Hot Line Tries to Answer Drug Addicts’ Calls for Help

The calls come in every few minutes, cries for help from a torrent of desperate people overwhelmed by drug abuse.

A homeless crack addict needs shelter and therapy. A man addicted to heroin for seven years asks about rehabilitation programs. A cab driver with a nine-year cocaine habit wants admission to an outpatient treatment facility.

Shattered by drugs, they have called a toll-free substance abuse hot line headquartered in a ramshackle building in Manhattan’s Washington Heights neighborhood, an inner-city area that has been called “the crack capital of America.”

The confidential hot line, operated by the Community League of West 159th Street, is a window onto the nation’s war on drugs.

Spend a few hours listening to counselors talking on the hot line and you will hear of addicts who have lost their families, their homes and their jobs.

You will learn of a social service system so overburdened that it simply cannot cope.

And you will discover that even after the latest offensive in the war on drugs, impoverished addicts who yearn for treatment are told that they will have to wait up to a year to enter an inpatient rehabilitation program.

The stories told by a succession of callers send a disturbing message: Drug addiction is entrenched in America’s social fabric--and the government has barely put a dent in the problem.

“America has become--it isn’t becoming--a drug-infested society,” said Lucille Bulger, the league’s 77-year-old founder. “I think it’s past epidemic proportions. It’s a national infestation.”

“The problem has gotten worse, and we’re not equipped to deal with it,” said hot-line coordinator Yvonne Stennet, 34. “There are so many people out there who need our help and we just don’t have the services to meet the problem.”

In addition to the hot line, the league runs a number of programs in the Washington Heights area, including after-school events and a nutrition center for children and a housing management service to renovate city-owned buildings.

Funded by government grants, the league focuses on grass-roots activism to reinvigorate the neighborhood, which is populated largely by blacks and Latinos and recently has experienced an influx of immigrants from the Dominican Republic.

Its hot line receives calls from throughout New York state and the Northeast.

The callers are not confined to the stereotypical inner-city junkie. Indeed, experts say there has been an upsurge in middle-class use of drugs like crack, and calls to the hot line reflect that rise.

Most of the 400 to 600 monthly calls to the hot line are from people seeking help for heroin, crack and cocaine addiction. According to a spokesman at the state division of Substance Abuse Services, in 1988, there were nearly 500,000 daily, heavy users of these “hard” drugs in New York City alone and that figure is expected to jump for 1989 as the crack epidemic worsens.

Most callers to the hot line, which is staffed 16 hours a day, want to know where they can find help. The counselors have a long list of organizations--ranging from support groups to homeless shelters to rehabilitation programs--to which they make referrals.

The callers’ voices are usually tinged with fear and anxiety, for by the time they decide to dial 1-800-LET-IT-GO, they have reached bottom.

“We’ve had people on the phone who have a knife in their hand and they’re ready to kill themselves,” Stennet said, adding that it is not uncommon for addicts to call when they are high on drugs or paranoid from the crash after a crack binge.

On a recent weekday afternoon, counselor Red Cotto was talking in a soft, friendly voice to Wayne, a 25-year-old crack addict who said he wanted to enter a treatment facility.

“Are you on the crack, Wayne?” Cotto asked. “Are you high right now?”

Sounding distracted and stuttering as he talked, Wayne admitted he was high. He was also homeless and without any money or medical insurance.

Cotto, 42, referred him to a city-run men’s shelter and gave him the address and phone number of a treatment facility that takes homeless addicts on a priority basis.

Ironically, Wayne was lucky that he was homeless.

Addicts with shelter who cannot afford the high fees of private rehabilitation centers can wait up to a year for inpatient treatment.

The delay is demoralizing for counselors who must tell addicts either to wait or to seek an outpatient program, which is usually less effective in treating drug abuse.

“It’s a hell of a problem,” Stennet said. “It’s frustrating--you get someone on the phone, you know you can help them, but there’s nothing available.”

“If I’ve heard one outrageous call, I’ve heard hundreds,” Cotto said. But he is quick to point out that for every 20 people he counsels on the phone, 10 to 15 will call back a few days later and thank him, saying they have received help.

“At times, you can look at this as being a thankless job,” Cotto said. “But when you do get calls of that type, you think, ‘Well, I’ve made a little dent, I’ve made a difference.’ ”

Ask Bulger about the war on drugs and she will say that politicians have no idea how bad the problem really is.

Bulger, who founded the league 37 years ago, has lived in Washington Heights all her life. She has seen her neighborhood destroyed by drugs and has heard legions of government officials announce they will win the war on drugs.

She has spent the last few decades urging the government to allocate more money for treatment and education, stressing repeatedly that to defeat drugs in the inner cities, poverty and ignorance must be attacked.

She is not optimistic.