Powerful Men: can we talk about your drinking?

I’ve dated too many men who are brilliant: and alcoholics

I lie back and shut my eyes with a crushing disappointment at the man slurring down the phone to me. It’s 2am, and he’s calling me, again, drunk. “I love you,” he rambles. “You’re so sexy. Your accent is so sexy. I miss you.” I say nothing. He’s done this twice now: and then coldly insisted he doesn’t want to date me the next day. He doesn’t mean any of it. This is just a cruel side effect of an addiction he won’t acknowledge. He’s a different man when he’s had a bottle of wine; a man I used to respect and admire so deeply, before I saw this side of him. The sad, angry, erratic, ethanol soaked side.

It’s not just relaxing you, is it?

I wish I could say this was unusual: functional alcoholics who are irrefutably bright, successful, and intelligent. CEOs. Top investors. Politicians. Amazing creators, and top barristers. And all of them, almost without exception, chained to a mistress called alcohol. “You’re embarrassing me,” I snap at another one over lunch. He’s swaying and is now loudly asking me about my sex life. He wants to order champagne, he’s boasting about having been drinking for three days, and has been drinking before I arrived. “Lighten up,” he shrugs. “You need to relax. You’re being really uptight.” Fuming, I try to avoid the urge to pour his drink over his head and…