Sympathy Low for Recovery Homes--but Need Is Great

Charitable contributions are down in Orange County. Blame it on the times, on the mood, on the heat.

Of course, down , here, is an especially relative term. We’ve never been too loose with our change.

When it’s charity at stake, the needy must pass all sorts of tests. Who deserves our largess more? Him, or her, this group or that? Can we deduct it from our taxes or merely put our souls at rest?

Some groups, let there be no doubt, are simply easier to help. I’m thinking of the innocent, children, the abused.

Other causes are much harder to sell. Why should I part with my money, people say, if I don’t approve? Drug addiction, alcoholism, AIDS. These are just some of the diseases damned with a social stigma as well.

I know all this, on an intellectual level, and I don’t approve. But as I found out the other night, I am certainly not immune. The sick can be unpleasant, putting you on edge. Desperation usually isn’t too polite.

“I was a liar, thief and a cheat for over 12 years,” Bart Allen is telling me, and I’m thinking that sounds about right.

Allen is one tough ex-con, 39 years old, who started drinking and doing drugs when he was in his teens. His face is hard, his hair thick and gray. His voice is clipped, angry and fast.

If you saw Bart Allen walking on your side of the street, maybe you’d think about getting out of his way. There’s something about him that puts me on guard.

Allen smiles, sometimes, but I had to stick around awhile before I saw that. That’s because this man is intense, extremely focused, and now he wants to make a point.

He’s straight now, and he is helping others get that way, too. Someone else took the time with him; he is paying back his dues.

But if Allen’s two nonprofit Comeback House alcohol and drug recovery homes don’t get more money, he says they will soon close.

The homes, of which Allen is director, have been in operation for the last 10 months in Garden Grove. They get no public funds. The 18 residents--all of them men--are supposed to pay $80 a week in rent, but most of them can’t come up with that.

“One out of three who get a job drink their first check,” Allen says.

So Comeback House, which doesn’t turn anyone away for lack of funds, is operating hand to mouth. They’d like to keep residents confined for 30 days of intense counseling before sending them out to find a job, but two days is all they can afford to do now.

“Our whole society is stupidly ignorant about addiction,” Allen says. “That’s where our frustration comes from. . . . Now that we’ve declared war on drugs, go get ‘em and all that, it’s impossible to get any help. . . . What people don’t realize is that there will always be a supply of drugs while there is a demand.”

Drunks and addicts, he goes on, will do anything for a fix. They terrorize, maim and kill, behind the wheel or behind a gun. He knows, Allen says. That’s what he did for years.

Allen and the homes’ manager, Bob Nicholl, are giving me their rap. They want me to understand, they say, but are afraid that I never will.

They say only an addict--”and alcohol is nothing but liquid heroin”--can really know what it’s like to lose control.

“People say, ‘Stop drinking. Use willpower,’ ” Allen says. “Try using willpower when you’ve got diarrhea. It’s the same thing.”

We keep talking, the three of us, and the conversation grows more relaxed. Nicholl, who’s been straight for a year, tells me the story that led him here.

He started drinking when he was 13 years old, and he’s 31 now. He ran away from home shortly after that, joining a carnival, and his mother thought that was probably best all the way around. He’s been confined to mental institutions eight times. As for drugs, Nicholl says it’s easier to say what he hasn’t taken than the other way around.

“When I was working at a hospital, setting up their computer system, they gave me the keys to the pharmacy,” he says. “I would steal Brompton’s cocktail, which is morphine, coke and alcohol, that they give to cancer patients. I took that for four years.”

But when Allen was working at Glenwood House, another Orange County addict recovery home that closed in 1986, he sponsored Nicholl and, he says, saved his life.

Then Nicholl smiles and digs in his wallet. He shows me three color pictures of his new family: he and his common-law wife and their chubby 5-month-old child.

In another room, the regular Monday night meeting is now under way. About 45 people--alcoholics and addicts, struggling, recovered and in various stages in between--are taking their turns.

Following the guidelines of Alcoholics Anonymous--first names only and admit you’re an alcoholic right up front--the men tell their stories of triumph and pain.

Johnny says he went to a banquet over the weekend at Chino State Prison with other members of AA.

“It was a real good feeling to be able to go in there, free,” he says. “It made me think that if I weren’t sober, I’d be back inside. Four months--that was always my grace period for staying on the streets. After that, I was back incarcerated.”

Jack, a 20-year heroin addict now clean with a family and a business of his own, tells the group they can bank on the fact that they’ll be getting angry, but says their anger should rightly be directed at themselves.

“Welcome to the newcomers,” booms middle-aged Pete in a preacher’s voice. “What we’re doing here, talking all these things out, we have to do to live. That’s simply the bottom line.”

People are listening, smoking and chugging endless reserves of coffee from paper cups. Hands shoot up. It seems everyone is anxious for a turn.

Then a basket is passed around, and people dig in their pockets for a few bucks. Every little bit helps. Right now, these little bits are about all most of these people have got.