Screaming Silently For Help - Suicide is not the answer

I have read much since the recent tragic death of famed Chef Benoit Violier and I normally do not enter into such subjects, but having been on the front line of chefs depression I feel some people see chefs not like we really are, while the rest of us need to realise that feeding the elite is not the end of the world, and that life consists of greater wonders than just "stars" and accolades.

The death of anyone is tragic, the death of numerous famed chefs in recent times is definately a case of our industry members "Screaming Silently for Help", that our industry needs to address.

Many commentators have hinted that the only reason someone might resort to such tragic means is the stress of seeking perfection, striving for a Michelin Star or the hours worked by obsessed chefs.

Of course that is definitely part of it.

But from one who has suffered his own bouts of depression during a 33 year career I can state that the major problem with chefs, is that we just don’t deal with life like everyone else. 

Unlike many, we suck at life, because we don’t always deal with issues the same way others do. 

We compartmentalize our lives, because that is how we need to run our kitchens. 

If we reacted to everything that happened in the kitchen, our brigades would be a mess, our service would fall apart and nothing would get plated. We compartmentalize and deal with things when we have time, we prioritize and we time to perfection so that the right ingredients hits the plate first and the meals get sent out hot, that functions for thousands get served fresh and by multiple kitchens without the guests ever wondering how and so that delays never occur.

During any given day I’m putting into its own little boxes the issues of staff, their lateness, sick leaves, days off, scheduling and problems with their production, running several kitchens at once, a pastry department, bakery, chocolate room, issuing food to more areas, several restaurants need to be delivered their food on time, quality needs to be checked as does the set up of the food. Functions, banquets and promotions need to be prepared, menus written, ordering completed on time and in advance to have goods arrive in time for the events. On top of this there are the demands of management and the corporation, the issues of modern social media and guests complaints, daily meetings and proposals put forward for new equipment, broken equipment and repairs needed, some urgent, some not .

On top of this I need to find time myself to cook, to assist in production or at least to make the samples of future menus so that others know what to prepare for upcoming affairs. I need to be a fun chef to work with within a team, I need to be strict and afford respect, sometimes I need to give warnings and scold, I need to deal with bosses, immediate and higher as well as unions and their issues, I need to deal with multiple managers thinking they know my job better than I do, Executive Chefs who command the entire brigade, yet have no idea of my own stresses and often no idea of my job as a pastry chef , the time it takes to make perfection and Food and Beverage Directors, F& B managers, supervisors, departmental managers of banqueting, stores and more, all having issues with me and my department of which I need to quell and placate.

Everyone of these items is boxed and dealt with over time.

Remember most of us start this career young. Very young,

We enter kitchens with little more than a desire for great food or simple need for a job.

We learn our management styles on the job, and usually from the chef who first took us under their own wing to train us.

As youths we obsess about our careers because having left school early, this pretty much is all we have to support ourselves.

We depend upon our wits, our own resources of - hands, mind and speed to become something within our career, to be noted people and to be commanders of our realms.

Like cutting fine “brunoise” that we train to chop to perfect cubes, so too our lives become perfect “brunoise” cubes into which we slot our lives, lives we are missing out on, leaving behind and are too busy to deal with.

I started working in the kitchen at 13, I worked my ass off trying to become something, I entered every salon-culinaire, every local competition, even state fairs and regional shows to get noted by local newspapers.

It worked.

I ventured further to win scholarships, trips overseas and eventually big enough prizes that saw time taken off my apprenticeship. This in turn saw me travel internationally to work with Michelin starred chefs and more importantly with a chef striving for his own first Michelin Star.

The pressure to perform, the hours and the precision was tantamount.

For little money in a foreign land I worked stupid hours to gain under his command, a Michelin Star, which meant something to him, and very little to me.

I returned to my homeland at 20 years of age, smarter, stronger and ready to publish my first book and start to process of somewhat stardom. It came quickly thereafter and one successful book turned into more, turned into newspaper columns, television requests and demonstrations.

At 21,  I awoke to a phone call that my best friend from school had killed himself.

My life unraveled quickly thereafter.

Until that moment, that very phone conversation and his terrible act I had not once stopped to think of anything, anyone or any celebration, be it birthday, anniversary or family occasion since I entered the kitchen 8 years earlier.

I was obsessed with food, I lived, ate and breathed my trying to get better, trying to get famous and trying to get to the top of my career and  I forgot the world around me.

Chefs are busiest when the rest of the world wants to celebrate. They all enjoy Christmas - we chefs, work for a week to prepare for it, the following week they celebrate New Years, we work from December 26^th to build up to it.

As a pastry chef this fight continues for another 6 months without as much as a day off to ourselves.  On January 1^st we begin to prepare for Valentines, then Chinese New Year, then Easter, then Mothers Day, then Fathers Day and the list continues.

We finish one celebration by immediately thinking of the next.

