We Recover Loudly – Personal Recovery and Mental Health Stories · Shell Righini

S3 Episode 06 Camille Vidal: Recovering Loudly … Mindful Drinking, Authenticity, and Letting Go of the Mask

·1 hr 5 min·5 clips

Camille says she used to be “the girl that could drink more than the guys” and hosted 100-person parties.

Shell welcomes Camille Vidal to We Recover Loudly. Camille is introduced as a globally recognized bartender and drinks expert turned mindfulness, yoga, and meditation teacher, with awards, mentoring work in the industry, two cocktail books, and twin boys. The conversation goes straight to the pressure to drink. Shell and Camille talk about the years when turning up and drinking with everyone else felt like the expectation, then trace how that turns into a question of professionalism, boundaries, and shame when people stop treating it as harmless. The body stays in frame. They spend real time on the physical side of service work, naming the shaking, jumping, lifting, bending, and constant movement that come with bartending and kitchen jobs, and they push back on the idea that hospitality is only charisma and craft. Cortisol comes up plainly. Shell and Camille talk about the stress workers carry through service and the gap between what their bodies are asked to do and the recovery, fuel, and care they are given. That comparison lands especially hard when the episode contrasts hospitality's late-night drinking culture and quick fixes with the way we think about athletes, preparation, and performance. There is no clean sermon. Instead of sounding like a lecture, the episode stays conversational and lets Camille answer, reflect, and keep going until the point feels obvious: care and professionalism are not opposites, and pretending otherwise has a cost. The talk moves through the everyday stuff too, the work rhythms, the social expectations, the pride in pushing through, and the way an industry can mistake endurance for ease. The tone stays warm. Even when the subject turns heavy, the exchange leaves room for humour, recognition, and the kind of candour that comes from naming the awkward part out loud. It ends on honesty. We Recover Loudly leaves Camille's story as both a personal recovery conversation and an industry snapshot, showing how mindful drinking becomes more meaningful when it is set against the daily habits of a culture built around excess.

As heard by us

A candid recovery conversation about mindful drinking, shame, and hospitality's pressure to keep up.

Camille Vidal's conversation keeps its focus on recovery, mindful drinking, shame, and the awkward line between being in service and being expected to drink. Shell presents it as an unfiltered recovery space, and that fits.

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Why you'd press play

For when you want a plainspoken recovery conversation that gets into mindful drinking, shame, and the pressure of bar life.

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