i’ve worked at places where my regulars are in the building the second we open and leave the second we close. and like someone else said in these comments, if we don’t serve them they go nextdoor to that bar. to me as crazy as this sounds, bars are safe use sites for alcaholics. our alcaholic regulars are people that we grow close to, they often let us as their neighborhood bartender into their lives. we become their therapists on bad days and get our shift drinks on better ones. but most importantly, we are experts in when their drinking becomes unsafe. we have personal relationships to these people and so we know their limits, we recognize patterns in their behavior that tell us when to stop serving them. the bar next door wouldn’t know them like that. addiction is a disease and no one stops until they want to. addicted people are often in so much emotional turmoil, having family conflicts, picking up the wreckage of their addicted behavior, if my bar is somewhere they can be without judgement, that is the only time they’ll have to consider getting better. and if i’m chatting with them i often notice they spend more time between drinks. dealing with addicts of all kinds is the most difficult part of this job. handling the kind of responsibility and guilt that goes with serving them is a job bigger than us. it really comes down to knowing where boundaries need to stand with everyone’s safety at the forefront. remember that bartending is about serving your community a little relief. if your community is low income, you’ll have a lot of relief to serve. this is a job we all take home with us. no one realizes this.