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For Sandra Parker, going for after-work drinks was practically part of her job. Working in investment banking in London, the culture was “work hard, play hard”. After qualifying as a chartered accountant in Scotland, Parker moved to the capital in her mid-twenties and worked in finance at Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank and BP.
“The markets move quickly, and you’re expected to be on top of it, and it’s high pressure, lots of deadlines and high stakes,” she says. “At the end of the day, we’d pile out of the door to the pub – that was how we connected with each other. People were earning a lot of money, but there was a lot of stress. It was very much, ‘We can’t wait to go for a drink tonight.’ I’d come out from work, my mind buzzing, and having a drink felt like the perfect way to quieten all that down and begin to switch off.”
But it was rarely just one, or even three, drinks. At times, Parker was drinking the equivalent of two bottles of wine in an evening. “I’d wake up and wouldn’t have been able to tell you how much I’d had to drink,” she says, “and there’d be parts of the night I couldn’t remember. I’d never go out planning to get drunk, yet so much of the time I’d wake up the next morning and be like, ‘Have I got my phone? How did I get home? How drunk was everyone else? What did I say?'”
“I’d have massive anxiety, just like I’d had as a teenager. It was horrible. Those blackouts were mental anguish, as well as the physical grimness of a hangover. I’d spend a week beating myself up about it each time. I’d have panic attacks. But each time things went downhill, I’d just tell myself alcohol was good, drinking was great and fun, and I just needed to exercise more self-control. I blamed myself for not being able to handle it better. I knew it was out of hand, but I was absolutely terrified of the idea of not drinking.”
The boozing wasn’t just part of the early days of her career. It was also, through Parker’s thirties and forties, ingrained in the fabric of her daily life. “I couldn’t imagine a weekend, a holiday, even unwinding after a difficult day, without alcohol,” she says, “but I kept that hidden, and nobody knew”. To others, her drinking might have seemed a normal part of the booze-fuelled work culture – nothing to worry about. Especially as she was physically fit, ate well and went on yoga retreats.
“When we think about drinking as a problem,” she says, “we tend to think about people that are actually at rock bottom, their life is chaotic, things have gone really badly wrong. But a lot of people who drink too much don’t have a life like that – they might be having a bottle or two of wine a night, but their life looks good from the outside.”
The money was great. With her salary, plus a bonus and some other benefits, Parker was on about £250,000. Plus, a top-tier pension. She was living the true corporate life, in every sense. Looking back now, does Parker think the drinking had an effect on the quality of her work? “I got the job done and was promoted,” she says, “but I think that if I hadn’t been drinking so much, I could have moved to different places more easily, and gone up the scale more quickly”.
“There are times when I spent more hours getting things done, and I didn’t do as well as I could. When there was a very senior, important meeting happening early Monday morning, I’d be careful on the weekend. But overall, I definitely had to push myself harder to get work done because even if I wasn’t drinking every night, alcohol affects your sleep, recovery and clarity, and I was always exhausted. Sometimes I really felt extremely, extremely low.”
It was in 2018, at the age of 49, that Parker gave up drinking. She didn’t mean to, at first, she just wanted a little break. “I was always trying to moderate my drinking. I’d read a book about it, go on the NHS website, and all the help was well-meaning, but it made no difference to me. I got to the point that I was so sick of it all, and knew I needed to find a way to get it sorted.” Parker decided, with the help of a life coach she’d been working with to help with her anxiety, to try to stop drinking just for one year.
Drinking less hadn’t worked, so she tried not drinking at all for a while. “I took it one week at a time, and after six months, one of my friends said to me, ‘I can’t wait to go out for a drink with you when the year is over,’ and I just found myself saying, ‘No, I don’t think I’m going back to drinking again’. I was surprised, maybe even shocked, when I said it, but I knew I was happier. There had been some awkward moments while socialising, but I’d get this thrill when I realised I was having fun without drinking – and waking up with a clear head, without panicking about the night before, was magic.”
A few years later, in her mid-fifties, Parker re-assessed her career. With her newfound sobriety, came a newfound clarity. “My career was going well – better than ever, in fact – as I was so clear-headed. But I looked at my life, and while I wasn’t in a dead-end job, and I was earning well, I could see it didn’t light me up. It was fine, but it hadn’t been my passion.”
Given she had earned enough money to put away a financial cushion, she thought about quitting and finding something part-time while she decided what to do next. Then, in the pandemic, voluntary redundancy was offered to staff, and, because she was feeling so much happier since giving up drinking, she started her own business coaching people to get a handle on their relationship with alcohol.
“Most of my clients tend to be high-functioning, so they’ve not hit the bottom, but they’re pushing through. For women in particular, the extra challenges tend to be that they’re usually still in a minority at senior level, and there’s pressure to fit in, and you’re expected to drink at the client dinners, and events. There can be a lot of that, every week. Yet, at the same time, you’re expected for it not to affect your clarity or sharpness. Drink is glamourised and marketed as a soothing tonic for the stress of motherhood, and a good pre-flight activity at an airport at 8am. It’s everywhere.”
What is the main thing Parker wishes she’d known about her relationship with alcohol? “Until the end of my forties, I imagined I’d be really miserable not drinking. I thought I’d be missing out. What’s the point of going on holiday? A night out will be really boring! I didn’t realise you could just not need it anymore, and be happy and have fun, and live a full life.”
Sandra Parker is a alcohol-free coach based in London. She is the founder of Just The Tonic Coaching.
