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It took me more than half my life to realise I was in pain - 20 years, 20 years from 35 lived and truth told it wasn’t even really me that realised it or figured it out. I couldn’t see past the pain long enough to realise that the pain was a problem. I was in such constant pain that I couldn’t even recognise that I was in pain.
No. I didn’t figure it out, not fully. It was a girlfriend. Another one stupid enough to date a chef, or kind enough I guess, to date a chef. She pointed out that not everyone feels the way that I felt in my body. The one thing I had never really realised, something I had never understood was that people were not in pain every day. That people did not wake up every morning in pain, go to sleep in pain, or wake up in the middle of the night in pain. It had been such a consistent threshold of pain that had been normalised over time that I didn’t event realise it was possible to not be in pain. In my mind, everyone experienced what I experienced, they just dealt with it better.
My pain ran from the top of my neck into my lower back and down into my left foot. A constant ache that would at times be sharp and shocking. However, for the most part it just felt like there was a tiny little balloon at those three points - and one behind my left leg just above my knee - that needed popping. No amount of stretching or massage could get rid of it. It was as if someone needed to get a needle and just burst the pressure and everything would be ok. At its best I could get through the day and still run and work. At its worst I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t talk, I couldn’t think straight.
Pain can come in many different forms. It can sit in your body, it can sit in your mind, it can build up over time and crack and bleed you out at the edges. It can make it impossible to think straight or set goals or move from moment to moment aware of what was actually happening. It forces you to numb. Numb with work, numb with alcohol, numb with cigarettes or drugs or sex. Anything to excuse it, to justify it, to normalise it. When you work 80 hours a week on your feet of course the body will be tired. Of course your thoughts don’t move as quickly as they should, of course getting out of bed on your day off feels impossible. It is as simple as living. Life exists with it and within it and without - well then something is wrong. Yet for me, I was never without it. So I built a framework within my life to justify it. Work too much, drink too much, sleep too little, run too much, smoke too much. My back and legs were always sore because of work and when I wasn’t working my back and legs were always sore because of running and when I wasn’t running my back and legs were always sore because of lack of sleep and when I was sleeping my back and legs were always sore because I was drinking too much and my bed wasn’t good enough…the list goes on and on. The pain builds and builds. Until you break.
—
Musculoskeletal pain among chefs is nothing new. A quick google will bring up hundreds of academic articles relating to the issue. While there are many factors across the industry that may be considered beyond the capacity to control1 there is one major takeaway from the conclusions of every article I stuck my nose into
‘Chefs are more likely to develop musculoskeletal symptoms including pain as a result of increased physical stress stress on their bodies during their work. Specifically, in the lower back and knee area2.’ -
Not surprising at all. When you think about the hours, the physicality of the work, the monotony of prep, the heat, the stress, the fast moments without physical consideration. Add to that the exhaustion and often times the chemical and liquid abuse - bodies break down. There is no choice within it. There is even a term coined ‘chefs foot,’ a term encompassing all foot injuries that might be endured by chefs ranging including any pain that may be due to stress. More often than not chefs that suffer from chefs foot end up suffering very similar things, or at least the pain they suffer tends to be defined under the umbrella definition as Hallux Rigidus.
Hallux Rigidus is commonly referred to as a ‘stiff big toe’ and arises as a result of the stiffening of the joint at the base of the big toe. It is arthritis. It is a form of arthritis that shouldn’t come about until you are old. Really old. Yet among chefs it is common place by the time they hit 30. The beautiful thing about Hallux Rigidus is that it doesn’t actually do that much to you. It just makes it painful to walk. Something inconsequential, I suppose…
What normally happens is that you start by getting some pain in the joint. The flattening of the foot becomes harder. The pain becomes deeper and harder to penetrate with any sort of stretching or foot bath3. The next stage is a swelling around the joint of the big toe. If you choose not to wear loose shoes you will be very quickly after that joint starts to swell. Then come the calluses that are more likely to be declare bunions. It is a cute thing, if you are into feet and toes and ankles and swollen bits then I recommend finding a chef. Find one as soon as you can. They are - at least in Australia - somewhat of a dying bread4.
And then there are the stress related issues- the headaches, the muscle tension, the tight shoulders, the stiff neck, the tight jaw, the hair loss, the ear pain, the dizziness, the vomiting, the twisted stomach and the dramatically reduced sex drive. This is all pain. When you don’t have an appetite and have to force food into yourself, it is painful. When you wake up in the middle of the night having almost bitten your tongue off while grinding your teeth down, it is painful, when you wash your hair in the shower and it starts to fall out into your hands, it is painful. When you stand up from the service fridge and have to catch yourself on the bench and the combination of headsman and fatigue makes your knees buckle it is painful and when you collapse into bed every bit of your body aching from toe to tooth, it is painful.
