Center Teaches Women Addicts Something New: Ordinary Life

The young, pregnant woman didn’t get it. She had just sat through a 1 1/2-hour class on “social skills” at Prototypes, a residential drug treatment program, but she still didn’t know how to talk to the other women in the class.

“If I complain, I get into fights,” she said glumly, as the other students filed out of the classroom. “They say I’m being aggressive. So what can I do? I don’t talk at all.”

The teacher patted the woman, a recent arrival in the program, reassuringly on the arm. “There are a lot of skills you have to learn,” she said.

For residents of Prototypes, the largest publicly funded program in Los Angeles County exclusively for female drug addicts, gentle reassurance is doled out along with lessons in the most basic of social skills. “I wouldn’t say it’s rehabilitation that we do here,” says Prototypes director Suzan Sanchez. “ ‘Rehabilitation’ suggests they had it and lost it. Most of the young people we see never even had it.”

Housed in a converted church school in Pomona, Prototypes is an extraordinary safe haven for 53 women, many of whom bring their belongings, their addictions and their children with them. The pay-off, for the grown-ups, is painful, healing insight about their addictions and, for the youngsters, the beginnings of a functional family, the people who run it say.

“There aren’t many other programs that try to keep the family intact, even though they’re dealing mostly with single parents,” says Donald Streater, who oversees federal block grants for the U.S. Alcohol, Drug Abuse and Mental Health Administration. “But most important, it gives the patient a sense of responsibility. The uniqueness of it is that it replicates everyday living. The women have to handle jobs, participate in treatment, take care of the babies. . . .”

Many of the addicts in treatment arrive with a collection of corrosive experiences--violent episodes or damaging relationships that have undermined their self-esteem. Recently, one young woman spoke candidly about having been gang-raped at 14, and another talked casually about her life as a prostitute, after a childhood in which she was regularly molested by an older brother.

A frail-looking woman told of a cocaine addiction so hopeless that she stole her mother’s VCR and her 10-year-old son’s Nintendo tapes in order to finance drug purchases.

“I’d do anything to get loaded,” she said, cradling a toddler in her arms. “I slept with the dope dealer. That’s where David came from.”

But many proudly recited some newly acquired wisdom about addiction. “When I first came here,” said the former prostitute, a heroin addict, “I thought I just liked to get high. But I realized that it was because I didn’t want to feel the pain.”

Pursuing a cocaine or heroin habit for a few years is an all-consuming activity, leaving little time to acquire such fundamentals as communicating with strangers in a social skills class, says Linda Padilla, the counselor who runs the class.

Most young addicts, like the befuddled pregnant woman, just don’t have time to grow up, says Padilla.

“She’s scared to death to speak to her peers,” Padilla says, after the young woman has walked inconsolably away. “When they come here, all they know how to do is to attack each other. They only know how to be passive or aggressive, but they don’t know how to socialize.”

The $1.4-million-a-year program, with funding from county, state and federal budgets, is housed in a collection of cinder-block buildings on a four-acre lot on East Arrow Highway.

It is similar to the “therapeutic communities” of the 1960s and 1970s, program administrators acknowledge. Those early programs, like Synanon in Southern California and Daytop Village in New York, housed addicts in urban residences and tried to reform them through self-examination and confrontational group sessions.

The difference is one of technique, says Sanchez. The early programs tried to dismantle their subjects, using a system of rewards and punishments to tear away bad habits in order to substitute good ones. It worked for men, but women often rebelled, she says.

“They shaved your head, made you wear signs, sat you on a bench and screamed and hollered at you,” says Sanchez, an amiably gruff woman who was once a heroin addict. “It didn’t work well for women.”

Though Prototypes residents can be punished for “negative” behavior, usually by being forced to do chores while others are enjoying free time, the guiding principles are reason and understanding.

Cece Arenas, a former crack addict and gang member who recently “graduated” from Prototypes after a long history of failure in other programs, says that for many women, the ton-of-bricks approach can be just the latest in a series of atrocities. “I was in 11 programs before I came here,” she says. “They always attacked you, put you down. I didn’t need that. I’ve been put down all my life.”

At Prototypes, which opened in Pomona two years ago, the emphasis is on leading a normal life rather than on aggressive behavior modification, program administrators say. Some residents work at outside jobs, and others keep the kitchen percolating or tidy up the communal living space.

Participants, some of them referred by the courts as a condition of probation, have their rent paid through county welfare payments. There are plans, however, to offer residential treatment to paying clients. The average stay is from six to 18 months, after which participants may move to a smaller, less-supervised residence in Covina.

Right now, there are 17 youngsters in the Pomona facility, from 3 weeks to 10 years old, living in dorms with their mothers. Toddlers and preschoolers frolic in a big sand pit in the inner courtyard or climb on jungle gyms and slides.

“We have to treat (the addicts) in the context of their lives,” says psychiatrist Vivian Brown, the program’s chief executive officer and one of the pioneers in treating female addicts. “And children are certainly part of their lives.”

Sanchez and Brown were among the founders of Via Avanta in Pacoima, the state’s first all-women residential treatment program. Now, there’s a statewide network of such treatment programs, with 22 publicly funded residences for women in Los Angeles County alone.

There’s a lot of communicating going on at Prototypes, in the former classrooms that serve as dormitories, on a terrace next to the complex’s swimming pool or in the couch-lined living room. All of the women quickly learn that using dope was more than just getting high.

“The way I grew up, you weren’t supposed to let people know you were hurting or even that you had feelings,” says Audrey Fielder, 34, a former crack user from Pasadena. “Put your feelings out there and people stepped on them.”

Drugs become a handy way of disguising vulnerabilities, the women say. Many speak of the comforting “numbness” of cocaine or heroin.

But drugs numb you only temporarily, says Jerlene Warren, 30, of Pomona. “I smoked so much, my heart was ready to burst out of my chest,” she says. “But when that high comes off, you feel like the worst person in the world.”

One of the values of the program, many say, is that it offers escape from the overwhelming isolation of addiction. The women participate in specially tailored groups, such as groups for “incest survivors,” for parents of small children or for those with family members who have died violently or from AIDS or drug overdoses.

“The more you talk about the past, the better you feel,” says Debe Gaub, 34, a former heroin addict from Highland Park. “And the more you accept and realize that it wasn’t our fault. . . .”

In the social skills class, the residents use role playing to try to solve basic social problems, such as asking a fellow patient in a doctor’s waiting room for information or making a special request to a counselor. Group members offer criticisms of the players’ choice of words or body language.

“I notice you’re always doing like this,” says one group member, pulling fretfully at the hem of her shirt, after a young woman has acted out requesting permission for her mother to make an unscheduled visit.

“I was feeling uncomfortable,” the young woman replies.

“Maybe you were afraid of what people think,” suggests Padilla.

Even with the nervousness, the young woman says, she has noticed some progress since she started taking the weekly class. “When I started, a lot of times my body would shake and I’d just stand up and cry,” she says.

Some of the women smile sympathetically.