Chef Scott Crawford on Sobriety and Empathy

About a month ago, I sat down with Scott Crawford, chef and owner of Crawford & Son restaurant in North Carolina. We talked about his 14 years of sobriety — Crawford runs the Raleigh chapter of Ben’s Friends, a support group for addicts in the food and beverage industry — and how he learned to bring empathy into the professional kitchen. I tried to work some of his comments into a piece I recently wrote (coming out next week), but they didn’t quite fit the angle of that story. I’m pasting a portion of the transcript here because Crawford’s words might help someone somewhere.

That’s about it: I’m interested in people’s sobriety stories, whether they become part of an article or not, and I think those struggling with substance abuse need to hear these kinds of stories again and again and again. So thanks to Crawford for talking with me for nearly two hours when I had no real agenda other than getting to know him. Here goes.

Scott Crawford: I started my drinking and drug use at eleven. My son is eleven now. I look at him and I think, “How in the hell? Where were my parents?” Those were different times. By the time I was 17, I moved to Florida, and-

Julia Bainbridge: With your family?

Crawford: No, on my own.

Bainbridge: Your parents just let you leave?

Crawford: I was a product of an 80s divorce and it was nasty. Now people have a little bit more of an idea of how to do it with the best interests of the kids in mind, but they knew none of that then. Anyway, it was traumatizing, which led to more drinking.

I was a creative type in a steel town outside of Pittsburgh, you know? There was nothing for me there. So I took off to go see what I could find, and what I found was that there were two worlds that would welcome someone like me: the restaurant world or criminal world.

Bainbridge: What is it about the restaurant world that welcomed someone like you?

Crawford: Yeah, well, when you ask the question, “Why is there a high ratio of people in this industry using and drinking,” it starts with who the industry welcomes. These are — back then, anyway — people who have no money for college, maybe they had a tough childhood, maybe they’re working their way through college… Usually the front of the house has an end game and the back of house was just, “Man I dig this, and we’re in this thing together.” There’s some street cred if you’re tough; the longer hours you can work, the tougher you are, the cooler you are.

I started in the front of house and actually moved to the back of house because I felt like that’s where I belong, with those people. It started with me selling them weed, and then I was cool enough to pick up a knife one day when someone didn’t show up. The first place I felt I ever really belonged was in the kitchen. It sounds a little corny, but I was 19 years old and I didn’t really have a family.

Bainbridge: Why did you choose that over more criminal activity?

Crawford: I did both simultaneously! That was mainly to support my own habits, because they were pretty expensive even at a young age. So I worked in the kitchen and I supplemented my income by selling to everyone in the restaurant: managers, chefs, everyone.

Bainbridge: Just weed?

Crawford: Whatever. And it was always that way; every restaurant I worked at, I was that guy. So I was a hustler, but I also discovered an extreme passion and an outlet for my creative energy.

Remember how I said I was a creative type in an industrial town? My grandfather had a sawmill, and I did work on that for a bit. So I knew I had a work ethic. And I had some morals about what was right and what was wrong, too. I didn’t immediately say, “You know? I’m gonna be a criminal.” It was a slow transition, as my addiction completely took over my life.

Bainbridge: What substances are we talking about, here?

Crawford: Cocaine really took over my life. I dabbled gently in heroin, but I mostly kept it at bay, thankfully. So it was cocaine and alcohol, daily, and after a while, you can’t fool people anymore.

Bainbridge: Can you paint that picture for me? What did life look like after you were no longer fooling people?

Crawford: I’ll tell you the day. I was in the parking lot of a community college doing cocaine at nine o’clock in the morning. I was still up from the night before. I eventually walked inside to take an algebra final, and once the test was in front of me, I just fucking freaked out. My mind just melted. I got up, I walked out, and I never went back. I had paid my tuition in cash, and I never went back.

Bainbridge: Is this in Florida still?

Crawford: Yes, Tallahassee. I bought a pager that day and started my own business.

Bainbridge: But there was still this low-level interest in making food?

