‘That was the wake-up call’: bar and restaurant staff on giving up alcohol

Three leading Hong Kong food and beverage professionals, whose decision to shift gears into sobriety may be a deviation from the norm, tell us their stories, one mocktail (or lime soda) at a time.

Sober since September 2021

“If you worked in a sweet shop, you’d find it really difficult not to eat sweets,” says Amy Stott, the service director at Black Sheep Restaurants, one of Hong Kong’s largest hospitality groups.

“It is much more accessible and amplified because the primary focus of hospitality is to show people a good time, and alcohol definitely comes into the equation for many people.”

People consume alcohol for different reasons and at varying levels of moderation. While Stott recognises that some in the industry may drink to numb the stress from work, she considers her former self to be a different type of drinker.

“I was one of those people that never wanted to go home,” she says. “I wanted to enjoy myself and have fun forever. I would stay out drinking with friends until 4am or 5am – and for what? Finding my limit [and ending the night] was the struggle for me.”

Eventually, this fun-loving lifestyle began to catch up with Stott’s health, both mentally and physically.

Whenever she went out drinking “until silly hours in the morning”, she would feel extremely anxious the next day because she didn’t have enough rest during the night, which was a regular occurrence.

“This was obviously from the drinking, but for years I tried yoga, meditation and all these things that I hoped would make [my anxiety] better without cutting alcohol out,” she says.

“I started to have panic attacks, a couple of them at work – which was not fun. That was the wake-up call for me.”

To prioritise her mental health, Stott decided to quit alcohol.

As with most things, it was difficult at the start, partly because of her job. A big part of what she did, she says, was greeting guests with a drink or two.

“I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to do my job without drinking,” she says. “Other people’s perception was the hardest thing to navigate, and then you reach a point where you don’t care what anybody else thinks.

“In the beginning, I thought I’d do it for a couple of months, but then my whole attitude towards alcohol just shifted. I’m much happier without it. I’m more present at my job, and I have way more mental clarity.”

Instead of dealing with stressful situations with a shot, she now has to process things differently, without the aid of alcohol.

“Sometimes it’s not that fun,” she admits, “but it’s better than waking up with a hangover the next day.”

Still, she doesn’t think alcohol abuse is a problem exclusive to the food and beverage industry.

“Going out every night is a big part of Hong Kong, and I feel the issue is much bigger than just our industry and extends through all walks of life.”

Michael Smith, the head chef at Moxie, finds that the food and beverage industry is not the cause of excessive drinking, but rather a place to harbour it. The reason, he says, is because this line of work is “so welcoming to everybody”.

“It’s not like you need to go to this college, do this amount of education, or get this degree for the kitchen or bar to welcome you into a second home,” he says.

“It is a really good place for people that come from difficult or dysfunctional backgrounds, who may have tendencies towards patterns of alcohol and substance abuse.”

As for Smith himself, he struggled with alcohol for a long time before he plucked up the courage and made the change.

He reveals that he was “stuck in a rat race” of drinking too much, experiencing depression, anxiety and paranoia, and then using alcohol to “turn these voices off in my head”.

Hong Kong is a city that prides itself on its vibrant nightlife, though he doesn’t see it as a reason behind people’s tendency to binge drink.

“In recovery, we talk about ‘taking it geographical’,” he says. “When you have a problem with alcohol, you take that problem with you to every country, every city and every job.

“When you’re a problem drinker, it can be very obvious to everybody around you, but you’ll give yourself excuses [such as] ‘I can’t stop drinking because I work in this industry.’”

At first, Smith thought that quitting would be impossible, but he was surprised to find how supportive people were.

“Some other chefs that I thought were bad influences actually turned around and said to me, ‘Yeah, I think it’s a good idea.’ The reality is, once you get really honest and tell people that you’re trying to better your life, the people who care will support you.

“The industry is whatever you want it to be, right? Just like society. You choose which circles of friends you want to associate with.”

Since then, Smith’s lifestyle has changed drastically. Not only did he stop drinking and smoking, but he also started eating more healthily, removing meat from his diet and consuming more fruit and vegetables – a change reflected in Moxie, the plant-forward restaurant he started alongside Shane Osborn in 2021 as the chef de cuisine.

Smith now devotes his free time to his many hobbies, which his past self “didn’t have time for because my No 1 hobby was drinking”. He boxes weekly and is in the process of learning to ride a motorbike. He has also started running marathons and recently competed in the challenging Hyrox fitness race.

“It was all part of a very holistic journey as I engaged in this – I hate to say it – journey of ‘self-discovery’,” he says. “To go from being a big drinker to the polar opposite, you start to see these self-improvements so quickly.”

Agung Prabowo, the co-founder of Penicillin and Dead & bars, has been practising sobriety on and off since January 2020 – serendipitous timing given that, a few months later, when Covid-19 hit, bars were restricted from operating normally.

“Before that, I’d been journaling my thoughts about alcohol and making empty promises to myself, and all of a sudden, I turned 40 years old – which was so weird, because I’d always been young. I’d been young my whole life, as a matter of fact,” he jokes.

Prabowo says he felt his body change. The hangovers he experienced “one too many times” would sometimes take him a day and a half to recover from. Unable to do anything but lie on the couch, he would regret his lack of productivity.

“As a bartender, my job doesn’t make it easy to quit alcohol, but I try to moderate my drinking and discipline myself with my drinking habits,” he says. “This year, I decided to drink for one month and go ‘dry’ for three months – it’s my formula of moderation.

“In that one month of drinking, I would make a promise to myself not to abuse alcohol, but just to have a couple of cocktails or glasses of wine on the weekends.”

Prabowo says that he is in “baby sobriety”, but is excited to approach this new chapter of his life with a clear mind and hopes to one day quit drinking for good while “only tasting bar spoons while making cocktails behind the bar”.

Meanwhile, he realises that working in a bar means there will always be people wanting to drink with him, but he says: “Luckily, as bartenders, we have many tricks to fake drinking or having shots.”

He adds: “Forever is a long time, so I prefer to look at not drinking on a day-by-day, week-by-week and month-by-month basis.”

For more information on Alcoholics Anonymous, visit aa-hk.org.