CHAMBERSBURG, Pa. — A man who received a second chance at life is reaching back out to help others.
“I literally was a dead flower, all but dead, and brought back for whatever reason and bloomed now,” said Chuck Dutrow, the founder and owner of Kindred Spirits Alcohol-Free Bar in Chambersburg, Franklin County.
Dutrow started drinking around 13 years old and over the years, depression crept in, making the habit spiral out of control.
He says he quit several times and then went back to drinking, making him ultimately feel trapped.
“I literally was drunk for an entire year,” said Dutrow.
He says he was in the hospital several times for binge drinking and a doctor diagnosed him with end-stage liver disease.
“He told me in the hospital, if you don’t change, you are looking at three to six months max,” said Dutrow. “I said, 'Well, how do I fix this?' He said, 'I don’t know that you can fix it.'”
That was the moment Dutrow says he knew he had to make a change. By eating clean, working out and being sober for almost eight years, he says now his liver has completely recovered.
“I think I’m probably healthier now than I’ve been for many, many, many years,” said Dutrow.
Despite the change in his lifestyle, Dutrow said that he still had a desire for the taste of alcohol. So, he found non-alcoholic drinks that he says taste very similar.
Excited about the find, he created a website called Zero Proof Market to promote non-alcoholic beverages. Soon after, he made plans to open an alcohol-free bar.
At Kindred Spirits Alcohol-Free Bar, there are a variety of drink and food options, in a county that Dutrow says has few social opportunities without alcohol.
“If one person comes in here in the shape I was in and finds any kind of peace, anything that’s going to help him or her, I feel like this is a success,” said Dutrow.
The bar will open its doors on August 2, with plans to open locations across central Pennsylvania in the coming years.