flash of irritation when a dinner plan means you won't be able to drink the way you'd hoped.
Your drinking doesn't have to fall apart in public to be worth taking seriously, and you don't have to accept a label to get help with it.
Anxiety After Drinking Alcohol
The confusing part is that the thing you're using to calm down can make the next day more anxious. According to NIAAA's guide to hangovers, people may fall asleep faster after drinking, but their sleep is fragmented and they tend to wake up earlier, and anxiety and irritability are among the typical symptoms after drinking too much.
If you've ever woken at 4am with your heart racing, then needed a drink that evening to come down from a whole day of feeling that way, you know how easily anxiety after drinking alcohol can turn into a loop. If anxiety is a big part of what you're drinking to manage, therapy for anxiety can address it directly.
So the more meaningful question to ask yourself is whether your drinking still feels like something you're freely choosing, or whether it's started to feel like something you need.
Therapy for Drinking Concerns and Life in Recovery
Getting help with after-work drinking usually starts with an honest look at the drinking itself: how much, how often, what happens when you try to cut back, and whether there are any physical symptoms or safety concerns.
Depending on what that shows, good care might involve a primary care doctor or psychiatrist, medication (NIAAA notes that three medications are currently approved in the United States to help people stop or reduce their drinking), specialist addiction treatment, mutual-support groups, therapy, or some combination of these. The right level of care really does depend on the person, and NIAAA is also clear that most people with alcohol use disorder recover or markedly improve.
In psychodynamic therapy, we can get curious about what drinking has been doing for you, and what becomes hard to tolerate once it's gone: the restlessness of an unscheduled evening, the feelings you've been too busy to have, the self-criticism that shows up the second there's nothing left to do, or the distance in a relationship that's been easier not to notice. If drinking goes away and nothing else changes, the need it was meeting can find another outlet, like more work or more scrolling.
This is an area where Dr. Chaim Rochester brings especially relevant experience. Before he became a therapist, he spent over a decade as an executive coach and organizational development consultant, and he's also worked as an executive recovery coach, supporting professionals in recovery from substance use while they kept up with demanding careers.
He has spent the last five years working with high-acuity trauma, including overseeing a clinical team at an outpatient practice treating trauma, addiction, anxiety, depression, and personality disorders, so he understands both the pressure of high-stakes work and what recovery asks of someone who's still expected to perform every day.
At Helm Psychology, Dr. Chaim Rochester works with people who are already sober or in recovery. Getting sober can be a huge accomplishment, yet it often doesn't resolve everything the drinking was helping you manage, and some people find that once the alcohol's gone, the pressure, the perfectionism, the strain in a relationship, or the sheer inability to rest gets much louder, and they want to understand the patterns underneath.
Therapy can be a place to do that work alongside whatever else is supporting your recovery, whether that's a program, a sponsor, a physician, or a peer community. Dr. Chaim Rochester sees clients in California, Texas, Virginia, and many other states.
We're an outpatient therapy practice, so we don't provide detox or medical withdrawal management. If a consultation suggests that a different level of care would serve you better right now, we'll tell you so directly.
One Thing to Notice About Your Drinking
Think back to a recent evening when you drank after work, and write down two things: exactly how much you actually had, and what you were hoping the drink would change about how you felt. Maybe it was "stop thinking about the client call," "feel less alone in this house," or "be able to sit with my kids without checking my phone."
That gives you a concrete example to bring to a doctor or therapist. You don't have to wait a week or two or figure out the right label before asking for help.
A note on safety: if you've been drinking heavily for a long time, please talk to a doctor before you cut back or stop. NIAAA warns that suddenly stopping after prolonged heavy drinking can lead to a painful or even potentially life-threatening withdrawal, and doctors can prescribe medications to make that process safer. If you or someone else has a seizure, hallucinations, or severe confusion, call 911 right away, and if you're having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988.
Starting Therapy for Your Drinking or Your Recovery
At Helm Psychology, we work with executives, lawyers, physicians, founders, finance professionals, and other high achievers who've gotten very good at looking fine on the outside.
Our founder, Dr. Annia Raja, worked at Boston Consulting Group and Morgan Stanley before becoming a psychologist, so she knows firsthand how built into professional life drinking can be, from client dinners to the round of drinks after a deal closes.
And if your partner's worried about your drinking, or it's become a recurring fight, couples therapy with Dr. Raja or Dr. Rochester can be another place to start.
All of our sessions are online, and we see clients in California, Texas, Virginia, and 40+ other states. In a free 15-minute consultation, we'll talk through what's going on and whether therapy with us is the right fit for where you are right now.
FAQs about Drinking to Unwind After Work
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Not always, but it's worth looking at closely. Having a drink after work from time to time isn't automatically a sign of a problem. It becomes more concerning when you drink more than you meant to, find it hard to cut back, feel you can't relax without it, or keep drinking even though it's affecting your sleep, mood, health, or relationships. A doctor or therapist can help you assess your own pattern.
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Alcohol works quickly, and for people who are mentally “on” all day, it can feel like the only dependable way to stop monitoring, planning, and worrying. Over time, other ways of relaxing can start to feel harder to reach by comparison. Therapy can help you understand what's been keeping you so on guard, and help you find other ways to feel off the clock.
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“High-functioning alcoholic” is an informal phrase as opposed to a medical diagnosis, usually used for someone whose drinking is a concern even though their career and outward life look intact. Clinicians use the term alcohol use disorder, which can be mild, moderate, or severe. Doing well at work doesn't rule out a drinking problem, and you don't need to identify with a label to talk to a professional about your drinking.
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Yes. Alcohol can help you fall asleep faster, but sleep after drinking tends to be more fragmented and less restorative, and people often wake up earlier. Anxiety and irritability are also common after drinking too much. That can set up a cycle where you feel worse the next day and then reach for a drink again to calm down. If anxiety is part of what you're drinking to manage, it's worth treating directly.
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If you've been drinking heavily for a prolonged period, talk to a doctor before you stop or significantly cut back. Suddenly stopping can lead to withdrawal, which can be painful and potentially life-threatening, and doctors can prescribe medications to make it safer. Seizures, hallucinations, or severe confusion are emergencies, so call 911. If you aren't sure whether your drinking counts as heavy, ask your doctor before you change it.
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Yes. Therapy can be an important part of changing your drinking, often alongside medical care, medication, mutual-support groups, or specialist addiction treatment, depending on what you need. Psychodynamic therapy looks at what the drinking has been doing for you, like managing stress, anxiety, loneliness, or self-criticism, so you can find other ways to meet those needs. A clinician can help you figure out what level of care fits your situation.
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Absolutely yes. Getting sober doesn't always resolve the pressure, relationship difficulties, perfectionism, or inability to rest that drinking may have been helping to manage. At Helm Psychology, Dr. Chaim Rochester works with people who are sober or in recovery, drawing on his experience as an executive recovery coach and in outpatient clinical work that included addiction. He sees clients in California, Texas, and Virginia, and many other states. Therapy can complement whatever else supports your recovery.