Q&A with Nikki Graziano

Nikki Graziano almost drank herself to death. At 33 she had a life-saving liver transplant and is now the owner of Bar Palmina, a thriving zero-proof cocktail bar in Philadelphia.

This transcript has been edited for clarity and length.

DRY RUN: Can you walk us through your story?

Nikki Graziano: I was living in New York where excessively drinking is very normalized. I was working in advertising and photography, doing retouching, so a high-stress, fast-paced life where we would always party hard after shoots. I never had a gauge on what was a normal or moderated way of drinking. Then I moved from New York to Philadelphia in 2020.

DRY RUN: So right at peak COVID.

NG: Yeah, my lease started in April of 2020. So I got here and for two years I didn't know where the grocery store was. The idea was to live a slower life. But as soon as I got here, the world shut down and when the world shuts down, there's no photoshoots. So like many other people, I didn't have anything to do.

In hindsight, I was physically addicted to alcohol without realizing it. With nothing else to do all day, there’s a depression that comes, and with forced isolation like that, I ended up in a really bad place and just drinking constantly, drinking all day every day.

DRY RUN: What were you drinking?

NG: Just bourbon. This was drinking in excess and alone, which, a lot of people will tell you that's the first sign of a problem. But I thought, well, everyone's alone right now. We're all drinking alone together, you know, drinking on Zoom and stuff. It was very normalized again.

I fell into a really bad place and two years had gone by, and all of a sudden I was not feeling well. At this point I knew what I was doing to myself. I knew I had an active addiction, but I was so depressed and I essentially just said, this is how I go. Like, I'm out. I knew what I was doing to myself, I knew I was killing myself and I didn't have insurance. I didn't see a way out at all.

DRY RUN: And by this point you were feeling the physical signs of it?

NG: Yeah, I wasn't enjoying a drink. I was drinking to keep the withdrawal at bay. Bourbon felt like my medication I needed to take just so I could go on with my day.

DRY RUN: Can you quantify how much you were drinking?

NG: Probably two-thirds of one of those giant bottles of Bulleit a day (approx. 33 ounces).

DRY RUN: So first thing in the morning, you'd wake up and start drinking bourbon?

NG: In the middle of the night I would wake up with withdrawal and go downstairs and drink some whiskey and go back to bed, just like taking medicine. I knew that I was going to have to get a really good detox and at that point I knew I financially couldn’t pay for that. And I'm also feeling crazy alone because I'm doing this to myself and nobody’s reaching out to me because no one can see me.

DRY RUN: Did anyone have any idea of the dire straits that you were in?

NG: Yeah, my now husband at the time could see what was happening and he went out of his way to get me on his insurance. We filled out all the domestic partnership paperwork and we were really lucky that his job at the time let me be on his insurance. And then he said, okay, you have insurance, you have to do something, this is getting bad.

I fought it for a while, and then he went on a work trip, and I texted my friend that I was coughing up blood. And she brought me to the ER, and I took a bottle of whiskey with me in a thermos. I changed into a gown, peed in a cup and my pee was like the color of iced tea and that's all I remember.

I woke up in the hospital in a terrible condition. I was on life support for about a week and a half. I was intubated, it was the closest thing you can get to a coma.

DRY RUN: This is when you find out you have end stage liver failure?

NG: It was my liver and my kidneys had gone too. So they put me on the transplant list and it's unfortunate the way it works, but the younger you are, essentially the longer the organ can live, the higher you are prioritized.

DRY RUN: And how old were you at this point?

NG: 33.

DRY RUN: So you are a young person to be on the liver transplant list.

NG: Yeah. My age combined with the severity of my condition made my case a very high priority. But even then, it's still kind of—I'm not religious—but it's a miracle, there's no other word for it, that I got a transplant within a week.

DRY RUN: Nikki, I can hear in your voice how intense this experience was for you. Have you felt like you’ve fully processed it? Do you tell this story often?

NG: I do tell this story often. But I don't think I have fully processed it.

As soon as I was mobile again, I was pretty much go, go, go. I felt like I had to make up for the years I lost. I'm very hardworking. I very much like working. I'm very independent. I dove into work and getting things done. I got a puppy as soon as I could walk.

DRY RUN: Did you feel like you needed to mentally recover from the addiction as well? Have you done that?

NG: I'm very lucky that I haven't had any cravings. I don't say this often, but I almost feel like a fraud addict because I don't struggle with it. My sobriety was pretty violent, I didn't have to fight my way through it to achieve it. I just had to wake up and put my life back together.

DRY RUN: It was the physical addiction more than the ritualistic or societal?