Stress can make pain chronic and beyond that chronic pain can increase your stress levels. And while they have a complex relationship, stealing from Paul to pay John in an effort to justify each of them, there is no doubt that the combination of the two lead to depression and anxiety5. How can you go to work knowing that you will be in pain that will entirely consume you? How do you go to sleep knowing you will wake up in pain anticipating the pain from work that will entirely consume you? How do you get out? How to you break the cycle? How do you ask for help?
Depression is rampant among chefs. A paper published in 2022 studying Australian chefs and hospitality workers from 2006-2017 concluded that suicide rates were 51% higher than other non hospitality industries. This may not be considered such a problem to most people, however the hospitality industry employs 4% of working Australians6. This is a much bigger conversation than just statstistics. It is important to remember though that pain doesn't always manifest as the physcal. It can be a silent, insidious destructive force that can pull people apart from the inside out. Before even there is the chance to ask for help, somerthing breaks. Sadly, this is not a controversial statement, too many friends have been lost as a result of it. Too many friends had no way to ask for help. No langauge to ask for help.
I didn’t get the chance to ask for help. The cycle was broken because I broke. Subconsciously, I was asking to break. I was praying for things to break me. I just didn’t speak the language of the prayers yet.
Being smart and responsible, I spent the night in on NYE 2019. I was to be back in the kitchen a few days later so I figured a night with a few spliffs and some pizza and some music was just what was needed. Rest. In a way. Rest, in the only form I knew.
Dancing around to Hamilton7 my back went. Not just a little but a lot. I smoked some more to reduce the pain, drank more beer to reduce the pain, and ordered extra pizza, to reduce the pain.
I thought it would be ok but lifting a light box for a friend the next day who was moving house it really went. White hot pain shooting through my skull and I was sobbing on the road trying to pull myself up to lean against the car. I don’t think I’ve ever spat the works fuck or oh god in the same sentence but they looped at the realisation that I could not move. I could not walk. I could barely breathe. It was a hard stop. My words a defiant and terrified prayer for help.
I drove myself home. Shuffled upstairs and smoked more and drank more and ate more. It was the only fix I had8. It didn’t work9.
The next day after falling off the toilet, naked, dirty and crying for help I asked a friend to cycle to the doctor and pick up the diazepam they were offering. Three days worth. Relief. Back to work on day two. On day three the drugs had offered me so much relief from pain that I was finally able to understand how much pain I had been in for so long. How lost and broken and confused I was by it. How scared I was of it. I got home at 3am on Saturday night and for the first time in memory realised I was not in pain. My body was free from it. It offered me such relief that I burst into tears, sobbing on the street in East London. The grief of relief pouring out of my body in the middle of the street in De Beauvoir.
Finally, there was room for it to be felt.
There wasn’t just me not dealing with something that everyone dealt with day to day. It wasn’t overexercising, or under stretching, or not sleeping enough, or drinking too much or not being good enough simply to get out of bed to deal with the day alongside the throbbing ache that ran down my legs and sat like a lead balloon in my back. Suddenly the constant thought at the back of my skull in demand of numbing day in, day out wasn’t there.
Yet only after describing this and having another opinion on it was I able to understand that I had been in pain, chronically, up until this point for almost 20 years. It wasn’t just in my imagination, it wasn’t something I could ignore.
Most people are not in pain all the time. I had no idea until recently. I had no idea because the industry encourages it. It glorifies it and it celebrates it.
Do not. If you are in pain. Ask for help. Get help. Talk. There is too much of life to live and it is far too short a life to be living it in pain.
I am still in pain. It is a daily fight. But knowing that I am in pain means I can understand it and deal with it and work on it. It means it cannot be ignored and that is a wonderfully positive step forward. A step towards a future without it.
A scientific control is an experiment or observation designed to minimise the effects of variables other than the independent variable. This increases the reliability of the results, often through a comparison between control measurements and the other measurements - for those unaware…
Yeah. Chefs foot bath. At least the smart ones do. Don’t believe me? You are welcome to view my collection of salts and ointments.
Although that is a conversation for another time. Covid caused a whole lot of trouble across many industries but what it did to hospitality was allow chefs to realise that being in pain all the time was f-u-c-k-e-d. So they quit. Became accountants of coders or something…
This isn’t even controversial.
Let’s put that into numbers - at least 1 million people have a 51% higher rate of depressive tendencies leading to suicide and suicidal ideation.
Because it is absolutely outstanding.
This isn’t necessarily naivety. It is more a determined ignorance. If you choose for it to not be bad, it can’t be bad so you may as well eat and drink and smoke and get on with life. If it is a choice, an active choice - it can only be good. Or such was the theoretical justification for a lot of my behaviour. In many ways the theoretical justification for why I was a restaurateur at all…
Absolutely no-one is surprised by that.
Daniel has a Masters in Food Culture from The University of Gastronomic Science in Pollenzo, Italy. He is a writer, a chef, and a recovering restaurateur.
Great article! For someone who has worked in hospitality for many years on my feet and for long hours, I can feel your pain. Wondering how you went recovering after the back flare up and what went in to feeling better?