There were red flags at the outset about the drinking culture in the beer industry, but I was too drunk to see them. The interview for my first brewery job lasted almost five hours. It took place at the Blind Tiger, a famous craft beer bar in Manhattan, the conversation fueled by several pints of 7.3% ABV Green Flash West Coast IPA. A few months later, I was onboarding at the brewery with my manager, recalling the details of the interview with another coworker.
“I knew it was going well when I realized that we’d already been talking for four hours and ordered our fifth round of beer,” I said.
“Sixth,” my manager corrected me. “But don’t feel special—I did that with every interviewee. I was testing you to see how you handled your booze.”
Welcome to the beer business.
Joe Reyes, the Southeast regional sales director for non-alcoholic beer maker Best Day Brewing, tells similar stories from years prior, when he would employ this strategy and go drink with a potential hire in addition to a typical in-person interview process. Our experiences are not uncommon. Examples like this made it clear from the start of my career there was an ongoing pressure to try to “fit in” culturally in the alcohol industry, which meant honing a coveted skill of being able to drink heavily but still function. So, I drank. Hard. I got extraordinarily good at skirting that line between being a party animal and a professional. As my career and reputation grew, so did my alcohol tolerance.
Ben Lemoine, wine club manager at Adelsheim Vineyard in Newberg, Oregon, says that there’s an allure to pushing those limits.
“Your ability to be drunk enough and sober enough at the same time is like this godliness or something,” he says. “It’s being fun and drunk and still remembering what you did last night—or at least if you don’t remember what you did, not hitting on your best friend or punching a cab or something.”
“Your ability to be drunk enough and sober enough at the same time is like this godliness or something.”
But that tightrope walk has a steep learning curve. Gabriel Jiminez, a former industry professional, remembers when he first started as a salesperson for Revolution Brewing Company in Chicago.
“I’m typically a healthy person, but there was a lot of fitting in that needed to happen. Bar owners wouldn’t even talk to you unless you were drinking beer there,” he says of his experience. “My first day, on my first ride-along, on the side of supplier sales, I had three beers and a shot of tequila. And I wasn’t prepared for it, and I’m like, ‘I’m feeling this.’” Jiminez wound up sleeping at his brother’s house that night, too inebriated to make his way home.
(John Carruthers, director of communications at Revolution, highlights that the company has policies in place to protect the health and safety of employees. “Beer is a social beverage and naturally a lot of fun can come out of that,” he says, “and that's why one of our highest priorities is making sure our team has fun in a responsible manner.”)
On the other side of the bar, bar owners and managers say they feel the same pressure. Eddie Cullari, owner of Eddie’s Roadhouse in Warwick, New York, says he felt as if he didn’t have a choice to not drink. When sales reps with beer, wine, or spirits came calling, he believed it to be an obligation to try samples, regardless of whether he actually wanted to consume alcohol at that moment.
“Drinking was a part of my lifestyle,” he says. “To procure or curate a beer list, a beer program, is not something I could do without drinking. You are the host of a party, and it’s unfair to not be in the same realm as everyone else around you. It’s like I had to participate and include myself in the festivities.”
What’s left is a destructive cycle made difficult by presumption of habit and the idea that there are unspoken rules shared by everyone involved—if there’s alcohol and you work with it or around it, you drink.
As my career continued to develop within the industry, the line between “normal drinking” and alcohol abuse became blurred. I brushed off problematic drinking habits because I believed they were a function of my job. I was surrounded by successful colleagues who seamlessly folded a party-hard lifestyle into their work, and if I didn’t keep up, I would be left behind—in personal relationships and professional opportunities.
Tommy Leischner, a former beer buyer and manager at liquor stores in the Calgary area, describes how that shift happened to him, as he went from being a casual beer blogger to an industry professional.
“At the very beginning, I was just drinking and partying on like Friday night, Saturday night kind of a thing,” he says. “Might burn it down for the weekend for a buddy’s birthday or something, but it was mostly contained at that point. Because it became my occupation and my livelihood, I was going out to events, like four-to-five days out of the week, and most of the time I’d be coming home in some sort of a state, some level of inebriation.”
“Because it became my occupation and my livelihood, I was going out to events, like four-to-five days out of the week, and most of the time I’d be coming home in some sort of a state, some level of inebriation.”
Robbie Wendeborn, the director of distilling operations at Four Birds Distillery in Jersey Shore, Pennsylvania, echoes that normalization of daily drinking, saying that he felt like it was impossible not to have a drink at work. This led to some awkward interactions at the doctor.
