He got sober. Now he wants to help others do the same through a new UCSD program.

2 days ago 1

The irony of his current life path is not lost on former Las Vegas bartender Kyle Medrano.

Basking in the sunshine outside his brother’s San Marcos home, he acknowledged the obvious reversal of expectations.

“I was in the bar business for 30 years out in Las Vegas, so I catered to people’s addictions to make money; now what I’m doing is the exact opposite,” he said. “Now I can use all of that lived experience to help people not make the same mistakes as I have.”

Many peer-reviewed studies have shown that alcohol use among bartenders is significantly greater than it is in the general population. One 2024 paper, which surveyed more than 1,000 bartenders and servers, found that nearly half reported moderate to high rates of problem drinking. And binge drinking was reported at a rate “over 3.5 times more than the average American.”

Over three decades of filling drink orders in the nation’s party capital left Medrano with a need to get sober. Once he did, he said, he felt a calling to help others do the same.