During it all, we forget events of our own.

We compartmentalize the issues of relationships, the anger of girlfriends and wives, the needs of family and the pressures of lives outside the kitchen. We box and store our own needs, our health, our families.

We snack during shifts, we dine on junk food because its fastest way to avoid hunger during quick needs of sleep, often we partake of recreational and other drugs to give us the happiness or drive to wake and do it all again. Many of us just resort to coffee by the liter, smoking and other vices to take the edge off.

We box and store our family. We miss their birthdays and garner anger from them for being self absorbed.

We are not.

We are absorbed by the worlds dining needs.

And the desires of our selves and our bosses to come up with more creative and innovative food than others.

We research and think food even when we are not in the kitchen.

Then one day one of our perfect “brunoise” cubes of storage explodes, whether it be our health, our relationships, our family or the death of a friend.

And the world falls apart for us.

We juggle these little compartments of life so well, that when one tips, so too does our entire world implode.

It happened to me at 21 when my friend committed suicide, and took me years to battle back from the precipice of self-destruction.

I walked away from an amazing future, but had to.

I took entire years off work and travelled seeking the answers to my own demons. My family suffered again as I disappeared on journeys into self-discovery and to find the person I was when I was not being a chef.

It occurred again at the death of my mother and the battle this time was harder, because I awoke from my food obsession to realize that with her death, so too was I older, unhealthier and had missed so much of my own life and hers.

I had missed,this time 20 years of birthdays, Christmases, New Years, lovers had come and gone in their dozens and I was alone without the most amazing person in the world to confide in anymore.

Some days it was just too much to handle.

It is not always just the pressure of the kitchen that tips our scales to the side of self-destruction.

It can sometimes be the waking moment that makes us un-juggle everything and realize that having given this career so much, that we have in fact lost everything else.

I have 16 cookbooks to my career, have fed the most famous of people and worked with Kings and Queens, I have travelled, demonstrated to hundreds, and been lauded over in print, yet I can no longer talk to my best friend, I have no mother to which to confide and relationships remain a struggle.

Imagine on top of this all, gaining a third Michelin star only to realize that the stuggle to get there, was nothing like the remaining daily struggle to keep it , and then what might happen if you did not? The pressure is self imposed yes, but it does not make the pressure any less.

I feel so sorry that over recent years we have lost such an incredible number of chefs who felt they had no options.

I can only imagine how many more we have lost that never get reported to the press and fall into obscurity because they are strugglers who never found the fame enough to validate column inches in newspapers and print media. Regular chefs who have suffered self imposed stresses only to slip in their own juggling acts and fall off the cliff that is perfection.

I understand the battle like few do.

I have paid the rent for myself since the age of 16 and having no means of support if I stop work, then I have had no choice but to continue working ever since.

If I have taken time away and walk the earth looking for myself and to tame the demons within, then it is only me who needs to work harder thereafter to save the money for my own future.

A double edged sword of life, where even in times of serenity you feel the stresses of who will pay the bills soon after.

I never battled for the second or third Michelin star, but since the age of 21 , I have been in the position of Executive Pastry Chef with cookbooks to my name.

Stresses came from never being able to really ask for help, as I was suppose to be the guide for others. I have had to learn on the job, how to manage while managing,

I have had to learn for myself new techniques while at the same time teaching techniques to others and I have had to remain strong for my teams when I myself may not have been strong enough for myself.

Cooking is a tough career. 

Chefs are amazing people who hold everything within themselves because we have little choice to do anything else. We need to command a brigade who needs our strength to guide them. We have to act strong even if we are not feeling such inside ourselves. Feeding others is a daily job and today everyone expects value for money and photographable food, otherwise they let the rest of the world know about it without thinking of what we have had to go through to put it before them. Perhaps diners need not know, but it does not diminish the issue for us.

Our strength is that we can compartmentalize and store the needs of ourselves over everything else.

But it is also one reason why we suck at life.

If we did another job, we might be able to take time out, take sick leave or take time to unwind and sort out all the little boxes in our heads. To arrange neatly our relationships with family, friends and lovers, to go to dinner with, to celebrate with and to take time to listen to them.

But then who would feed the rest of the world while we did? Right ?

If you find the pressures of life getting to you, I beg of you all to talk to someone you trust. 

I tried therapists and psychiatrists but nothing helped like a good friend.

Chefs do not open up often, but I beg of you to try.

Outside of our bubbles , life continues and despite what we think, the world will not fall apart nor will they starve if we are not present.

Much of the pressure we feel is self imposed and it is only after we get away from the stoves for a period of time that we can see that.

There is no weakness in taking time out. Chefs do not suck at life, we just deal with it all differently to others.

There is no weakness in needing help or asking for someone to just listen.

Please do, before your own juggling act becomes unbalanced and tumbles into a battle for self survival.

Benoit Violier RIP 1971- 2016