Photo: Peter Frank Edwards/Redux 
 
 Over the holiday weekend, the Times quietly published a powerful story on chef Sean Brock (Husk, McCrady’s, and Minero) and his surprising struggle with alcoholism. After friends intervened, he quietly attended rehab for six weeks in Arizona and is now sober. 
 
 Last year, Daniel Patterson publicized his experience with depression and antidepressants, and Mike Solomonov previously opened up to the Times about his drug addiction. Chefs like Seamus Mullen and George Mendes have broadcast the benefits of their healthier diets. This is a stark shift away from the hard-partying, workaholic chef archetype. 
 
 Brock, notably, is famous for his love of bourbon, and he says he actually sold his entire vintage collection. (The value was high enough that he could buy himself a 1969 Plymouth Road Runner.) Now, Brock aims to help others in the restaurant industry who are struggling with addiction and mental-health issues. “I have this opportunity in front of me,” he says. “If I can inspire people to take better care of themselves in this industry, that will be my greatest contribution.” Judging by the outpouring of support on Twitter, he’s already succeeding: 
 
 It matters when Jay-Z mentions his therapist and Sean Brock talks about rehab. It chips away at the stigma, word by word. — Kat Kinsman (@kittenwithawhip) July 4, 2017 
 
 Thank you @hseanbrock for inspiring people with your food, but more then that, thank you for this....https://t.co/c9hDG2YlhU — Gavin Kaysen (@gavinkaysen) July 3, 2017 
 
 This is a big deal... kudos to @hseanbrock for sharing. https://t.co/vRFe465trC — marcvetri (@marcvetri) July 4, 2017 
 
 Keep up the fight @hseanbrock As a person also in the industry, it's the nature of the beast. Trying to clean up myself. https://t.co/gIgykwyvOP — Tyler Brown (@tylerobrown) July 5, 2017 ||||| Chef Matt McCallister is one year and two weeks sober, so the story that appeared in Monday’s New York Times struck a chord. The article, entitled “Chef Sean Brock Puts Down the Bourbon and Begins a New Quest,” profiles Charleston chef Sean Brock’s tackling of a drinking problem that had gone unaddressed until he checked into rehab earlier this year. 
 
 Severson’s article gets at something vitally important but often overlooked, the elements of restaurant work too seldom discussed: addiction, and its shadow-notion of self-care. Brock’s admission itself is courageous. 
 
 “It’s a lot to reflect on,” McCallister says. “It’s great that somebody of his caliber is talking about these things. That it got a full spread in The New York Times, that’s huge.” 
 
 The restaurant industry can be grueling: the pressure and grind, heat and sheer physical toll, the hours spent toiling in a kitchen, the absences from family. 
 
 Brock details the problems that fueled his escape into drinking, the spiraling addiction that got in the way of his cooking. Brock’s meteoric rise began in 2008 when he opened McCrady’s, championing Southern foodways and local sourcing. He won a James Beard award for Best Chef Southeast and has been nominated for Rising Star and Outstanding Chef. His restaurant Husk was named Bon Appetit magazine’s Best New Restaurant in America in 2011, and his cookbook Heritage is a New York Times Bestseller and won a Beard award. To say Brock is a superstar celebrity chef is not an overstatement. And yet, as Kim Severson writes in her profile, “In some circles, his name had become a verb. After a long stretch on the line, one cook might look at another and say, ‘Let’s get Brocked.’” 
 
 McCallister would never use the stresses of the kitchen as an excuse. “I don’t make excuses for anything we do,” he says. But, as with doctors, it’s something “that hits our industry on a large scale,” he says. “Any industry that has high-level stress.” 
 
 And, of Brock’s story, he says, “It’s a story that definitely hits home.” 
 
 McCallister’s own story includes an eight-year struggle with heroin addiction, a dark time over a decade ago that preceded his culinary career. Cooking, in some ways, saved him. “It gave me something I was passionate about,” he says. “It consumed me, almost to the point of being its own addiction—which is a much healthier addiction than sticking a needle in my arm.” But while he hasn’t touched drugs in years, the specter of alcohol became coping mechanism and refuge. “Drinking definitely cut the edge.” 
 
 And that’s where Brock’s story parallels McCallister’s. “For a small section,” McCallister says, “I felt like I was reading about me.” A year ago, on his birthday, June 20, McCallister was hosting a guest chef dinner with a James Beard award-winning chef from Boston, and he was, he says, black-out drunk. 
 
