Understanding the High-Functioning Alcoholic: Professional Views and Personal Insights

by Sarah Allen Benton

Who is the typical alcoholic among the 12.5 million living in the United States now? Many, if not most of us when asked that question, would envision a skid row bum or someone at least out of work or with little education locked into a low-skill, low-paying job. But that is not accurate, according to the results of a national study released in June, 2007 by the National Institutes of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. The NIAAA determined that alcoholics in the United States really fall into five subtypes, including nearly 20 percent who are highly functional alcoholics, well-educated with good incomes. They include corporate presidents, powerful politicians, police, lawyers, doctors, scientists, and other highly-skilled, highly-educated people who are middle- to high-income and by most accounts successful. In this unprecedented book, mental health counselor Sarah Benton takes us into the worlds and minds of so-called high-functioning alcoholics, to understand how people so intelligent and achievement-oriented get drawn into states in which they secretly cannot control their liquor consumption but still manage to excel in their careers.

The book includes a look at celebrity alcoholics like singer Eric Clapton and actor/comedian Robin Williams, as well as alcoholics in high positions including Chris Albrecht, former Chairman and CEO of HBO. Other high-profile people included in this book are Miss USA 2007 Tara Conner and football legend Joe Namath. With her own story of alcoholism and her recovery woven into the text, Benton takes us into the lives and challenges of these well-educated and successful people, seeking to understand how, when, and why they became addicted, as well as the reasons their alcoholism is, for most, so hard to admit, cope with, and recover from.

Genres: Nonfiction

224 pages, Hardcover

First published March 5, 2009

About the author

Sarah Allen Benton is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor and therapist at McLean Hospital (affiliated with Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School) in the “McLean Residence” 90-day transitional living program for substance abuse and dual diagnosis treatment in Waltham, Massachusetts. She has been featured in a NY Times article by Jane Brody, has appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show, CBS Early Show, coast to coast radio shows, NPR and more. Additionally, she has written articles on the topic of high-functioning alcoholics on Oprah.com, for The Addiction Professional, The Massachusetts Medical Society and is a blogger for Psychology Today.com

Benton has also worked as a therapist in the Emmanuel College Counseling Center in Boston and received training through the Mind/Body Medical Institute, once affiliated with Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital in Boston (now the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine). Additionally, she has been involved in psychologically-based research studies through McLean Hospital, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Northeastern University and the Boston University Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders. Benton earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder and a master of science in counseling psychology degree from Northeastern University. Sarah is a recovering alcoholic and has been sober since February of 2004

Reviews

[Natalie Peterson]

This book helped me understand alcoholism much better as a disease, and particularly how it relates to myself and many people that I know. The god stuff towards the end was a bit much for me as an atheist, but on the whole I found the book more useful and enlightening than not.

[Molly McGeehin]

Not a wealth of knowledge but I had no idea such a group exists