NG: I struggle with social anxiety. So obviously, alcohol is a very easy thing to just lean on. And I was a happy drunk. When I was drinking socially with my friends I became what I saw as a nicer, happier, funnier version of me. I'm sure that's delusion, but in my mind alcohol got rid of that shy kid that I was. I also really believed that drinking made me more creative, which is just wild to think about. It was so tied to my self worth, I thought ‘I'm actually me when I drink.’

DRY RUN: And now you've got this flourishing, zero proof cocktail bar that's incredible. Tell us how that started.

NG: After I recovered, I would go out to bars and I had been making myself drinks at home, playing with some of the NA spirits when they were first coming out. I thought I’d find a bartender who knew what they were doing with these things, but I didn’t. For sober people that want to go out, there didn’t seem to be good options. I do really like club soda and Topo Chico, but after the third one at a bar, my stomach hurts.

DRY RUN: That's the genesis of all great businesses, finding that hole in the market.

NG: While you are recovering from an organ transplant, you're spending a lot of time doing nothing and resting. There's a lot, there’s so much resting. I'd never rested before in my life. So not being able to really walk that much, you watch a lot of TV and you know what's on all the time? Shark Tank.

So I started doing pop-ups for a bit and then raised the money, did the paperwork, found a place, and opened Bar Palmina in August.

DRY RUN: Your husband sounds like an amazing man and this is, in a way, one of the great love stories. It's reminding us of When a Man Loves a Woman. He really fought for you and saved your life. When did you decide to marry him?

NG: We just got married last month. Thank you. It was kind of a rush, we just had some pizza, we put the dogs in bow ties, we got married at the bar, did paperwork in front of our friends, and it was great.

DRY RUN: The bar is so perfectly curated, delicious and it’s really culinary too, I know that you're sourcing exotic ingredients, the best of the best and really treating it as a master craft and as an artist would. Can you tell us a little bit about your process and the sourcing and what makes a zero proof cocktail special and not just a sugar bomb?

NG: My education is photography and I also minored in mathematics. So I really enjoy the creative process and the scientific process. Learning how to problem solve is a very useful skill no matter what you're working on. And the general problem that we see in non-alcoholic is stuff is either watered down or it's too sweet. Alcohol and sugar will take on flavor, which is why people usually just resort to sugar. You need a lot of sugar to hold a lot of flavor and that ends up being too sweet. And the way I thought about it was: How does my grandmother make a sauce?

DRY RUN: She’s the namesake of your bar.

NG: Yes my Italian grandma. She makes sauce every Sunday. I started thinking about how sauces stay together, emulsifiers, the food science of it, oils, fats, textures, mouthfeel, acidity. I’ve taught myself techniques and found the right ratios and I try to keep everything pretty seasonal. I think it's important to support local farmers as well, which is my way of getting to know Philadelphia.

DRY RUN: If you could distill your expertise into what makes a non-alcoholic beverage good and a real replacement for a cocktail, what is it?

NG: I think restraint is the one ingredient people are missing. There's a lot of weird lemonade out there.

DRY RUN: Is there anything that you wish that other people knew about drinking, being on the other side of your harrowing experience?

NG: I knew drinking was doing damage, but I didn't think it was possible to ruin your liver at 33. Also, I didn't know that the way that men and women metabolize alcohol is so different. And it really affects women much more negatively.

DRY RUN: Did you have an example when you were getting sober, you said there was that one year that you didn't go out, but did you participate in a program or did you have an example of what healthy living and sobriety looked like?

NG: I did not go to a program. They actually were really trying to push it on me. They were basically making me promise to go to AA if I got a liver transplant. And I was very much like, I will go to all of the therapy within this hospital, with whatever doctor, however many times a week you would like me to go, but I'm not going to join AA. I have heard horror stories about a lot of things regarding women in AA. It's like notoriously a terrible match, as well as I'm not religious, so it wasn't a good fit for me.

DRY RUN: Well, it sounds like you're doing a lot for the cause of liver health in the way that you're living your life now and for creating a space for people to enjoy a healthy alternative to alcohol.

NG: Yes and I was finding that sober people didn’t go out because they didn’t drink and I was wondering, ‘Why can't you go out? Why can't we just be social?’ And in the same way that people who have gone to AA, they really appreciate the community, right? So why can't we build a community where there's just no drinking? Also, bars are cool. Bars are fun. I like going to bars.

DRY RUN: It's another way to fight the loneliness epidemic too, by creating a space for people to meet and connect.

NG: I think it's a great social benefit of living in a city and we can have that without alcohol in the equation.

Bar Palmina in Philadelphia

All photos by Jill Guyette or via Nikki Graziano or Bar Palmina.