I was a manager at a Big Six firm (back when there were Six of them) and reached a point where traveling 50 weeks a year and being on stage from dawn past dusk became unacceptable. However, I had other skill. I took a step back - yes - but it wasn't a step back to the beginning, and it surely wants a step away from working. That's simply not the right approach imho.
I see three good paths forward, from such a scenario. First, the path I took: Capitalize on the skills I already had, and the credibility I am able to exploit from my current career to jump into a new career, not quite laterally, but definitely not down to entry level. In my case, I was an international management consultant, with a specialization in software development and IT operations, so with some homegrown skills in programming, fostered by the experience from developing internal applications - work that I assigned myself as manager - I was able to start a second career at a pretty senior level. (Software developers are notoriously poor when it comes to understand customer requirements, so having a software developer with such strong business experience was quite advantageous for my first employer in my new career.)
Incidentally, I also gave myself an out - something which I feel is good though not essential. After a long time as a management consultant to software development companies I rationalized that it would be good for me to get some hands-on experience in the discipline that was the focus of what I was providing advise. For the first several years of my second career, I could have easily jumped back if I wanted, at a senior manager level very likely, simply on the strength of having gained such unique insights. If you can arrange something for yourself akin to what I arranged for myself, you'd be in the very best position, I would think. (Full disclosure: I never went back to management consulting.)
A second good path forward would involve finding a volunteer opportunity that would be quite a rich, personally-fulfilling experience, but also throw of loads of non-specific professional development gains. I don't know how young you are, but back when I was young, there was something called the Peace Corps that provided such opportunities. Like my own situation I described above, it provides you substantial "cover" for why you stepped away from what you were doing - a practically unassailable explanation that not only explains the detachment but also afford you some significant measure of admiration for doing so.
It doesn't need to be quite so exotic though. My church association, right now, has a job req out for something related to what I do, but at a much lower level position from what I do, making less than half what I'm making now. If my working environment was as oppressive as you make yours sound, and I just had to get out and take a "break" for a while, and/or if I wanted to jump from what I'm doing into the kind of development that this job opportunity represents (a side benefit), I could use that job almost as a training opportunity (with almost half-pay). I would effectively be getting out of the high pressure rat race, since the expectations for such a low-level job would be so far lower than for my current, high-paying job (at least for someone with my skills). I could then jump back into the rat race later, without any concerns about prospective employers considering my "downtime" as anything other than an admirable trait: Giving of myself for a few years, practically volunteering my time.
A third good path forward involves leaving the working world to go back to school for a new degree. (Though, to be fair, that's pretty expensive.)
The point of all this is to highlight how doing what you wrote, literally, i.e., "checking out" or starting over from entry level in another career, both are sub-optimal. Even in a situation such as you're describing, you still need to be thinking about what's best for your future.
I hope this helps.
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