Halfway Houses for Alcoholics

A bootcamp approach for middle-class patients

Wealthy alcoholics have spas that offer tennis, maid service--and fees of $10,000 or more a month. Poor tipplers get help through Medicaid or at free faculties run by the Salvation Army. But where is the middle-class sufferer to go? Though college-educated professionals or managerial people account for a sizable portion of the nation's estimated 10 million alcoholics, white-collar drinkers traditionally have had to fight their addiction while coping with everyday life, a daunting task even with the aid of groups like Alcoholics Anonymous.

More and more company health programs cover alcohol and drug detoxification programs. There are now scores of post-detox rehabilitation programs as well, but they can still be ruinously expensive. One that aims to break a patient's habit but not his bankbook is Georgia's Metro Atlanta Recovery Residences Inc., or MARRinc. Its fee: $125 a week. Begun in 1975 by Donnie D. Brown, then a rehabilitation counselor and therapist at the Georgia Mental Health Institute, the program runs seven Atlanta-area halfway homes for detoxed drinkers and drug addicts who are not yet ready to return to normal living. The residents are doctors, lawyers, ministers, professors, nurses, office managers.

MARRinc builds on techniques used in other programs but adds twists of its own. The residences are not isolated but located in neighborhoods. MARRinc looks for houses or apartments that can accommodate only five or so people. Explains Brown: "The limit is how many people can get around the dining-room table. The number is big enough to stir up a lot of different attitudes. It is also small enough to keep people from burying their feelings."

There are no frills, a bootcamp approach shared with the Navy's Alcohol Rehabilitation Service in Long Beach, Calif., which has treated Betty Ford and Billy Carter. Residents at Long Beach make beds and scrub toilets, but at MARRinc they are also expected to shop for groceries, cook and tend the yard. There are no live-in housekeepers. Says Ann Martin, the Atlanta Junior League's representative on MARRinc's executive board: "A number of interim care facilities have somebody to do everything for you but attend the therapy groups."

Classes and meetings occupy residents' free time. Formal therapy sessions, held three evenings a week by visiting counselors, allow residents to discuss problems. At one typical meeting, a resident being scolded for failing to clean a sticky kitchen floor tried to change the subject, prompting a housemate to snap: "I think this is the way you treat your wife when she confronts you. No wonder you drive her crazy." Notes Martin: "It forced the shirker to realize he doesn't face issues squarely."

Most residents rejoin the outside world after three months. But some stay as long as six months. The decision to leave is made jointly by the resident, his housemates and MARRinc's staff. Expulsion is automatic if a resident breaks the rule against using drugs or alcohol. But MARRinc does not intend to write these backsliders off forever. Says Martin: "Our goal is to open a house for people who have slipped."

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