The work day has finally ended. You have a splitting headache from dealing with customers and putting up with other co-workers bad habits. You decide that having a drink will settle you down.

What you don't realize is that "drink" will multiply and you will soon end up spending whatever money you made that night.

That was me just a year ago working in the service industry. It's not that my co-workers didn't enjoy taking care of people, it is just a constant stress builder if you let it become one. Our natural reaction at the end of the night was to go out and "blow off some steam."

But what I learned over time was that we were not effectively dealing with the stress, we were merely ignoring it.

When the morning came, our wallets and our mental clarity had taken a serious hit. Sure we had a good time forgetting our stress the night before, but we were about to be right back where we started with another shift.

It's a vicious cycle. If that at all sounds like your current condition, consider getting out. It can change who you are as a person if you let the service industry. Lucky for me I was able to land an internship which forced me to find a new "way" to deal with my stress.

I was fortunate to get out of an industry that I had no plans of ever becoming part of. It was only once I was out did I read about the negative effects of drinking to relieve stress, aside from the obvious.

Apparently, cortisol (the stress hormone) is released throughout the body when consuming copious amounts of alcohol. I would go on to learn that cortisol has adverse effects for the body including lowering your metabolism and packing on extra pounds.

On top of that, hangovers incurred can lead the affected individual to act lazy and become even less motivated in their actions.

So I was actually harming myself a lot more than financially as I did put on some noticeable weight. But in the end and especially through continued learning; I've learned that the stress intake never stops, no matter your profession. Stress is more thought of now like the people who discourage or upset me. The reason is because I can't control those people, similar to stress. I can only control how to manage it and decide how I let it affect me.