In her late 20s, Carrie Neal Walden found herself in a moment of personal upheaval and professional indecision. She left her career in sales and decided to become a server while she figured out next steps. It turned out, she loved it. She loved the energy, teamwork and sociability of working in a restaurant, and – as a perennial people pleaser – she loved taking care of guests every night and figuring out what they needed even before they did.
But she also started to pick up what she calls the bad habits that come with the territory. She worked long shifts and couldn’t take breaks to eat. She slept on an erratic schedule, when she did sleep at all. She worked weekends and was a night owl, keeping hours ill-suited to gym memberships or friends with nine-to-fives. Her social world narrowed to her fellow servers.
Also, she drank. Before, she had been hyper-focused on planning for the future; now it was fun to just work hard, make money, put off thinking about the next 10 years, and drink at the end of a long shift. She worked at a fever pitch and took full advantage of the moments when she could put her feet up or have fun, which were almost always shift drinks at bar after-hours.
Increasingly though, she drank anytime she could. When hangovers took over or her shift endurance started to fade, she’d find a new restaurant and start again. Now in her late 30s, vodka was in her system at all times. She was wilting from exhaustion – she knew she had to quit or something had to change, but she drank to steady her hands. It all came to a head the day she took a fall on the job, cracking her ribs and prompting a referral to a liver doctor. He told her that if she didn’t quit drinking, she had just 12 to 18 months to live.
Walden is not alone.
Of all occupations, the hospitality and restaurant industry reports the third highest rate of heavy alcohol use (11.8%), the highest rate of illicit drug use (19.1%) and the highest rate of substance abuse disorder (16.9%) – all of which far exceed national averages. Still, these numbers may underestimate the problem since workers in especially precarious positions might not feel comfortable accurately self-reporting substance use.
For many, alcohol and drug addiction dovetails with other mental illnesses that run rampant in the hospitality industry, including clinical depression which affects at least 10.3% of food industry workers, though informal data indicates the rate is likely much higher. What’s more, while the industry ranks between the 13th and 19th for most suicides by occupation, it comes in just second in terms of suicidal ideation, with 5.7% of workers reporting they had considered killing themselves within the last year. These numbers are likely deflated as well; qualitative evidence points to many factors that depress self-reporting in the food industry, including stigma, pride and a belief that one just has to “pay their dues.” Still, tragically, the largest increase in suicides from 2012 to 2015 can be found among women in the food preparation and service industry, a rate that increased a full 54% over these three years.
All of these issues – from substance abuse, to depression, to suicidality – are exacerbated for people who are experiencing greater overall stress in their lives, working within devastating financial margins or surviving well below a livable wage. In the restaurant industry as with elsewhere in our country, racial and gender segregation means that people of color, and especially women of color, occupy these most precarious positions.