8 Signs You’re a “High Functioning” Alcoholic

❌ 100% FREE VIDEO TRAINING (2025) ❌ New Method To Control Alcohol in 48 Hours ➡️ https://www.soberclear.com/video/?el=podcast

🔥 APPLY FOR SOBERCLEAR PROGRAM 🔥 Currently Accepting New Clients. Apply Here ➡️ https://www.soberclear.com/quiz/?el=podcast

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome to Stop Drinking Podcast

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to the Stop Drinking Podcast, where we help you make stopping drinking a simple, logical and easy decision. We help you with tips, tools and strategies to start living your best life when alcohol-free. If you want to learn more about stop drinking coaching, then head over to wwwsoberclearcom. So the very first sign is that you regularly drink more than you plan to. What I mean by this is that you say I'm going to have one or two drinks and then you drink six. You say I'm going to have half a bottle of wine and then you finish the bottle off. If you do that, that is a sign that you are a high functioning and I know the title of this video may have used the word alcoholic, but I'm going to say a high-functioning problem drinker. See, we will get into the other seven signs in a second, but we need to just kind of go off track to come back on so you can get a more realistic look at the entire picture. So if we've not met yet, my name is Leon Sylvester and I run a coaching company called SoberClear. What we do is we help business owners and professionals get control of their drinking in as little as 24 hours. Now, it doesn't always happen that quickly. In fact, that's quite rare. Usually it takes around two to seven days, but we help people do it quickly. We have a totally new method that doesn't involve labeling people as alcoholics. What we do is separate the person from the problem and attack the problem. We attack paradigms and worldviews. So, whilst the title of this video may have said alcoholic, and whilst there was a period in my own life when I was struggling to stop drinking that I went to AA meetings and called myself an alcoholic, there is no such thing Now. If you don't like me telling you that, if you think that you're an alcoholic and you found success with the 12-step approach, then this video is probably not for you. I'm sorry to say it, but I'm really talking to people that don't want to give themselves this label.

Speaker 1: 1:44

You might have clicked this video thinking, well, what would those signs actually look like? Because I'm not going to try to like downplay the problem and say that there's not a problem in signs that come up with people who have drinking issues because there absolutely are. But this idea that you are the problem and that you're an alcoholic and there's no known cure for this made up self-help term, this disease, I'm sorry but I don't buy into it. No medical doctor is going to label you an alcoholic. The only way that you can become an alcoholic is if you go to an AA meeting and then decide if you are one. But the next seven signs and the first sign are signs that you're a high-functioning problem drinker.

Speaker 1: 2:19

We need to be able to separate the two things. We can't just label us as the problem. What we need to do is label alcohol as the problem, the drink as the problem, not the person. You could even argue problem drinker isn't quite right because it's still labeling the person. So I'm going to say it's a person who has a problem with alcohol. Now, I know this might sound semantics, but it's pretty damn important.

Speaker 1: 2:40

Walking around with this label that you're an alcoholic to me is dangerous, because if you believe this and you end up drinking again, what ends up happening? Well, I'm the kind of person that never stops, because I've told myself when I'm an alcoholic for all of these years. I don't want to go too deep into this in this video, but I know people that I met in meetings that gave themselves this label. They thought they were addicts, they thought they were alcoholics and then later on they died from their addiction. And I'm not blaming the label for these things. These things could have happened regardless. But to give myself that label no chance. But there are still signs that you could be a high-functioning person who has a problem with alcohol, and I'm not saying that that problem doesn't need fixing, and I know that might have sounded like semantics, but to me it can be life or death. The second sign that you're a high-functioning individual who has a problem with alcohol is that you say you're going to stop and then you don't.

Speaker 1: 3:27

Now another quick caveat here, and another side quest that we kind of just have to go through, is that all of these things are things that happened in my own life. So I'm not telling you this from a pedestal. I'm telling you all of this stuff from experience, as somebody who drank for close to 10 years and who hasn't drank for seven years. All of these signs, all of the things I'm talking to you about, are things that happened in my life. Telling myself that I was going to stop drinking alcohol and then failing to stop happened more times than I can count. I can't tell you how many times, because it was infinite. Every day I'd wake up and promise myself right, that's it, never again. A day later, a week later, whatever three hours later, sometimes I'm out drinking again, and I know not everybody has this experience. I've worked with people who are 50 years of age. They've never thought it was a problem, and then they suddenly think what am I doing? And that's okay. That wasn't my experience. My experience is that I was stopping and starting all the damn time.

Speaker 1: 4:19

The third sign is that you lie about your drinking or you try and hide it. You would be surprised how common this is. When you drink alcohol, you know what you're doing is wrong. You know it hurts the people that you love, but rather than attack the problem, we just think that they're never going to notice. Right, we can sneak those drinks in. You know, I know people that they'll drink vodka because there's less smell on the breath and maybe the partner doesn't notice and listen. I hate to say it, but when it comes to lying about your drinking, who are you really lying to? That's what we've got to ask ourselves, because the person who gets hurt the most from this lie isn't your family or your children or whoever, it's you, and it's a bitter pill to swallow. But lying and hiding your drinking is a sign that it might be time to change.

Speaker 1: 5:00

So number four, and this is the feeling I lived with for 10 years you might not have been there for the whole time that you've drank for I had it but you know deep down in your heart that alcohol isn't helping you. You know in your heart that what you're doing is wrong. There's a feeling that something's not quite right, and when you drink you have to kind of justify it to yourself. Well, I'm relaxing, you know, I'm winding down after a stressful day at the office. I've got a family. I've got, you know, all these crazy things getting thrown at me 24-7. I need a drink, but you know in your heart what you're doing is wrong. What I found in my journey is that feeling was impossible to shake off. The longer I drank, the worse it became, because what would happen is I'd stop drinking, life would go better, I'd add alcohol back into my life. And then what do you think happened? Of course things got worse. So the longer that I drank, the worse this feeling became, until it all accumulated into stopping drinking seven years ago.

