Mothers Recovering From Addiction Get Special Aid

Julie knew she needed help when she realized one morning that she was letting her 5-year-old take care of her 1- and 3-year-old daughters all day--while she drank.

“Every morning I would put out a bowl of food for the kids and let them take care of themselves,” says Julie, who requested that only her first name be used.

“All of a sudden it hit me, and I ran out to call my social worker to ask her to find a home for my kids,” says Julie, 34, a single mother on welfare.

Julie, who lived in a two-bedroom house in Ventura, says she would buy two fifths of whiskey, a case of beer and some wine, which she hoped would last a week. Unemployed, lonely and isolated, Julie says she struggled to overcome her alcoholism but became overwhelmed by her disease and her responsibilities.

Julie’s predicament is not uncommon, says Cathy Anacker, executive director of the California Women’s Commission on Alcohol and Drug Dependencies in Van Nuys. According to the Los Angeles County Offices of Alcohol Programs, 18% of American women either have alcohol-related problems or are at high risk for such problems. “Women have a tough time because they are typically the ones who are responsible for the children,” Anacker said.

“Recovering is a full-time effort, and then to add the responsibilities of care-giving on top of that--it’s incredibly difficult.”

A few organizations are available to help women specifically with alcohol and drug dependencies and to offer psychological support and foster care for their children. These include Hope for Kids, Rainbow Recovery Centers and Via Avanta.

In Julie’s case, her social worker told her about Hope for Kids, an Oxnard-based program that recruits foster families to care for children while their mothers are recovering. Through Hope for Kids, two of Julie’s children were placed in one home and the third in another, freeing her to enroll in a 30-day detoxification program in Oxnard. After detoxification, Julie went to Rainbow Recovery Centers, a nonprofit Ventura County-based program for women and adolescents.

Rainbow Recovery Centers have two facilities for women--one in Simi Valley, the other in Oxnard--that provide three to six months of live-in treatment for 250 clients a year who are addicted to alcohol and sometimes drugs as well, said Kathleen McQuillan, the centers’ executive director. In addition to the women’s facility, Rainbow Recovery Centers have a youth facility in Ventura that accommodates six 13- to 17-year-olds and a counseling and educational facility in Oxnard for all ages.

“We like to make women aware that they do have a choice,” McQuillan said. “They don’t have to be a punching bag, work at a fast-food facility or be on welfare.” Since Rainbow Recovery Centers will help with their other responsibilities, she points out, “all they have to do is abstain from alcohol and drugs and they can change their lives.”

To be accepted into Rainbow Recovery Centers--and there are waiting lists at all three residential facilities--a woman has to make a three-month commitment to the program, be motivated to change and have a positive attitude, McQuillan said.

The program, funded by Ventura County, the United Way and by fees the participants pay once they begin to work, is designed to encourage the clients to help in one another’s recovery.

“They assign the chores, like who does the wash, and they call each other on their behavior,” said McQuillan, who added that learning how to interact with one another and to rely on others is an important part of the program.

Rainbow Recovery Centers also provide group sessions and involve each client in developing a personal plan to break addictions.

Julie, who is still at Rainbow Recovery Centers, sounds determined when she says she is committed to finding a job, getting off welfare, finding a place to live and getting her children back.

“There’s a lot of guilt, but a part of me knows that I’m doing the best I can,” she said. “I love my kids and I’d rather have them safe with foster parents than there with me passed out. I’ve learned I have to take care of myself first. And then I can take care of them.”

Rainbow Recovery Centers were founded in 1981 with financial support from the California Women’s Commission on Alcohol and Drug Dependencies. Developing such programs, Anacker said, is the main work of the individual chapters of the 600-member commission.

The private, nonprofit group, designated a commission in 1974 by the state, now has an annual $200,000 budget, Anacker said. The money comes from the state Department of Alcoholism Programs, the Los Angeles County Offices of Alcohol Programs and individual memberships.

The goals of the commission, Anacker said, are:

* To advocate treatment rather than punishment of drug-addicted mothers.

* To support services that encourage women to become independent.

* To educate the community through classes at local colleges (including Cal State Northridge), recovery houses and community groups.

Anacker speaks from personal experience. She was addicted to drugs and alcohol 15 years ago and her children, 7 and 14, were born while she was recovering.

