I don't get the joke about after work beers. Or was it actually serious advice? Can't tell. Because if it is, then it sounds quite cynical to me (e.g. as far from the truth as one could be).
I mean, self-medication is a thing. Ethanol is one of the worst medicines you can take, but, it's legal, and socially permitted [in the western world, largely], or even encouraged, so, there it is.
Self-abuse is often a response to external abuse, whether from a personal relationship, or the ennui (and worse) of this capitalist hellscape we live in. Or specific conditions (depression), which is basically the same thing but done to oneself biochemically (give or take exacerbation by outside forces too). Tons of people (and media especially, and the former, I suspect, largely because of the latter) stigmatize drug use, thinking it's a failing of a person's moral fiber to give in to such addictive products, and therefore they
don't deserve of compassion, they've brought it on themselves. A very old fashioned, Victorian interpretation.
Whereas if you actually looked at the history of these people, you'd largely see they fell into drug use, whether by peer pressure (particularly when younger, more susceptible to it) or by stress or abuse. And social stress will be a strong factor in peer pressure itself taking that dark turn, so it almost seems redundant to mention. (Indeed on a system level, it's irrelevant; we can assume some level of peer pressure exists in a population regardless, and simply consider overall stress of the population and its response to it. Maybe it has individual effects, but individuals on the whole will have better outcomes more often if that stress is addressed first.)
So it's no accident that many drug users are in poverty, homeless, abused, mentally unwell. Many may become unemployable as a result of such circumstances, making it a positive feedback loop that therefore needs additional force to break (rehab programs), in addition to dealing with the underlying causes.
Anyway, not to get overly serious here... Just to say that, the seemingly casual response of "drinking away the work day" is indeed a normal response; a dark one, but a human one. The severity of that response can range anywhere from "out with the mates", to, eventually shivved in a dark alley over a dimebag of meth or whatever. The same force that might tempt you to have something "just to unwind", is the same force that tempts others to much darker fates.
And, not to say that a little ethanol here or there is necessarily a self-abusive thing, not to the most severe degree the term brings to mind. But when we have a conscious understanding that it's incrementally bad for overall health, and continue to do it anyway, that's still a very slight but definite harm we do to ourselves. And that's just the easiest case, you know, you have a couple drinks, you feel fun for a couple hours, no hangover, no consequences, other than the nebulous idea that you've been told it's bad. Which sounds more like other people trying to guilt-trip you, you don't feel any worse from it personally, right? But there's also the level of, maybe you do drink enough to get a hangover, and now the physical after-effects are manifest, and you still do it on an irregular or greater basis, despite knowing it's bad, and now the abuse is clearly both physical and mental. When I say "abuse" here, I mean anything from a sliding scale of "knowing it's bad but it doesn't feel bad overall" to "constant state of drunken fog mixed with cirrhosis".
So; it's largely a response. It might not be a healthy one, but it can happen. And if it gets really bad, it's a gateway to other and worse kinds; it's a sliding scale. I would suggest monitoring your alcohol consumption, and using that as a hint that, maybe you should start looking for a new job. Or family or "friends", or place to live; whatever the stressors may be.
(For my part, can confirm: my alcohol budget shrank notably when I quit my first job. Haven't been [externally] employed since.)
Tim