Crawford: It wasn’t just low-level; I guess I downplayed that. It was really a thing that I was passionate about and good at. The way I moved, and the way I was able to make food work for me… I noticed that people around me couldn’t do that. I guess I’m getting more into the criminal portion of my career; that’s what happens to people who are that bad off.

Bainbridge: It wins out.

Crawford: It wins out. Long story short, I had some years during which I completely stepped out of society altogether. I’ll admit that it was amazing, for me: I did whatever I wanted, I had piles of money, and I learned all about business. Everything that I learned during that time period, I apply to my work today when talking with investors and structuring deals. It’s bizarre.

Eventually, though, I went back to cooking. I didn’t quit doing drugs or drinking, but I decided, “I can’t go to prison, and I think I’m going to. My luck is going to run out.” So I left Florida. I went to Richmond, Virginia — I knew a young lady there who I cared deeply about — and I got a job with chef Michelle Williams of Richmond Restaurant Group. She changed my life, because she ran a kitchen in different way. It wasn’t this macho bullshit.

Bainbridge: How was she different?

Crawford: I had left the drug business behind, but I was still an addict. It doesn’t just go away if you don’t get any treatment. There were a whole bunch of us struggling with addiction in that kitchen, and I saw an empathy from her, a fairness.

Bainbridge: She was aware of the drug problems?

Crawford: She was, and she gave this group of guys a chance. That really inspired me. So, at this point, I really wanted to be a chef, and I wanted to be more like her. I wanted to run a kitchen like her, but also just be a better human being.

Bainbridge: What else was it about her?

Crawford: She viewed a kitchen almost as a sanctuary, a place to be away from, you know, the world. You walked into her kitchen and felt safe. That was so different from the old-school fine-dining kitchens I had been a part of, where nothing was ever good enough and you were always on edge. I loved that, too, but this showed me something different.

We all had enormous respect for her — she worked hard, and her food was delicious — but she cared about people. I remember one day, I was really hungover and just feeling like shit, but I had a good service. At the end of it, she came by, put her hand on my shoulder, and said, “I’m having some people over tomorrow and I’d like you to come. Bring some bread.” I remember thinking, “Wow, she cares about me enough to invite me to her home?” I went, and nobody was getting drunk, it was just about food, and it was great. She’s really cool.

Bainbridge: So what happened after that experience?

Crawford: I went back to Florida, to a cheap culinary school in Tampa. I really couldn’t go back to Tallahassee. Between Tallahassee, Miami, and Gainesville, the [drug] activity in that state was beyond what anyone really truly knows. The pill mills started in Dade County. It was just a crazy, crazy place.

At this point, I was pretty functional. I got straight As in culinary school and was running circles around everyone based on what I learned from Michelle.

Bainbridge: When you say “pretty functional”… Were you still using daily?

Crawford: Two or three times a week. Basically, I would work pretty hard all week, keep it pretty under control, and then lose it on the weekends. Anyway, I finished school and immediately got a sous chef job. The chef and I partied like rock stars. Then we left Tampa because he got a job at Black Cat, as the executive chef, and I took a job as his sous chef. That was a bad move. I went down really fast and really hard. It was an amazing opportunity and I just blew it.

Bainbridge: Did he, too?

Crawford: No. He partied hard, but he just didn’t have the addictive personality.

People come in here all the time for Ben’s Friends, and they’re like, “I don’t know if I’m an alcoholic, but I definitely have some issues I need to address with it.” That’s fine. That’s completely for you to decide, right? But for guys like me? We know. There’s absolutely no question. I knew, and I knew for years and years and years.

I started to use heroin in California and I was hiding it. I was becoming introverted because I couldn’t share the depths of my addiction. I was waking up in parks. I was beginning to create my own hell. At the same time, I was cooking amazing food, I was seeing the most amazing products I’d ever seen, I was hearing people talk about happy cows producing better milk, and I was charging up all my credit cards eating at all the best restaurants in the city, which I don’t regret. I paid them off later.

Anyway, each time I started to go down, I would just move. That was the pattern with me. So I came back to Florida and I joined the Ritz Carlton.

Bainbridge: Why keep returning to Florida?

