How this local chef took a weekend off from drinking — and got his life back

“I took a weekend off from drinking and wound up here.”

For the better part of a year I’ve been using this sentence as a way to start any social media post that reflects on the journey of sobriety that I did, indeed, start one random weekend, just so I could finish painting the trim in my dining room.

It’s not that I was a “Leaving Las Vegas” kind of drinker. But if I’m going to maintain complete honesty with both myself and with you? My relationship with alcohol was most certainly unhealthy.

I was probably drinking more than your average person on “Sunday Funday;” most professional cooks do. As a chef, over-consuming alcohol is as natural as using salt, or griping about the special requests from table 12 in the middle of the shit on a Friday night. It’s expected. It’s encouraged. It’s celebrated. Hell, even the patron saint of line cooks everywhere, Anthony Bourdain, commanded it, and many of us responded, “Yes CHEF!”

I certainly don’t blame Tony, not for creating this toxicity, anyhow. Yet he was also more than a symptom. He spoke candidly about the industry, and his problems with addiction. He made no attempt to conceal his zeal for drinking, made a successful career out of normalizing what was once called alcoholism, and offered no apologies. But he also made a career that is rife with small tedious tasks, exciting. Even dangerous. The year Bourdain’s book, “Kitchen Confidential,” was released, I was a well-respected 30-year-old chef living and working in upstate New York who had been running kitchens for about five years. I knew then that I wasn’t going to go back and finish my philosophy degree, or even continue traveling as a spoken word artist. What I didn’t know was that I was on the cusp of throwing myself into an 18-year drinking problem.

As a former punk rock kid and skateboarder, my fuse got lit by his book’s snotty attitude, and I happily played the part of a highly driven chef who’d put in the hours. Both in the kitchen and in the bars. I was both a featured chef at The James Beard House, and a guy who couldn’t remember driving home last night.

The details aren’t that salacious or distinguished. I started a family, moved to Charlotte, opened my own restaurant, Lulu, began getting some recognition as a chef, saw some great bands that I can hardly remember seeing, totaled a car, and missed my sons growing up. The fact that my marriage survived is a testament to my wife’s patience and belief in me, and not to any awesomeness displayed by yours truly.

So how can I blame Tony, when it’s a story we’ve all heard before? When you lose yourself step by step, you hardly recognize the change. But a funny thing happened on my way to what certainly had to be the bottom.

In 2010 I sold my restaurant that had barely survived the recession (let alone the epic tales of partying and working, and working while partying) and signed on to be the opening executive chef at what would be a farm-to-fork-themed joint to be named Halcyon. During my time there, I appeared on Bravo TV, at the James Beard House, and I got some national press at a time when Charlotte’s dining scene was barely a blip on the national food radar. I also spent a lot of my free time going out and promoted my hard charging lifestyle on Facebook.

Yet somewhere between finally getting a DUI in 2012 and that weekend I took off from drinking almost a year ago, I broke up with fine dining as a chef. I began reassessing my priorities, and what I knew about myself. I began going out to drink less, though I was certainly still drinking.

Coming to terms with the fact that I was no longer “the same guy sober” that I was “when drinking” was just code for realizing what an ass I had started to become when I drank. Recognizing that it also made me an ass when I wasn’t under the influence was a little harder to acknowledge. I had also begun noticing (and increasingly, reading) random articles about sobriety that would appear on my social media feeds.

And I had some chores to finish…

Sometimes, it seems, the most profound changes can occur when you’re not looking for anything specific. Yet it’s often the seemingly simple tasks that offer the greatest insight.

For me it was a Saturday afternoon. I discovered a random TV channel featuring old punk rock and alternative music documentaries to put on while I did some work around the house. My first instinct was to go grab a beer and enjoy a few sips before I started painting. A second, quieter, and unexpected instinct reminded me that having that first beer would lessen my intensity, and would probably lead to at least a few more after that. I knew that the trim work would get sloppy, I would get sloppy, eventually stopping altogether, justifying how hard I had worked all week as the reason to just let it go. I was fairly well-versed in projects that got derailed by an afternoon of drinking.

But Thanksgiving was five days away, and I had promised my wife that the downstairs would be done in time for guests. “When I finish painting tonight,” I thought, “I can have that beer.”

And then it became when I finished all the trim, I could have that drink. By the end of Sunday, I decided I would go until after I finished cooking on Thanksgiving. By Black Friday, it became about making it one week. After that, I gave myself permission to drink at upcoming functions with other chefs, which ALWAYS meant a “few” beers.

But I didn’t drink.

The number of days without drinking continued climbing. Each new day brought my score higher, and knowing I COULD drink made it easier not to. By Christmas, my high score became my sobriety. It was no longer about “not drinking until —” but about being able to see a life without drinking.

There is a difference between “not drinking” and “living sober,” though. Painting the walls is easy. In no time flat the illusion of change is HUGE. But to really complete the task, you gotta hunker down to the often boring and slow-going stuff, the day-to-day experiences. That’s the difference. Or at least it has been for me.

When I started on this journey, I only wanted to change my relationship with alcohol. Take back some control. That was my goal: not drinking. And as “not drinking” continued, bits and pieces of me began to surface or resurface. For instance, happiness returned, not suddenly, but in the way sunshine brightens slowly as a morning fog burns off. Certainly, I had been happy when somebody bought me a beer or another shot, but that kind of happiness is like watching the fog burn off from inside, through tinted windows. You can see it’s getting brighter, you get the sense that it’s getting nice out there, but you’re not really out in it, not really feeling that change.

This clarity I was experiencing transformed my “not drinking” into a salvage job; I began recovering. Not from a sickness, but what I’d lost of my original form over the years.

I don’t want to offer the illusion that my sober days have all been bathed in a soft white light. Some have been very hard. Learning about what’s been hidden in the dark corners and lurking under the sills is unpleasant. But there are more days than not lately that I step back and really like what I’ve done with the space.

Sobriety can be uncomfortable. Sobriety can be boring. Sobriety can make you resentful. Sobriety can seem pointless. And sobriety can be lonely.

In other words, sobriety can be a lot like any other part of your life. Because it is a part of life. Or can be. Because in our “perfect” Instagram worlds, we are normalizing a drinking culture, letting it hijack us from really experiencing living. We post pictures of our drinks to show we’re happy, having fun, living our “best lives.” But are we really doing that?

I know I wasn’t.

I don’t know what your relationship with alcohol is, so I post these words in case you were wondering what it might be like to take a weekend off.

I know, you’re asking yourself, “But where’s the spectacular crash?! Where’s the hitting of bottom?” Me too. I think subconsciously, I always figured that bottom would have to look like the relationship a Nicolas Cage character had with the bottle. Maybe the idea of hitting bottom is a dangerous myth? Maybe it can unnecessarily prolong an unhealthy relationship with a substance? Not everybody hits the same bottom or at the same depth or same speed, and it definitely was not supposed to look like a gallon of semi gloss and an unfinished home improvement project.

And yet, one random Saturday almost one year ago, I quietly pushed up, and away, from a bottom that was, literally, as boring as watching paint dry.

This story was originally published August 22, 2018 at 2:00 AM with the headline "How this local chef took a weekend off from drinking — and got his life back."