“You go for a physical or something and they’re like, ‘Oh, how many drinks a week do you have?’ ‘Between five and 12 on a slow week.’ And you kind of have to be like, ‘But I’m in this industry where drinking is expected.’”
“You go for a physical or something and they’re like, ‘Oh, how many drinks a week do you have?’ ‘Between five and 12 on a slow week.’ And you kind of have to be like, ‘But I’m in this industry where drinking is expected.’”
Cullari agrees, even trying to defuse that tension with wry humor.
“I used to say it to my friends every time I drank too much: ‘I was doing research,’” he says. “I started to justify and rationalize my consumption of alcohol as ‘It’s my job.’ I mean I read about it. I read books on beer, I drink the beer. I read books on wine, I drink the wine. Do I overconsume? Yeah, more often than not.”
In some cases, that normalization of drinking on the job creates hazardous work conditions. Wendeborn recalls one of his supervisors telling him that he needed to be able to work on heavy machinery despite drinking. And Reyes says he was once handed breathalyzers at a previous employer’s Christmas party, which turned into staff drinking heavily to see who could blow the highest blood alcohol content level on their device.
I’m not sure whether jobs in beer, liquor, and wine create or attract alcoholics. It’s probably a combination of both. I think I once had a healthy relationship with alcohol, but within a few years in the industry, my perception of “healthy” had become so skewed that I couldn’t see problems developing within myself. For me, craft beer became the perfect place to hide. I had unfettered access to my favorite form of self-medication, and despite a high tolerance for alcohol and a heavy drinking habit, I was surrounded by people who seemed to be capable of drinking even more.
“I can’t possibly have a problem,” I’d tell myself. “Just look at the people you work with, they have the real problem.”
The problem, of course, was that I did have a problem.
My depression, which I later learned was a function of untreated bipolar disorder, had gotten worse as my career progressed and alcohol intake increased. In 2016, for the first time ever, I was truly honest with my doctors about how much I was drinking: At least 30-40 beers a week. Within a year, I found myself in an intensive outpatient mental health program, desperate for relief. I was placed in a co-occurring program, which treats mental health disorders and substance misuse. This included attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and group therapy centered around substance misuse, in addition to regular group therapy sessions for depression.
But despite the diagnosis, I still didn’t think that I had a problem. In fact, I was almost offended and slightly indignant about it. After all, my drinking seemed damn-near moderate compared to my peers. It wasn’t until I had to talk out loud about my drinking in a group therapy session that I realized how bad things really were. “Hi, my name is Mark, and my drug of choice is alcohol. I work at a brewery.” I got a few chuckles from the group. Somebody snidely commented, “Yeah, Budweiser should pay me, too!”
“No, really, I work for a brewery.” Suddenly, the faces got a little more serious.
I didn’t know where to start, so the counselor running the group suggested that I share what a “heavy drinking day” at work might look like. A few weeks prior, I’d been at the brewery for a meeting, and had a particularly hard day of drinking, so I decided to talk about that.
We’d started the day by cracking open a bottle of whiskey at 9 a.m., passing it around and taking swigs as we each shared successes from our departments and markets.
A 11 a.m., several cases of beer were wheeled in on a hand truck to enjoy with lunch.
We continued drinking until the meeting concluded at 4 p.m., when we walked over to our taproom for more beers with our colleagues who worked in the brewhouse.
This was followed by an outing to a local bar, where we had beers, followed by dinner with several more.
After dinner, those of us from out of town reconvened at a casino near our hotel before the end of the night for—you guessed it—more beer.
I had been casually drinking for 16 hours straight.
When I was done talking, nearly everyone’s jaw was on the floor. The people in my group—the ones I thought had problems—seemed genuinely shocked. I had heroin addicts looking at me like I was hardcore. I uttered an excuse that was unfortunately common from myself and others: “Yeah, but you guys don’t understand,” I said. “I work in beer.”
I took six weeks to complete the program, but started drinking again when I went back to work. My job had become so intertwined with consumption that I couldn’t untangle one from the other. My mental health improved with periods of abstinence, but sometimes it takes a few tries for sobriety to stick.
Thankfully, my situation isn’t how it goes for everyone else. Cullari says his relationship with alcohol only started to change as his physical health started to deteriorate, causing serious stomach discomfort and digestive issues. Even then, it was about adjusting to drinking rather than cutting it out. He describes his early years working in alcohol as wide-eyed, but somewhere around five-to-10 years in, “you’re like the rest of the people in the industry that you realize are predominantly alcoholics that are drinking Lager again, all day, just so they can drink all day.”