 “After that episode of mine, my girlfriend at the time and now my wife, and [close friend] Robert Lyford [of Patina Green] were conspiring an intervention. I landed back here [after a trip]. I walked in. There was my old drug counselor from rehab 12 years ago.” 
 
 The period since his one-month stint in rehab has been one of total change, a reorientation that goes to the very core of who he is. “I’ve never felt prouder of what I’m doing,” he says. “Quality of life is an important thing to me. I’m spending time with my son and my daughter and my wife. I love working. I love the stress. I love the intensity. I enjoy chaos. But I have to manage it and not let it get out of control. I need some of that in my life. But I also need to make sure I’m taking care of myself. It just comes down to taking care of yourself. Which isn’t drinking a fifth of vodka or a fifth of gin a day.” 
 
 The highly driven chef also tries to be a role model. “How am I showing up to my cooks?” he asks himself. That means not getting livid at the staff at the end of service. It means being mindful of their levels of stress. Chefs with Issues, a site Severson references in her article, is one McCallister is familiar with; he champions its notions of community and solidarity. Part of the profession, to him, now means extending that circle. 
 
 “I’ll drop what I’m doing and talk with someone if they need to talk,” he says. 
 
 At 36, McCallister says he feels stronger and has more energy than he ever has. He quit smoking. But he’s no preacher of sobriety—or of any one particular doctrine. 
 
 “If you’re sober and you’re happy and you’re doing what you love, then more power to you,” he says. “If you’re a partier and it’s working for you, then more power to you. It wasn’t working for me.” ||||| “In a short period of time, he’s gone from a young guy from a little town in Virginia to a point where he can’t walk down the street in Charleston or New York without someone identifying him,” he said. “That’s a blessing and a burden, and requires you to always be on point. With that comes addiction.” 
 
 Mr. Brock’s rebirth, as he calls it, could help change an industry that has always demanded too much. 
 
 Before he returned to Nashville in March, he made sure that Ms. Noe had moved his precious bourbon collection to the garage. There was so much that she had to spread the work out over a week, being careful not to damage bottles that could command thousands of dollars apiece. 
 
 Mr. Brock sold them all and used some of the cash to buy a black 1969 Plymouth Road Runner on eBay. “I’ve wanted that car since I was a little kid,” he said. “My garage used to be full of bourbon. Now there’s my childhood obsession.” 
 
 No one around him doubts that there are tests to come even though the double vision is at bay, he is taking less medicine, and his head is clear. Though he has slowed down, the projects are stacking up. In coming months, he and Mr. Howard plan to open Husks in Greenville, S.C., and Savannah, Ga. A major television project is in the works. 
 
 Mr. Brock is an official ambassador for the Myasthenia Gravis Foundation and is planning a series of fund-raising dinners with chefs who have won Michelin stars. He has joined the board of the Heirloom Foundation, which aims to help restaurant workers with mental health issues. 
 
 Mostly he plans to enjoy his freedom. 
 
 “Surrendering,” he said, “is the greatest feeling on the face of the planet.” 
 
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– Celebrity chef Sean Brock’s post-work partying benders were so notorious that colleagues began using his surname as slang—to "get Brocked"—for boozing it up after a long shift. But industry stars are applauding the chef’s open dialogue about addiction following a candid New York Times profile on his life after rehab. Hours after an intervention in January, the chef, as famous for his bourbon collection as his haute Southern culinary stylings at his Husk eateries in Nashville and Charleston, SC, was on a plane to Arizona. He spent six weeks in rehab at the Meadows, known for treating the likes of Tiger Woods and Michael Phelps. In therapy he began to unwind the complicated tangle that the autoimmune disease affecting his sight wrought on his life and delve into past traumas that left him emotionally suspended. “The only emotion I knew was anger,” he told the Times. “I was miserable and angry at the world.” Brock was diagnosed with PTSD, and has since exchanged his stash of high-end bourbon worth thousands for meditation, continued therapy, and healthy eating. Per Grub Street, luminaries in the restaurant world are applauding Brock for his openness on mental health, which he hopes will inspire people in an industry that the Health and Human Services department ranked highest in substance abuse. Food journalist and creator of the site Chefs with Issues Kat Kinsman tweeted, "It matters when Jay-Z mentions his therapist and Sean Brock talks about rehab. It chips away at the stigma, word by word." And chef Matt McCallister told D Magazine that though he doesn’t use the industry as an excuse for his own addictions, it’s a story that “definitely hits home.”