I Burned the Drinking Playbook. You Might Want To.

By Pamela Rueda, CPRC | Founder, Thrive Collective

Addiction is sitting politely in your leadership meeting, and you refuse to see it.

Gen Xers and older millennials—we inherited a playbook with one sacred command: work hard, play hard. We didn’t inherit a drinking problem. We inherited a corporate culture that made drinking the solution. And for many of us, that culture came with a body count.

It’s 2016. I’m 33,000 feet above ground, shifting uncomfortably in 22B. To my left, a businessman, mouth agape, asleep. To my right, a suburban mom is candy-crushing her way from Dallas to New York. I’m exhausted but look flawless. Red lipstick. Black pantsuit. The laptop is brimming with scripts that are sure to secure the gig for us. I’m 41 and finally own the title. I’d worked for it all my life: studio executive producer. I stand a little taller when I say it. But not today. Today I’m nursing a massive hangover. Five years of sobriety thrown out the window, just weeks before.

A few rows ahead, my management team—three men I deeply admired—ordered coffee and laughed. I cringe thinking of what’s ahead. Our office on the Empire State Building’s 53rd floor. The elevator ride I dread every single time. A full day of performing and people-pleasing. A yes from the client. Steaks and scotch. They will drink. I will drink. There’s no way I won’t. It’s part of the job.

But I need one now. Right now. Not at dinner. Now.

Knowing my voice will carry forward, I pull out a pen and write on a napkin: “Three Chardonnays, please. Apologies. I am mute.” The flight attendant smiles kindly and hands me the plastic bottles, refusing to take my credit card. I’m bathed in shame at my lie. But I forget as soon as the first twist-off cap pops.

I was twenty-two when I learned the secret power of a glass in hand. The Centurion Lounge, accessed with my first American Express—my father’s, but it felt like mine. It was 10 a.m., but the men at the bar were drinking like it was 5 p.m. I ordered a Stella. I got a wink from the guy beside me. “Work hard, play hard,” he said, flashing a toothy, Tom Cruise-y smile. I lifted my glass and felt it wash over me for the first time—power and belonging. Drink in hand, I was one of the boys. I had arrived.

I never drank a polite amount. Always more than I wanted. More than I should. From the beginning, a subtle voice indicated that my drinking habits were distinct. However, in a culture that celebrated victories and mourned defeats with a generous pour, that subtle voice quickly faded away. Everyone did it. Why shouldn’t I?

One night in 2009, when I was 35, I drove my nine-year-old son home while intoxicated.

I took myself to AA the very next day and confirmed what I always knew: I, like roughly ten percent of the population, cannot drink normally. I’m just not built like that.

I got sober and stayed sober for five years. Until a corporate retreat undid it. The kind that runs from sunup to sundown. One second, I was holding a Perrier; the next, a martini glass. How? Why? Maybe the pressure to perform. Maybe the happy hours that were part of the job. Maybe the playbook, tattooed in my mind for a decade and a half. Who knows? Who cares why? I was drinking again.

Pop. Three Chardonnays at 33,000 feet and I can finally breathe.

I’m not the only one wired for chemical romance. One in fifteen leaders struggles with some level of addiction — maybe one in ten. We’ll never know because silence and shame are part of the epidemic, which prevents many individuals from seeking help and discussing their struggles openly. In 2025, the U.S. Surgeon General declared alcohol a group 1 carcinogen, causally linked to seven cancers: breast, colorectal, liver, esophageal, mouth, throat, and larynx. The CDC estimates roughly 178,000 Americans die from alcohol-related causes every year — that’s one person every three minutes. Nearly 30 million adults had alcohol use disorder in 2022, and the condition costs the U.S. economy close to $93 billion in lost workplace productivity annually. The data is screaming. Gen Zers are getting it — alcohol sales are historically down. Yet somehow, we still have our fingers in our ears. C-suiters are in their boardrooms planning the next corporate holiday happy hour, playbook in hand. (IF YOU HAVE SOURCES THAT WILL HELP)

Work hard. Play hard.

And here’s the thing. Addiction in the corporate world doesn’t look like Sammy, who waves his brown bag maniacally as you walk by him every morning on your way to catch the train.

Occasionally it looks like me—red lipstick, heels, and a Yeti mug quietly upgraded from espresso to Prosecco. But more often it looks like the IT guy whose boss told him happy hour was team building, so he drinks four or five just to feel like he belongs and can keep his job. The founder is out there killing it—building something extraordinary—while quietly fighting a battle no one can see. Or consider Sandy in HR, who devoted her life to the company but woke up one day to realize that the only thing waiting for her every night is a bottle of wine.

Not everyone in that gray area would call themselves an alcoholic. Most wouldn’t—and maybe aren’t. But the gray area is vast, voiceless, and may be the most dangerous place of all because it has no name, no language, and no permission to ask for help.

I may have been an alcoholic from the start. Or I may have danced in the gray area and then crossed a line I never saw coming. It happens between projects. Between the pat on the back and the third glass of wine at the hotel bar. And how would we know when we seem to be the only one in the boardroom struggling? One was joking about the Xanax they popped before the pitch. The other is about the Ambien they took to sleep. All part of the playbook. Normalized and celebrated for decades.

Following the New York trip, I spent another full year trapped in the silence of a highly functional yet addicted leader.

Terrified. Not of the alcohol. Of asking for help. Of the hotel rooms where the minibar felt like a loaded gun, I couldn’t ask to be emptied or removed because what would my boss think? The higher the title, the louder the silence.

So I didn’t ask. I just drank. Hidden. Ashamed. Alone. Until I couldn’t anymore. Until I chose differently. Until I chose me.

I got sober and told my boss and my team. I gave my addiction a name, and the stigma associated with it didn’t affect me. Frankly, no one seemed to care. They knew I left at 4:30 on Thursdays to do “my thing.” While they were booking tickets to CES in Vegas, I bowed out and booked a spot at a recovery conference.

A year later, at a corporate retreat, I was offered wine. I didn’t wait for it to circle four more times. I said to the waiter—loud enough to be a statement: “I do not drink.”

The people around me fell into an uncomfortable silence that gradually turned into an interrogation. Why? What happened? Are you in trouble? Why don’t you drink?

I learned to smile and simply say, “I just don’t.”

It amuses me to this day. Say you don’t smoke or don’t eat meat and people nod. But say you don’t drink? Suddenly sobriety feels like an accusation. I’ve learned to stop giving explanations.

That’s the other addiction we need to name. The silence. The stigma. The cultural lie that says the status quo is just how leadership works and you’re strange for violating code. It isn’t strange to not poison yourself. It never should have been.

Someone in that room is drowning right now. Maybe it’s you. Maybe it’s the person beside you—the one who just said no to the drink and you asked them again anyway.

Real leadership challenges the status quo. Upgrades the playbook. So stop making happy hour mandatory. Assign the gray area a name and permission to exist. Speak the truth that everyone in that room is hesitant to express.

Someone needs to go first. Light the match. Toss the book in.

For you. Or for the person who’s been waiting for someone—anyone—to go first.