Hedrick House: Tucson Way Station for Drunks : Alcoholism: Jack Downey’s treatment facility tosses a lifeline to the ringout-swilling lushes. The rules are simple--one drink and you’re out.

At the outset, there are two things to know about Jack Downey.

He’s a drunk. And he’s an environmentalist.

He recycles other drunks.

“I’m not a recovered alcoholic . . . I refer to myself as a drunk,” says Downey, 65, who has kept booze from his lips for 24 years. He insists he’s never met an alcoholic who wasn’t a drunk first.

In the last 15 years, through Hedrick House, which Downey calls “a halfway house for drunks,” he has reeled in more than 1,300 alcoholics from the brink, much as he was tossed a lifeline when he was a ringout-swilling lush.

“I was one of the original recyclers in the country,” Downey says. “I recycled drunks, if you will.”

Officially, in the eyes of the Arizona Department of Behavioral Health Services, Hedrick House is a residential rehabilitation facility for recovering alcoholics.

It gets by mainly on private donations and the $10 a day each resident pays. It has operated on a budget of about $79,000 to $89,000 a year, quite a way from the $10,000 or more an inpatient might be charged for a monthlong stay at some full-scale alcohol treatment centers.

A self-described cowboy with an ever-present Stetson, a colorful, sometimes salty vocabulary and a bull-sized dislike for anything smacking of governmental bureaucracy, Downey took over Hedrick House in 1977.

The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism’s latest available figures show 707 halfway recovery houses for alcoholics nationwide among 6,493 alcohol treatment facilities. That 1989 total includes 1,261 alcohol treatment and general hospitals, psychiatric and other specialized facilities, 906 community mental health centers and 2,414 outpatient centers.

Other NIAAA figures point out the scope of the problem. It estimated that 9.1 million Americans were alcoholics in 1990; an additional 5.9 million were abusers. And alcohol cost the United States an estimated $85.8 billion in lost productivity, $4.3 billion in crime and $2.6 billion in motor vehicle accidents as of the last available projection--for 1988, based on 1985 data.

A Tucson expert says there were 100,000 alcohol-related deaths in the country last year.

Hedrick House, named for the north side residential street where it is located, accommodates up to 30 men at any one time.

It differs from full treatment centers such as specialized hospital programs, which typically detain a person for three or four weeks for medical therapy and monitoring.

“The medical model programs are designed for people who are more physically debilitated and require more intensive medical monitoring,” says Tom Donovan, acting director for ADAPT, a county consortium dealing with drug abuse, alcoholism prevention and treatment.

Hedrick House, he says, “is a highly effective program for the recovering alcoholics who are willing to fully commit themselves to Jack’s program.”

Downey, who emphasizes his disdain for percentages, says Hedrick House’s known success rate is 41.6%, based on those with whom he and his staff have had physical contact. His assistant says the figure could be far higher.

What gets Downey excited is the guy he hasn’t seen in two years who walks through the door and says: “ ‘Hey, fat man, how about a cup of coffee? I’ve been straight ever since I left here.’ That’s my percentage.”

At Hedrick House, set up like a series of bunk houses, each man comes in with at least three days’ sobriety and is restricted to the compound for the first week, in case quick medical attention is needed.

Then, he must try to find a job--sweeping a supermarket floor, chucking fast-food hamburgers or whatever--to pay his $10 daily fee. He must attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and follow its 12-step principles. And he must stay off the sauce.

In return, he gets three meals daily, including the likes of sirloin steak and prime rib; room, bedding, shower, linens, laundry supplies. And the support of the other residents; assistant director Craig Brown, other staffers and Downey.

“It’s almost obscene the way I feed these guys,” Downey says. But he made a key discovery long ago: “When they’re feeling good and they’re full, and they know they’re safe, they listen.”

Downey says Hedrick House doesn’t follow the therapy regimen of the full-treatment facilities, “because here we believe that the responsibility for a man’s sobriety should rest on his shoulders.”

No one is catered to. “If you fall down, there’ll be 28 guys right there to pick you up, but you’ve got to make your own effort first,” he says.

For Hedrick House’s first seven or eight years, Downey contributed half his paycheck as a heavy-duty equipment operator. He also was its makeshift plumber, electrician and dishwasher, in addition to his other duties there.

Until July, Hedrick House never took any government funds. It received an $80,000 grant of federal Community Development Block Grant funds to rehabilitate five buildings on a site where Hedrick House will be relocating. The new buildings, expected to open sometime next year, will allow for 55 beds.

A $500,000 fund-raising drive is under way and about $175,000 has been raised through private and corporate donations.

As part of a broader effort to find non-governmental support, supporters are planning to stage annually the Hedrick House Horse Show and Cowboy Olympics, starting in 1993, a hybrid between a horse fair and rodeo.

Brown says he has strong contacts in the rodeo community who will be called on for help, including “some world champion cowboys” who have indicated a willingness to do exhibition roping and riding to help generate donations.

One current five-year resident will stay until he dies if allowed. Downey and Hedrick House have buried four other destitutes who died.

Downey says he can empathize with his men. “I’m not proud of it and I’m not saying anything for aggrandizement, but it’s a part of my past, it’s a part of my experience,” he says, even down to ringouts, the leftover booze from bar drinks sold for two bits a gallon to drunks.

That experience, he adds, is what allows him to get through.

Verbally, Downey says: “You can hit him hard enough and make him believe that he’s not a bad man. He’s just a wino or he’s a glob of snot or whatever, but he’s got a chance. And I’m the example.”

Downey developed a drinking problem at age 11, when his family lived next to a Tucson bootlegger.

One day he and a friend discovered the neighbor’s dandelion wine and raw-tobacco cigarettes and parked themselves under a mesquite tree, drinking and smoking. “I thought that layin’ there laughin’ and jokin’ and pukin’ all over each other was the greatest thing since sliced bread,” he recalls.

His alcoholism blossomed fully after he graduated from the University of Arizona.

One day when he was 28, he awoke from a five-day drunk, found himself in a drugstore and managed to call Alcoholics Anonymous.