Wine & Spirits - October 2019 - 8

Fi ned &
FI LT ER ED

Back Bar

CONFI DE NT I AL
by RACHEL DELROCCO TERRAZAS

For bartenders and sommeliers, sitting down with coworkers after a long shift, double
fernet in hand, can feel like an expectation; you're not part of the team unless you
decompress over a drink. For wine and liquor distributors, checking in with bar
accounts might carry the expectation to drink a cocktail at each stop. The ubiquity of
alcohol in the hospitality business is part of what's given the field its allure, but recently,
there's been a shift in what's celebrated in the trade.

"We need to teach people
to understand themselves
and how they drink."
-Laura Green

WINE & SPIRITS

"I was tending bar, and I quickly and clearly realized it wasn't a healthy environment to be in," says
Laura Green, a licensed mental-health counselor who
recently gave a seminar on alcohol and moderation at
Bar Convent, a trade show in Brooklyn, New York. "I
was drinking too much, spending too much money,
my relationships were suffering. I had dreams of
opening bars but I wasn't confident I would thrive."
She considered leaving the industry, but instead
went back to school to study mental-health counseling. Now she works as the Midwest spirits specialist
for Winebow Imports while also seeing clients and
speaking on substance abuse and mental health at
beverage conferences.
With their easy access to alcohol, bartenders and
sommeliers haven't always been comfortable talking
about how their work relates to substance abuse. But
at Green's Bar Convent seminar, there was a roomful of bartenders with hands raised, waiting to share
their stories and ask questions. And the conversation
is happening more frequently across the country.
Tales of the Cocktail, an annual beverage conference
held in New Orleans, recently launched a foundation
to award grants for research projects on wellness in
the industry. This year's conference also included several seminars on substance abuse and mental health,
offered by licensed therapists and counselors, as well
as free yoga and meditation classes.
Mark Goodwin was a recipient of a grant from
Tales of the Cocktail in 2018. A bartender based in
San Francisco, he used the grant to found the Pin
Project, which launched this past June. It's a bartender collective that provides pins for fellow restaurant workers to communicate their intention not
to drink. Goodwin got the idea as he struggled with
his own relationship to alcohol and what it meant
for his career. He had worked in hospitality since he
was a teenager, eventually becoming a bar consul-

OCTOBER 2019

tant. Although he was thriving professionally, he says,
all too often he'd find himself taking a shot during a
shift and feeling inebriated four hours later. Changing careers didn't seem like an option to him, as he'd
already put so much time and effort into hospitality-and he also realized he wasn't the only one with
an issue. "I want to help," he says.
Both Green and Goodwin will tell you that if sobriety is what you need, then by all means, find the ways
to sustain it and work with a professional; but they
believe there is a middle ground. "Sobriety can be
necessary if alcohol is getting in the way of what you
need to do," Green explains, "but we need to teach
people to understand themselves and how they drink.
We need to learn how to monitor ourselves and normalize nonalcoholic drinking. We also need to keep
social accountability for each other and say these
things out loud."
Brenna McHugh, a California-based substanceabuse counselor who serves as manager of the Scotch
Malt Whisky Society, was on a panel at Tales of the
Cocktail that aimed to do just that-to help industry professionals become more aware of their own
boundaries and behaviors. McHugh also contributes to a wellness group, Jigger & Dash, in Northern
California, that sponsors hospitality-driven mentalhealth roundtables to discuss the challenge of working with alcohol. "There's an excess of food and drink
in our industry: I can drink more. I can eat more. I
have an expense account. This type of lifestyle can
take its toll." she says. The movement toward sobriety is the industry's response to that, to help people
sustain a rewarding career. McHugh says, "It's about
checking in with yourself. Be honest with the pleasures and the drawbacks. Drinking is not the piece
that brings me here. It's the people. The alcohol is not
the community. I want to be around these interesting
and dynamic people and I want to remember it." n

Wine & Spirits - October 2019

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