Notes on Leaving San Pedro

The exterior of Beacon House is the color of the sea, a combination of grays and whites that characterize the ocean in its many moods.

Seen in bright sunlight, there are almost fluctuating qualities to the chromatic tones of the old Victorian, much as the hues of the Pacific seem to shift and change through stages of its temperament.

Inside Beacon House the same changes occur, elemental realignments in hopes and emotions that are traits of the human condition as unpredictable as the sea and sometimes as awesome.

That’s because Beacon House, overlooking the ships and long-necked cranes of San Pedro Harbor, is where they keep the drunks. In the parlance of those struggling with the agonies in their soul, it’s the last house on the block.

I’ve been meaning to come here for a long time, not for rehabilitation, which is what it offers, but to see for myself in more detached terms how the young men of my generation must have seemed to those looking in.

Newspapering used to be famous for its hard drinkers and I was one of them. Only a caring wife and an intense dedication to good writing kept me from the abyss where so many of my friends disappeared.

I visited Beacon House after having seen “Leaving Las Vegas,” which, in typical Hollywoodian style, gave dying of alcoholism a whimsical cant. Nicholas Cage almost made it seem like fun.

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Trust me when I tell those of you looking in that it is no fun. Ask any of the 120 men who live at Beacon House, who are clawing their way up mountains of sobriety. Ask Mary Proper.

She’s the only woman in the place, its director, and rules with a combination of love and discipline that has earned her the name Mother Mary. A sign near her desk sums that up. It says, “I holler because I care.”

The main building that houses this privately supported home for recovering alcoholics is a little over 100 years old. It was a mayor’s house once and then a flophouse and then a sobering-up place for old sailors with rum and salt water coursing through their arteries.

Beacon House took it over just as the building was about to be condemned, much as it takes over the men who come here as they are about to condemn themselves.

Proper, who is 60, was a drunk herself for a chunk of her life that began in high school, but has been sober for 28 years. She wears a gold chain around her neck with the numeral 28 hanging from it to remind her of that.

She was the kind of boozer that drank in the morning because someone told her beer had the nutritional value of eggs. She lived on the kind of crazy planet where the worst thing that could happen would be to run out of liquor.

Proper faced herself one day when an ex-husband in a drunken rage tumbled down a cliff. She remembers staring at him and then walking away without even seeing if he had survived the fall.

“That’s where drinking had taken me,” she said, looking out toward the sea. “I was to the point where I didn’t even care whether another human being was dead or alive. I’ll never forget that.”

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Those who come to Beacon House are there because they’re tired of blurry days and agonizing nights, but it’s not a free ride. They turn over their relief checks for room and board, work to make extra money and contribute free time and energy to the community.

“Alcoholics are takers, not givers,” Proper says. “They live in an unreal world. So we have them working for others, because they have to learn to give of themselves.”

Counseling and peer pressure help sober them up. If they fall off the wagon, they have to leave. Those who stay straight get there, Proper says, because they finally learn that they’re not alone in life.

Old drunks helping old drunks is a twist of literature based on a certain reality, but mostly alcoholics live in a world of their own, and it’s a world they can’t abide.

The performance of Nicholas Cage in “Leaving Las Vegas” addressed the problem as only Hollywood does, with a beautiful woman involved and a certain sad glamour attached to its pathology.

In truth, it’s a hard death that alcoholics die and there are few retakes in the unfolding chronology of their stories. Those who make it, who emerge to see blue sky and sunlight, will tell you how scary and unglamorous it is.

Beacon House offers a way out of the scariness and pain with tough, honest treatment and, like the sea it faces, holds out the prospect of gentle times ahead. All it takes is getting through the storm.

Al Martinez can be reached through the Internet at al.martinez@latimes.com