Focusing on lower-ABV beer wasn’t necessarily a sign of progress, he says: “It’s alcoholism meets age.” Eventually, a gluten intolerance is what provided Cullari the motivation he needed to approach drinking with moderation.
Others don’t have it so easy. In 2017, Reyes was diagnosed with F2 liver disease as a result of his heavy drinking. He could change his habits or face terminal consequences. In a post on LinkedIn, he listed one-liners he used to tell himself and others about his job and alcohol intake: “Die on the payroll,” “We’re here for a good time, not a long time,” and “Life is uncertain, don’t sip.” He was coping with humor until a doctor told him it was time to get serious.
Reyes eventually found a role as the vice president of sales at Tank Brewing, where he felt encouraged to build a culture of health among employees. During his time at Tank, he taught new hires that drinking is not an expectation on the job and offered free wellness and recovery resources like cryo treatments to his team.
“We’re being present for the consumer. And by being present for the consumer, you have to be present for the consumer in mind, not only in body.”
“I would say that for the team we built here, they don’t have that feeling of an obligation to drink because I’m not doing it myself,” he says. When asked about how it affects his staff’s ability to promote the brand, he described it as a plus: “We’re being present for the consumer. And by being present for the consumer, you have to be present for the consumer in mind, not only in body.”
Trying to get sober while working in alcohol is a challenging proposition. Worry about social stigma is one thing, but how can you excel in an industry you love if you can’t provide tasting notes, sensory analysis, or talk about a drink with experience? “It’s nearly impossible,” says Leischner, who tried to quit drinking while still working at a liquor store.
But increasingly, there’s an understanding that personal choices do not reflect an ability to excel professionally. For Lemoine, it’s actually been a boon to his career. Support from his colleagues at Adelsheim Vineyards was crucial, and when he confided with them about his intention to get sober, they encouraged him while pointing out examples of sober winemakers in the industry. The choice increased his productivity and enjoyment in work.
The hope for Lemoine and others is that along with rising wellness trends, acceptance of being “sober-curious,” and a variety of non-alcoholic options at stores and bars, alcohol-use disorder and sobriety move away from being taboo subjects. Professionals interviewed for this story didn’t recall getting formal training about alcoholism—a potential blindspot for industry insiders—but organizations like the Brewers Association now offer resources to members, including guides to recognize signs of substance abuse, how to create staff drinking policies, and ways to identify problem-drinking.
However, because overdrinking is so normalized across the industry, it can be that much harder to recognize when someone has an issue.
“I never had an intervention, because nobody was willing to admit I was an alcoholic,” says Lemoine, who also had trouble admitting it himself. And often, when help does come, it’s after things have reached a rock-bottom point. “Helping you get help at the end is not a good place to start,” he adds.
“I never had an intervention, because nobody was willing to admit I was an alcoholic …Helping you get help at the end is not a good place to start.”
Changing these attitudes is part of the mission for Meagen Anderson, founder of (AF)icionado, a certification program centered around educating industry professionals about non-alcoholic and alcohol-free beverages. In addition to teaching about production, sensory, sales, and marketing, she says that learning about mindful drinking is an important component of her approach. The program was partially born out of her own struggles—she had invested so much of her time and professional dreams into educational roles at Boston Beer Company and global hop companies that she felt trapped in an identity tethered to alcohol.
“For me, this is part of my comeback story from alcohol, and then wanting to share all of the best aspects of it with others. To encourage them,” says Anderson, who quit drinking in 2020. “Before I changed my lifestyle and started the healing process at some level I was always searching for the right tools and information. Once I had them right for myself, the ability to change became much more manageable.”
Now she’s forging her own path forward, again a beer educator, but this time, without the alcohol.
It took me two rock bottoms and several half-hearted attempts to finally find sobriety on May 12, 2022. My path has taken me back into the industry, most recently as a bartender at a brewery taproom. I’ve been open about my sobriety behind the bar, because I’m proud of it, and because it sparks a conversation worth having. De-stigmatizing sobriety and addressing alcohol use disorder head on can be challenging, but will help our friends and colleagues before they reach their own depths. Resilience requires vulnerability, but it also gives us the chance to lift each other up.
Words by Mark LaFaroIllustrations by Ryan Troy Ford
