Fifteen minutes into my conversation with bartender Evan Zimmerman, I realize he isn't going to eat half of the tomato focaccia square I purchased at Ellē in Washington, D.C., so I slide the plate back toward me and listen to him while I finish the rest. He can’t eat because his hands are occupied, mimicking how he might pulverize salted peanuts and use them to season the creamy head of nitrogen-charged Coca-Cola.

Zimmerman will serve the drink he’s describing, or something like it, at a highly anticipated non-alcoholic-cocktail-paired dinner in Portland this weekend, alongside a roster of some of the most well-regarded chefs in the country. (All 72 tickets for the dinner were purchased within two minutes of going on sale, at a price of $225 each.) Sean Brock, Gregory Gourdet, Gabriel Rucker, Michael Solomonov, and Andrew Zimmern will each prepare a course, and Zimmerman will create a non-alcoholic cocktail to match.

The chefs share high achievements: altogether over a dozen restaurants, 13 James Beard awards, three Top Chef appearances (including one competition finalist), a hugely popular food and travel show, and multiple cookbooks. They also all share a lifestyle: sobriety.

Brock, whose name was once used as a verb by line cooks in need of a few beers post-shift (“Let’s get Brocked”), now starts his day with a meditation session followed by a bowl of berries with macadamia milk. Gourdet, who hit bottom freebasing cocaine for three days with no sleep, runs marathons and maintains a strict gluten- and dairy-free diet. When I visit Solomonov, a former crack addict, at his restaurant Zahav in Philadelphia, he asks if I brought running shoes and tells me to meet him at 8:30 the next morning. We take a brisk walk before his all-staff meeting.

These are, by all accounts, changed men. And with the upcoming dinner, part of the Feast Portland food festival, they’re joining forces for the first time.

Rucker, the Portland-based chef and owner of Le Pigeon and Little Bird Bistro and organizer of the dinner, wants to challenge assumptions about what the life of a successful chef looks like. “A lot of young cooks look up to chefs in the press, and the common stigma is, 'I need to be a badass, I need to be able to drink and hold my liquor and then work through the hangover.”

Rucker is lucky: He maintained a marriage and a business through years of using alcohol to come down and cocaine to stay up, and his bottom—the term used to refer to an addict's lowest point—was relatively high. One morning, after an evening spent passed out on the couch at home when he was supposed to be dining with his family and neighbors, he decided it was time to make a change. He called his father, who is sober, and asked to go to an AA meeting with him. “He said, ‘I'll take you down the path with me, but you don't get to go back now.’ And I haven't gone back.” Five years into his sobriety, Rucker goes goes to AA once a week, talks to his sponsor every day, and hits the gym most mornings.

“My oldest son is seven, and he doesn't remember me drinking,” says Rucker. “He's not gonna grow up remembering me as a drinking dad.”

According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the highest rates of illicit drug use are found in the accommodations and food services industry, and workers in that industry have the highest rates of substance use disorder: 16.9 percent compared to 9.5 percent on average across other industries. The highest rates of heavy alcohol use are in the mining and construction industries, with accommodations and food services coming in third.

"How do you even gauge what's appropriate when partying is part of the culture of your business?” says Solomonov.

Of course, substance abuse and mental health are linked. Last year, Mental Health America (MHA) published the results of its Work Health Survey across 19 industries in the United States. The healthcare, financial services, and the non-profit industries scored in the top 10 percent; manufacturing, retail, and food and beverage scored in the bottom 10 percent.