Speaker 1: 5:54

I need to remind you that alcohol is poison. Alcohol is ethanol right. If you drink enough of it, it will put you in a coffin, it will kill you. You can overdose on this drug and die. And if you ask me and you want my really honest opinion, I don't think there's many people out there in 2025 and 2026 and beyond that are drinking alcohol and thinking this is a good idea. I think people are starting to wake up and I think that the more that this is spreading and the more people that are talking about not drinking alcohol, the more that other people are starting to question their relationship with this highly toxic and addictive drug.

Speaker 1: 6:28

So, number five, the fifth sign, is that you play it out mentally and you know that things aren't looking good. What I mean by this is that if you really sit down and be honest with yourself and you ask yourself if my drinking continues to increase or I maintain this same level for the next 15, 20 years, and you're truly honest with yourself and you see where it's going and you know it ain't looking good, but you still avoid solving the problem, man, I just hate to say it, but you've got an issue right. There is an addiction there, because that's what all of this is. These signs are basically you burying the truth in exchange for being addicted to a drug. Think about it like this Just imagine you had this super intelligent species that were just so healthy and they could look down at earth and they'd see the wars, they'd see all the chaos, whatever.

Speaker 1: 7:14

But then they'd see people drink alcohol. They'd be like what on earth is going on? These people are consuming poison. What are they doing? And I know that sounds like a weird kind of thought experiment, but just think about it logically. Remove the emotion, remove the conditioning, remove all these marketing messages and imagine a baby doing this. A baby's never going to do this. A baby's never going to put this poison in their body and think it's a good idea. It only seems to happen when we become adults, when we mature right, because we all know in our heart where this is going. Alcohol adds nothing to your life. It's a carcinogen and all it does is accumulate bad things in your body. But it's an addiction and that's another bitter pill to swallow. I know this video is probably not the easiest one I've ever made for you to listen to.

Speaker 1: 7:55

So number six, and this one is the biggest one of all to me. I don't know about you, but I'm sure that you've got people in your life that look up to you. It doesn't matter how old you are, it doesn't matter how successful you are. You will be seen as a leader to some people maybe your children, a cousin, a friend and if you know when you drink alcohol that you are not setting the kind of example that you want to set to them and you keep drinking alcohol, sorry that you want to set to them and you keep drinking alcohol. Sorry, but again, it's a huge, huge red flag. Maybe you're functioning right, maybe you've got a good life Things aren't that bad. But if you have people in your life that look up to you and you love, do you want them to drink alcohol the way that you drink it? If the answer is no and you continue drinking alcohol, I'm and me and my brother actually have a 14-year age gap.

Speaker 1: 8:39

When I drank alcohol, I always used to think of him because he was young, growing up, and I always used to think I don't really want to set an example as somebody that drinks alcohol to this young man. I want to show him health, right Fitness, success, career, business. I want to set that kind of example to him. I don't want to set the example of. It's okay to go and get smashed on a Friday night if you don't like your life and get smashed on a Friday night if you don't like your life. I don't want to do that. I want to set the example of if you've got a problem, deal with the problem head on. Don't bury it, don't bury your emotions through drinking alcohol. Fix your life. That was almost the message that I wanted to give to him Now.

Speaker 1: 9:10

I drank alcohol while my brother was growing up, but this one it was like carrying a weight around all the time. I wanted to set a quality example to him, not one where somebody's drinking alcohol. It just wasn't what I wanted to do. And I'm not judging right. I'm not saying that my way is better than anybody else's. I'm sure there's plenty of brothers and parents and people out there that are far better at the job than I am and they drink and they set an even better example. But the whole point that I'm trying to make here is that if you know that when you drink alcohol, you're not setting the right example to the people that you love, but you keep doing it I'm sorry to say it, but it's another sign, number seven, and please make sure to stay tuned to the very last sign, because the last sign is what all of this is built upon.

Speaker 1: 9:50

But you keep telling yourself that you'll do this later. It's the old thing of like the diet starts Monday. Right, I'll deal with this after the holiday, after the wedding, after this stressful event, when life's calmed down, then I can fix the problem. And this is all built on the next point that I'm going to get into. But if you keep telling yourself I'll deal with this later, I'll deal with this later, and then it never ends up happening. I'm sorry, but there is some level of addiction there.

Speaker 1: 10:13

But everything here is built on the eighth sign. The eighth sign that you're a high-functioning person who has a problem with alcohol. Let's separate the two together. But the eighth sign is that you're afraid of what life would look without drinking alcohol. Fear is the foundation of everything. People that drink alcohol are afraid of stopping because they're afraid of what life would look if they don't drink. Now, this is the exact problem that my program fixes. We remove the fear. So stopping drinking becomes a choice. There's no fighting, there's no willpower, there's no begging God to help you. It becomes a logical choice. But everything is built on this foundation of fear that somehow, if I remove alcohol from my life, then life's going to be worse off, I'm not going to be able to deal with stress, I'm not going to be able to socialize, etc. Etc. Etc. Thanks for checking out the Stop Drinking Podcast by Sober Clear. If you want to learn more about how we work with people to help them stop drinking effortlessly, then make sure to visit wwwsoberclearcom.