Crawford: By this point, my brother lived there, and I’m very close with him. He’s an alcoholic and got sober at 18, when he was incarcerated. So he was watching me this whole time, basically hoping I didn’t kill myself. Anyway, I go back to Florida, I get this job at the Ritz Carlton, and I just kill it. I got three promotions in two years, and I got my own fine dining restaurant. I was keeping myself in check: I was not using cocaine, and I was using alcohol almost lightly. I was finding my food, finding out who I was as a chef, taking risks I’d never taken before, and it was awesome.

Then I get a call from south Florida, from my old partner who I used to traffic with. He said, “Man, I think I need you to come down here and see me.” And I said, “Well, what’s going on?” And he said, “Man, I’m just in a really bad way with these Oxycodones.”

Bainbridge: Had you ever taken those?

Crawford: About a year prior, I was in Miami with him. I was working too much — I had lost 15 pounds and felt like shit — so I went to Miami to party. One night, he gives me these pills, and he’s like, “Man, these things are the greatest thing ever.” I didn’t know what Oxycodone was at the time, but that’s what they were. I put them in the coffee grinder in the hotel room and mixed them with cocaine, and it was the greatest night of my using life. By the end of that trip, though, my tongue was swollen. I could barely talk. I said, “Man, I gotta go back home.” While I was driving, I called my doctor and told him my symptoms. He said, “I want you to find a sign that has an H on it and go there.” I was like, “Well I’m on the 95…” And he said, “Fucking go to the first hospital you see.” So I found an emergency room, and discovered that I was in full ketoacidosis. I had type one diabetes, and I had no idea that my pancreas had stopped producing insulin about six weeks earlier. So my blood sugar at the time would not even register on their machine.

Bainbridge: Was that kicked into gear by drug use?

Crawford: One hundred percent. It was not like juvenile type one, where it’s genetic. It was autoimmune. My body attacked itself, my organs were shutting down, I was toxic. They said I was hours away from probably dying. I was in the ICU for days, but when I got out, I went back to work immediately. I still drank, even. I was in complete denial.

Bainbridge: So let’s go back to your friend calling you…

Crawford: He said, “I need fucking help.” So I went down there, stole him, and brought him to north Florida. I put him up while he kicked the sheets. He kicked heroin and Oxycodone in my house, which is really dangerous, but he did it. I got him a job at the Ritz, but then he started to kinda pull me down. We started using cocaine again, we started partying like we used to.

I was still succeeding at work, though, and I wanted more than what I could do at the Ritz. I wanted five stars, and we could only get four. So I left and went to Charleston, to the Woodlands Inn. It’s no longer there, but it was a Relais & Châteaux property. I was really proud of my work there, but I was walking a really thin line there between succeeding and utter disaster.

Bainbridge: So what happened?

Crawford: This was a year after my diagnosis with diabetes. I had this great job, but secretly, I was basically dying. My brother saw me after a three or four-day bender, I wouldn’t check my blood, and he was very, very upset. He called me and said, “You know, you’re gonna die.” And I was like, “Man, you’re right.” He said, “But you know, you don’t have to.” The next day, I walked into a meeting, terrified. I couldn’t imagine how I could possibly stay sober after a 20-year career of using to the absolute extreme.

Bainbridge: How did you do it?

Crawford: AA. It took me a while to embrace the program. I get why it doesn’t work for some people, but you know, if you really, truly have the desire, like I did… I didn’t want to die. My sous chef at the Woodlands, his brother died from type one diabetes and an all-night bender of cocaine. It’s called a diabetic coma, and you just don’t come out of it. Back in college, a guy died that we partied with ’cause he liked to eat Valiums and drink. He didn’t check his blood before he went to bed, it went low, and he went into a coma and never came out of it. It’s common. You can’t continue to do what I was doing and live through it. And I had too much I wanted to contribute.

I remember not knowing how I would talk with my sommelier about tasting for wine dinners. Eventually, I decided, “Well, you know, if I’m honest, then if it’s an issue, it’s his issue. If I lie, or try to play this off in some way, it’s just not gonna work.” So I went to him and I was like, “I have a problem.” And he’s like, “Oh, I know. And I’m really glad you’re getting help. This is how we can do this.” And so he became my palate. We did magic together without me having to taste.