Cathy Bixler was also an addict. Now the 28-year-old single mother of three is working part time as a counselor at Via Avanta in Pacoima, a long-term residential recovery program for addicted women and their children. But three years ago she was addicted to cocaine, taking three to four grams a day until the very day she delivered her son, Shawn, now 2.

“When my son was born, he was immediately taken by Children’s Protective Services because he had drugs in his system from me,” Bixler said. “I was so screwed up it didn’t faze me.”

Bixler didn’t see her baby again for six months. Her 8- and 5-year-old children were placed in different foster care homes and Bixler was on waiting lists for seven different recovery programs.

A counselor told her about Via Avanta, which is a rough equivalent of “the way forward” in Latin. She applied and she got right in. She stayed in the program for 18 months.

“The hardest part was wondering if this was going to work for me, and not being with my kids,” she said.

Because the program only allows mothers to bring one child under age 8 with them, Cathy had to pick between her three. She chose baby Shawn, but because he was born with an immune-deficiency problem that makes him susceptible to infections, she initially had trouble Persuading the staff to allow him in. Eventually she succeeded.

Via Avanta, said its program director, Marcellus Robinson, opened in 1971 in Venice and moved to Pacoima 11 years ago. Part of the Didi Hirsch Community Mental Health Center in Culver City, the program offers a nine- to 18-month program with a capacity of 48 women and 20 to 25 children.

The residential program, Robinson said, has one staff member for every seven clients and is designed to deal with needs ranging from the women’s and children’s medical problems to parenting education, counseling, and job-hunting and money-management skills. The center also has a weekly group to help program graduates readjust to the larger world.

“There are a lot of women who need this,” Robinson said. “There are not but two or three recovery programs where the women can go after in Los Angeles that will accept women and children. And without the program, the child has to go into the protective services system. Without the program, women have to go into recovery without their children.”

Now Bixler and her children have an apartment in Van Nuys. After completing the program at Via Avanta, she was hired to work 2 1/2 days a week as a counselor.

“Every day I’m working there, I see my life played over and over again in the lives of the residents there. And now I’m making it. I’m responsible now. And it’s not all that hard. I wouldn’t change my life right now for anything,” she said.

Another recovered addict, Ann, 36, says she looks back on the last 10 years she has been in treatment and the 14 years she was addicted and wishes she hadn’t wasted all that valuable time.

“My son is a teen-ager today and we finally have the best relationship, the best we’ve ever had. And now we only have a few short years together before he’ll leave home,” said Ann, who requested that only her first name be used.

Ann started using alcohol when she was 12 or 13 “as a fluke,” she said. “It was there, so we thought we’d use it.” Throughout her adolescence she says she also tried marijuana, LSD, amphetamines, barbiturates and heroin. She graduated from high school--barely, she said--and started working in a series of office jobs.

And then she tried heroin.

“It was kind of like it just happened,” said Ann, who lives in Ventura. “My boyfriend had gone to jail for selling heroin. I was depressed about that and my friends just offered me a fix.” She said that was when she began to have trouble functioning in the world.

“All along there was something down inside me that told me I was doomed from the start. A voice kept telling me I didn’t have it, I didn’t know how to do life,” she said.

But Ann said her life really started to fall apart when her son was born. Throughout the pregnancy she says she was using heroin.

“I went to the hospital loaded. I don’t remember a thing.”

She said she nursed her newborn son and continued to use heroin, so the two were addicted together.

“I had so much hate and anger toward my baby. He was interfering with my using. There was violence; there was abuse,” she said.

Finally, in an effort to get off the streets, Ann decided to try a residential program in Ventura that was based on the 12-step Narcotics Anonymous program. Her parents took her son.

For the first few years after she left the residential program, she said, she had difficulty assuming responsibilities, including caring for her son.

“I was in denial, guilt and rage,” she said, “often flying off in temper tantrums. I was horrible.” But gradually she straightened out her life.

She is now studying business in college and working part time in an office.

“I had no idea I was going to stay clean. But it turned out to be one addict helping another,” she said.

“I learned I had a chance. I had lost my choices and in the program I got them back. The obsession was lifted and I gradually came out of the fog. That’s where the little bit of hope came in. But turning the hope into something real took years.”