Here’s why a sobriety support group took a booth at the Bar Expo

In Las Vegas, a city famed for imbibing — at a convention filled with people who enable imbibing, either directly or in products related thereto — an organization devoted to sobriety might seem (at first read) to be exceedingly out of place.

But the Bar & Restaurant Expo that just finished a three-day run at the Convention Center is the perfect place for Ben’s Friends, a sobriety support network of hospitality professionals. The group’s co-founder, Mickey Bakst, made that point right away on Tuesday during a break from the event.

“We want the exposure for our group,” explained Bakst, a longtime restaurateur (including time at Tribute, a James Beard Award winner in Michigan) who said he has been sober for 39 years. “Alcohol and drugs badly affect people in our industry. Every single employer that walks through this place has at least one employee who is struggling with alcohol and drugs.

“I want to tell owners they don’t have to fire these employees,” and employees that they don’t necessarily need to leave hospitality.

Like AA, without steps or higher power

That approach differs, Bakst readily acknowledged, from traditional clinical treatment that calls for avoiding places where addictive substances are found. Ben’s Friends doesn’t contain a clinical component, he said. Instead, “we’re very similar to AA in our structure except we’re not really God-focused and not really step-focused.”

At the group’s meetings, people who have the hospitality profession, its distinctive hours and signature addictions in common offer stories of achieving sobriety, or trying to, the co-founder said.

“A meeting is, ‘I had a tough time last night, this is what happened.’ “

“A meeting is, ‘I’m four days sober and I have to stand behind the bar and how do you deal with the stress of being behind that bar?’ “

“A meeting is, ‘I’m two weeks sober and my kitchen is 120 degrees and my chef is a j——— and how do you deal with the stress?’ “

A network born from grief

Ben’s Friends honors the memory of South Carolina chef Ben Murray, a friend of Bakst and of his co-founder, Steve Palmer, a three-time James Beard Award semi-finalist and managing partner of the well-known Indigo Road Hospitality Group in South Carolina. In 2016, after years of struggling with alcohol, Murray killed himself.

Out of the men’s grief, Ben’s Friends emerged. “We had to do something,” Bakst said of all the hospitality professionals ruining their lives and careers through addiction.

The first meeting was held in 2016 in Charleston, South Carolina That grew, by word of mouth initially, to meetings (remote during the pandemic) in 15 cities across the county, plus nationwide remote meetings.

Living sober is possible; they should know

The support network also grew out of the founders’ own descent into, and climb out of, addiction.

For Palmer, alcohol abuse led to estrangement from his family, a failed marriage and homelessness before an intervention set him toward sobriety. It took the loss of his restaurant in California and being medically revived after a three-day drinking jag, for Bakst to begin the journey.

Palmer dates his sobriety to Nov. 5, 2001, Bakst to Dec. 14, 1982. The dates aren’t just milestones, Bakst said. The years of sobriety they reflect also demonstrate, through Ben’s Friends, that a satisfying life and career without alcohol are possible in food and beverage.

Bakst is interested in starting Las Vegas chapter of the group; anyone interested in being involved should contact him at mickeybakst52@gmail.com.

Contact Johnathan L. Wright at jwright@reviewjournal.com. Follow @ItsJLW on Twitter.