There was this enormous relief to not be lying anymore, but there was also all this shame I had to deal with. So I just kept going back to AA. I kept showing up, even if it was a terrible meeting.

Bainbridge: You’ve been clean since?

Crawford: Yeah. Never relapsed.

Bainbridge: What else helped you stay the course?

Crawford: Well, it was cooking. I felt like I had something to contribute. I had some people tell me that I was wasting talent that not everyone has. And I felt guilty about that. And you know, I used to create that culture of work hard, play hard. These guys in my kitchen looked up to me. I didn’t view myself as a role model, but I was, and I didn’t accept the responsibility of that. So I wanted to make up for that a little bit.

Bainbridge: Is your former trafficking partner still in your life?

Crawford: Absolutely.

Bainbridge: For a lot of people who go through programs and decide to change their lives, that comes with a bit of cleaning house. Did you not consider leaving the industry, or saying goodbye some of the people you used to party with?

Crawford: I do remember people in AA telling me I might want to abandon some of those people I ran with in Florida, but they’re good human beings. There were some years when I distanced myself from a lot of people, but I came back, because I care about them. A lot of those people that I was involved with in criminal activity or hardcore partying down there, I’m in touch with today. But 95 percent of them are clean.

Bainbridge: Is your wife sober?

Crawford: She is. I was only sober a few months when I met her, and she ran a bar. She didn’t drink like I did, but she kinda had to question, “Is this something I want in my life?” It was her decision; I didn’t force that on her. I’ve seen so many great people not evolve because of alcohol, and I think that’s something my wife admired and saw me doing. She wanted to do the same thing: continue to evolve, with our work, with our children, with just being good humans.

Bainbridge: So why Ben’s Friends? Why create a group just for people in the industry?

Crawford: When I thought back about how terrified I was to walk into that first meeting… I don’t think I would have been nearly as terrified to walk into a meeting full of cooks and bartenders. What about the biggest questions I had, the special challenges related to what we do? “How will I do wine dinners? How will I be able to be around it and not partake? How will I finish the adrenaline rush of a service?” You know, all the questions I had, these old guys in these meetings had no idea what the hell I was talking about. This past Sunday, a young lady who’s a bartender came into Ben’s Friends. She’s like, “This is fucking day one for me, and I don’t know how to do this.” And so, everyone’s like, “This is what I did. This is what you can do.” And it was that way to a degree in AA, but this is just so much more specific. Immediately, you’re surrounded by people who have been through exactly the same challenges.

I do think the steps get you through so much of the deeper issues that addicts need to address, and we don’t shy away from that language. In fact, we encourage people to go to more than one meeting a week. Work the steps.

Big picture, we want to make our industry better by addressing this little dark secret. We have a pretty serious issue here, within our industry, and there are a lot of special challenges. The first step towards change is talking about it, getting it out in the open.

Bainbridge: So tell me about how you run your kitchen. What stuck with you from your time with Michelle Williams, and how do you make restaurant work more sustainable for your employees?

Crawford: We are closed Sundays and Mondays, and we are the closed first week of January and the first week of September. It is very costly for business, — you’re basically giving up $100,000 worth of revenue — but I wanted that for me and for my team. At the end of the day, I believe we’re busier because we do that. The product is better.

I wanted to insure my people, but as a small business, we can’t. We actually would not make it as a business. My insurance this year surpassed the mortgage on a $500,000 home. That’s how much my insurance costs, because I have diabetes and a family. We gotta do something about that.

So what can I do for my staff? I can teach them about having a healthy lifestyle, right? I pulled all these trades. For example, this chiropractor who works on trade was here on Friday, adjusting the whole team in the middle of the restaurant. We have so many posture issues in the industry, and it creates all these problems with headaches and shoulder pain. So he treats us.

And so I’m teaching people to focus on their health. We have a contest here: If you sell the most of a certain bottle of wine, you get an hour massage. In the old days, the reward would have been shots after work. So we can at least teach people how to be healthier. That’s a start.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.