SEATTLE — A new group in Seattle is helping people who work in restaurants and bars overcome addiction and substance abuse, amid the temptations built into their jobs.
“We are surrounded by the thing that we're trying not to do all the time and that's just really hard to face,” said Kate Willman, a Maître D’ and supervisor at the new restaurant Eight Row in Green Lake.
Willman and Eight Row chef-owner David Nichols are in recovery after years of working in New York City restaurants, and partying hours after the last tab was settled.
“I was working in the best restaurants I’d ever worked in and I was also in the lowest place I had ever been,” Willman said.
“I've always been a chef, it was this kind of a rockstar mentality I was drawn to,” Nichols said Friday while preparing to open for happy hour.
The party mentality draws a lot of people to the restaurant industry, but when they've had enough, how do they get sober when they’re surrounded by so much alcohol?
“The community part of getting sober is what has kept me going all these years,” said Willman, who stopped drinking nearly seven years ago.
She and Nichols are starting a Seattle chapter of an organization called Ben's Friends. It's a support group for people in the hospitality and restaurant industry who are recovering from addiction and substance abuse.
“Everyone is welcome in the industry, whether you're a dishwasher, or a barista at a coffee shop, or server, or chef, it doesn't matter,” Nichols said.
Ben's Friends started in South Carolina and is named in memory of Ben Murray, a young chef who took his own life after struggling with alcoholism.
The organization expanded to more than ten cities and offers an environment where restaurant workers can talk candidly about the difficulty of quitting drinking or drugs, in a business where partying is often a badge of honor.
“The idea is that we can handle more as a group than any of us can on our own,” Willman said.
They are, after all, in the hospitality business, and now they're serving each other.
Ben’s Friends meets for the first time in Seattle on Monday, Nov. 4th at 10 a.m. at Eight Row, 7102 Woodlawn Avenue NE, Seattle.
More information here.