How to stay sober in advertising

It’s the night before a huge new business presentation. The CEO, the one with his name above the door, hosts a dinner for all of us working on the pitch. He invites everyone from the IT guys to the project managers to me, the new business person. There are about 30 of us, milling around a long table in a private dining room at a fancy restaurant.

The CEO is a big man with a big voice, and he waves me over to sit next to him. When the waiter comes by to offer me wine, I put my hand over the top of my glass and shake my head, and the waiter moves on. I don’t drink.

I’m a recovering alcoholic. I’ve been sober for years at this point. I knew that the life I’d built sober would crumble if I started drinking again, and my past experience taught me that I can’t handle any alcohol at all. I’d been in advertising for years, so I’d gotten adept at the small survival skills that kept me quietly sober in an industry where most agencies have open bars or at least a keg in the kitchen.

At this pre-pitch dinner, when the waiters had served wine all around, the CEO lifts his glass for a toast. Everyone gets quiet. He gives a nice speech thanking us all, and everyone raises their glasses. I raise a glass of water. He turns to me, horrified, and says in his booming voice “It’s bad luck to toast with water. Get this woman some wine!” Pitch teams can have as many superstitions as sports teams, and he is truly alarmed at the prospect of his wine glass connecting with my water glass in a salutatory gesture.

The room is already quiet and now thirty pairs of eyes slew my way.

“I don’t drink,” I say.

“Not at all?” he says.

“Not at all.”

“Why?”

I don’t know what to say. I don’t want to announce my alcoholism at this venue, at this moment, but I also don’t want to lie. A waiter hovers by my elbow with a bottle of wine at the ready.

“Do you have an allergy?” the CEO says.

“I do,” I say, relieved at this out.

“My girlfriend has an allergy, she’s allergic to tannin.”

He waves off the waiter, ticks his wine glass against my water glass, and then everyone starts eating and talking again.

He takes out his phone and flicks to a picture of his girlfriend and pushes the phone so I can see it. In the photo a woman is striding out of the water, dressed in a bikini which looks great on her. The photo is professionally shot, and I wonder if it ran in a magazine somewhere. She is significantly younger than the CEO.

“She breaks out in hives if she has any tannin,” he says, and replaces the phone in his pocket with a calm finality that indicates now he’s ok with me not drinking. I am grateful to the girlfriend with the tannin allergy. And we go on to win the pitch.

According to the 2019 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 5.3% of people 12 and older have Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD). But only 7% of those adults got any kind of treatment for their AUD.

Think about your agency. What if 5% of the people that work there have a drinking problem?

The pandemic made things worse for problem drinkers. According to a New York Times article, a 2021 study by the American Psychological Association found 1 in 4 adults increased their alcohol consumption because of pandemic stress. Women are more likely to use alcohol in response to stress, and women drank more during the first year of the pandemic, according to Addictive Behaviors Journal.

For those of us who are recovering alcoholics, the pandemic led some to more isolation and others to new communities as recovery groups moved to Zoom just as work did.

If you’re one of those people who have gotten treatment, or you want to support recovering drug addicts and alcoholics, here are some suggestions.

To tell or not to tell

Those of us in recovery need to decide if we want to tell anyone at work that we are clean and sober. (Unless, of course, they already know because they sent you to treatment.) I usually told at least one person, often someone who would be traveling with me to boozy events.

But I’ve also been sober since 1989. I know any of us could relapse at any time, but my co-workers worried less about me relapsing because I got sober before most of them started kindergarten, sometimes before they were born.

There may be good reasons for you to keep it quiet. If you’re new in sobriety, people may worry about relapse. Almost every movie or tv show with a character who is newly sober has a scene where that character relapses. It’s a trope that can carry over to work, and set up expectations about your chances of success.

Make it about something besides the booze

If you’re organizing a festivity, make sure that the non-alcoholic beverages are as readily available and engaging as the ones with alcohol. If you are a normal drinker, think through a planned event and try to understand what it would be like for someone who doesn’t drink. A wine tasting event isn’t fun for me, but I would enjoy it if there was also a tasting platter of tapas to sample. Chocolate tasting anyone? 

Some people in recovery avoid foods with alcohol in them. I’ve seen labels in front of dishes at events that point out the vegetarian option or call out if a dish has peanuts for people who have allergies. If you’re serving a dessert that’s been doused with alcohol and doesn’t have “rum” in the name, consider a little label that says, “contains alcohol.”

Find your people

If you’re in recovery and lucky, you can find other people at work who are sober. I met one of my best friends when she interviewed for a position at the agency where I worked. She noticed I didn’t drink, and asked someone in her department why I didn’t partake. “I think Stephanie’s a Jesus freak or something,” she was told. At the holiday party, we were the only people not drinking. That year they gave out flasks for a holiday gift, and booze with which to fill them. I suggested we go outside so I could smoke a cigarette, and when I started cussing about something she began to question the accuracy of the “Jesus freak” label. She asked why I didn’t drink and we discovered we were both sober.

It helped having a sober colleague. We’d have quick connections in her office and stick together at work events that centered around alcohol. Which, at the time, was every event. Try to find your people at work. Not everyone who doesn’t drink is a recovering alcoholic, but the recovering alcoholics will all be not drinking.

We are not experts

There’s a pattern in recovery circles where lots of people in early sobriety decide to be chemical dependency counselors. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to help others. In fact, it can help you stay sober. But I’m wary about trying to sober up people at work. At one agency where people in management knew I was sober I was asked to talk to a young woman who was doing heroin at office parties. I tried. And I found out that trying to help someone you work with get clean blurs a line for me between the personal and professional. It led to some awkward moments when she kept using and then we both felt weird around each other. Even small agencies with no HR should be able to find outside resources to help anyone with an addiction problem.

Be beverage aware

At cocktail parties I always carried a drink that looked like it could be a cocktail, usually club soda with lime. If people think you’re drinking, they won’t ask you if you need a drink.

But watch your drink. In a crowded setting a club soda with lime looks just like an actual gin and tonic, so don’t put your drink down in case you pick up the wrong one.

When I worked at agencies that had beer on tap or a full bar at the office, I tried to stay away from that part of the kitchen. If I got stressed, I’d leave the office and take a quick walk around the block when it was hard to be around booze. If you’re newly sober, keep chocolate or candy handy if you have a craving for alcohol.

It gets easier

Most people can drink socially and enjoy themselves and don’t really care if others aren’t drinking. Over time when people realized I wasn’t judging them or trying to convert them they accepted me as a non-drinker and were glad I could always be the designated driver.

I’ve even worked with a few active alcoholics and drug addicts who were oddly comfortable with me, I think because they didn’t have to dissemble. I knew they were alcoholics or addicts, and they knew I knew, but they also knew I was one as well. The fact that my drunken escapades were in the past didn’t mean I didn’t have them. I like other drunks, sober or not, and they can tell.

Every event that I got through without drinking, every person I told who was fine with it, every pitch I won stone cold sober, every year that passed without a drink made it easier, like one brick on top of another brick until you have a whole house.

Whatever your reasons for not drinking, whether health or recovery or pregnancy, you can stay sober in advertising. It is hard at first, but it gets easier with every event you make it through.  Drunks are generally a wildly creative, chaotic, passionate, generous, questing group. The sober ones can go far in this trade. And we’re out there. Keep looking until you find some of us.