Project Houses Latinas Trying to Overcome Alcoholism

For nearly half her life, Rosa, a petite woman of 52 with a streak of gray in her red hair, considered herself a “champion” drinker. She said she used to chase down shots of hard liquor with glasses of beer every day until she would fall down unconscious.

Rosa, a widow who ironed clothes for a living, said she tried to stop drinking many times on her own, but couldn’t. Two years ago, she enrolled in a co-ed, residential alcohol treatment program. She lasted only three days. She left, she said, because “it was mostly men in the program instead of women.”

Language was a problem, too, since Rosa, who spoke through an interpreter, understands little English. A native of Guatemala, she has lived in the Los Angeles area for 12 years.

For two months now, Rosa said, she has gone without a drink. She stopped in December when she moved from the small apartment she shared with a roommate into an airy, two-story house at 530 N. Ave. 54 in Highland Park, where California’s first bilingual residential recovery program for Latinas has been established.

There, along with five other women alcoholics, Rosa (who asked that her real name not be used) said she is learning to “help myself with the problem of alcohol.”

90-Day Program

Known as Mujeres Project, the 90-day recovery program is part of an effort by Los Angeles County’s Office of Alcohol Programs to address what the county has identified as a priority for the next few years: the need for more services for alcoholic women.

“New money and projects have been committed to meet a parity of services for women by 1988,” said Al Wright, director of the county’s alcohol programs.

Alcoholism among women in Los Angeles County is a growing problem, Wright said, but most of the $20 million in alcohol services that the county provides annually is channeled into programs for men.

According to the California Women’s Commission on Alcohol, of the 75 residential recovery programs in the Los Angeles area, which includes 60 self-supporting programs and 15 county-funded programs, only 17 are for women.

For the more than 2 million Latinos in Los Angeles County, there are even fewer services, Wright said.

There are a few counseling and out-patient programs with bilingual staffs, Wright said, but until the inception of the Mujeres (which means female) Project, there was only one bilingual residential program in the county. That program, run by the East Los Angeles Health Task Force, is for men only.

Mujeres Project, which accepted its first resident in October, could serve as a model, Wright said. “If it works well here, my anticipation is that it will be copied in other parts of the state.”

Fee Based on Ability to Pay

The program is free to women who qualify for public assistance; others may be charged a maximum of $500 for the 90-day program, based on their ability to pay. Under a renewable one-year contract with the county, Mujeres Project is being administered at a start-up cost of $160,000 by the California Hispanic Commission on Alcohol and Drug Abuse, an arm of the state Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs.

The commission contracts with counties to administer alcohol and drug programs in the Latino community, besides providing training and technical assistance for other alcohol services.

James Hernandez, commission director, said there are few recovery programs designed for Latino alcoholics because “we all expect existing programs to serve our population.” But the majority of the programs, Hernandez said, are viewed by Latinos as “cold, uninviting and intimidating.”

Three women have completed the recovery program at Mujeres Project, which relies on peer-oriented, group-support techniques.

Women in the program were referred by alcohol-service agencies or went on their own after hearing about the program on Spanish-language radio and television shows. The Mujeres Project staff does not provide medical treatment or individual counseling and therapy, but will make referrals if such services are needed.

Typical Week

Women must be sober for at least 24 hours before going to live at the house. A typical week for the women at Mujeres Project is filled with support-group meetings, workshops on such health matters as nutrition and exercise, guest lectures by representatives of other alcohol services, arts and crafts, and classes in aerobics and English.

Besides the services provided by the staff of Mujeres Project, two Alcoholics Anonymous meetings are held at the house each week, one bilingual and the other conducted only in Spanish.

There is a secluded spot, called “Serenity Hill,” at the rear of the home’s huge terraced backyard.

Most of the time “it’s one lady helping another lady,” said Maria Lojero, who directs the project’s six-member staff, all of whom are women.

Because the staff is bilingual and bicultural, Lojero said, “we can relate to the women in the program as far as food, as far as language, as far as attitudes and cultural traditions.”

House Blessed

To illustrate her point, Lojero recalled that the first residents requested that a Catholic priest bless the residence. “Some people wouldn’t be able to understand that,” Lojero said.

Lojero anticipates that meeting the particular needs of Latinas, especially in language, could reverse past failures. She told of the experience of the first Mujeres Project resident. The woman, Lojero said, spoke only Spanish but had spent nine months in a recovery program for English speakers.

“She went through group sessions. She sat there for nine months and she didn’t understand half of what was said,” Lojero said. “So she went through the program and hadn’t learned anything because she couldn’t understand anything.”

The recovery program stresses involvement of the community and the residents’ families, who can join support groups at the house every Thursday evening.

Work With Family

“It’s not just a matter of keeping the individual here for 30 to 90 days then turning her loose and saying, ‘OK, you’ve got it together. Go on out there,’ ” Lojero said. “We try to work with the family and with the surrounding community as far as educating them to what alcoholism is.

“The bottom line is that we don’t isolate the alcoholic woman.”

Maintaining an open-door policy may also help to break down what Lojero said is the Latina’s deep-rooted resistance to admitting that she has a problem with alcohol. Denial is a common trait of all alcoholics, but it is magnified in Latinas because of cultural and family ties, Lojero said.

“Hispanic women are really put up on a pedestal. If it’s a mother, if it’s a wife, she’s the one that keeps the family together. She’s placed in a more than human role--able to withstand everything and be strong.”

Problem Hidden

These women are expected to be strong, Lojero said, but they tend to be overprotected by men in the Latino community. So, when a Latina develops a problem with alcohol, Lojero said, the family is more likely to hide her problem than seek help because her alcoholism would be considered a social disgrace, Lojero said.

There are no statistics available on the extent of alcoholism among Latinas. And there is a dispute among researchers and experts in the field of alcoholism about the need for special recovery programs for Latinas.

Dr. Raul Caetano, a staff member of the Alcohol Research Center in Berkeley, is one of the skeptical experts. Caetano conducted surveys among Latinos in Contra Costa County in 1977 and 1980 and is now sampling 1,500 Latinos for a national survey.

Based on his own research and other studies, Caetano contends that the low rate of Latinas involved in alcoholic treatment programs reflects a low rate of alcoholic problems rather than a reluctance to seek help.

Identifying Problem

“Some people believe it is low because Hispanic women have a lot of problems in identifying themselves as alcoholics,” Caetano said. “I don’t think that is the problem.”

He said it was impossible to determine whether evidence from other surveys could be applied to Los Angeles County. In commenting on the Mujeres Project, Caetano speculated that it was “going to be difficult to fill the place.”

Mujeres Project, nevertheless, is operating with a full house of six residents and has two women on its waiting list, Lojero said.

Hernandez, the Hispanic commission director, is so convinced of the need for such a program that, when the commission could not locate a house to lease, he took out a loan and made the $15,000 down payment on the $115,000 four-bedroom house in Highland Park.

The county is now paying the $1,100 monthly mortgage on the house while Hernandez seeks investors willing to assume his loan, he said.

House Remodeled

Volunteers helped remodel the house, which features art prints donated by Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena. An individual donated a 1976 BMW automobile to the program, Hernandez said.

Staff members work out of a makeshift office at the house, but will soon open a community resource center nearby at Avenue 54 and Monte Vista Street. Lojero said she hopes that some of the women at Mujeres Project will volunteer to help at the resource center.

As Rosa said, “It’s a very important part of the program to interact with one another. We need to help each other.”