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Helping immigrants battle alcoholism
Area Hispanics face their own set of challenges in the fight to overcome drinking problems
By JOHN MARTINS Staff Writer, (856) 794-5114
Published: Monday, February 19, 2007
Press photo by John Martins

Men attend a meeting of the Grupo Hay Una Solucion on Sunday in Bridgeton. The group is the only Spandish speaking Alcoholics Annoymous meeting in Cumberland County.


(Editor’s note: Staff writer John Martins was allowed to attend an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting on the condition that he respect the members’ desire for anonymity. The members were aware he was reporting on the problem of alcoholism in the immigrant community.)

BRIDGETON — Amid the muffled sound of Mexican ballads being played in the novelty store downstairs, a small group of local men gathered Sunday in a room on the second floor of a Commerce Street office building to talk about their drinking problems.

With a mug of instant coffee in hand, attendees, who used only their first names, told stories similar to those heard at other Alcoholics Anonymous meetings around the world. These, however, were told in Spanish, and they reflected the distinct struggles and concerns that other Hispanic residents in this small working-class city live with every day.

Arturo, a Hispanic businessman, said drinking went hand-in-hand with his previous job as a concert promoter in New York City. Despite the encroaching addiction, he managed to book high-profile acts, including the famous Mexican group Los Tigres del Norte, at prestigious venues such as Radio City Music Hall and the Roseland Ballroom.
“It was like a wave,” he said. “It dropped just as quickly as it rose.”

Paulo, a middle-aged man dressed in blue jeans and a crisp blue shirt, said his drinking caused his wife and children to leave him. He also had a criminal record from the several times he’s been caught driving under the influence. He decided to get help, he said, when he was arrested — drunk — driving a tractor-trailer on the New Jersey Turnpike.
“I don’t know what I was thinking getting into that truck,” he said, shaking his head, looking grief-stricken. “I used to do it all the time.”

According to county substance-abuse professionals, alcoholism goes beyond national or cultural boundaries, affecting all races and ethnicities equally across the board.

For immigrants, however, the harsh realities of living in a sometimes inhospitable foreign country can magnify the negative effects of drinking. “Their families are there, they’re here, and they’re surrounded by different languages and different customs,” said Nelly Fontanez, a Spanish-speaking counselor for Ocean County’s ADACO, or Alcohol and Drug Abuse Council. “They’re isolated and disengaged. They think (alcohol) will take away their problems and it just makes them worse. It’s a no-win situation.”

Spiral begins early
At the Cape-Atlantic Intergroup, a Pleasantville-based alcoholism support organization, a Spanish-speaking counselor who identified himself only as Rene said he’s been seeing a disturbing trend among recently arrived immigrants.
“They start drinking very early, at 12 or 13,” he said. “After they come to this country, they end up losing everything — their family, their friends. They don’t want to do something (to help themselves), and they start drinking even more.”

Rene, now 62, said he started drinking because all his friends were doing it. The adults in his own family, he added, often drank. As his teen years flew by, the drinking got heavier but was contained only to social settings. It didn’t become a problem, he said, until after he came to this country 38 years ago, traveling alone like so many other Hispanics looking for work and a better life. He was here for 16 years before he hit rock bottom.

“I was drinking for this and drinking for that,” he said. “I started on the weekends at night, and then I went to drinking during the day. Then I started drinking on Fridays, and it went to Thursdays and Wednesdays and Tuesdays and Mondays.”

He was 40 and well known to cops in Atlantic City, he said, adding that he had been arrested many times for drunken driving, public drunkenness and domestic violence. The police, however, ended up saving his life. An officer told him about a local Alcoholics Anonymous meeting run by and for people like him. “I was tired of being in the hospital, tired of being in jail all the time,” Rene said. “Tired of being out of a job all of the time. No family. It was a lot of causes.”

He’s been sober for 22 years now, and he’s still taking it one day at a time. He’s also giving back to his Hispanic brethren by volunteering with the Spanish hot line.
It’s not easy, though.

Cultural resistance
Substance-abuse professionals in southern New Jersey agree that trying to help Spanish-speaking alcoholics often seems like an uphill battle. When alcoholism strikes the Hispanic community, they said, cultural attitudes often prevent them from realizing that excessive drinking is a disease.

And for the Hispanics who are in this country illegally, ADACO’s Fontanez said, that cultural resistance to seeking treatment is often exacerbated by a common avoidance of government-affiliated services. Many illegal immigrants, she added, avoid public agencies for fear of deportation.

When you combine that with the current dearth of Spanish-speaking support groups for alcoholics and their families in this part of New Jersey, it creates a recipe for disaster.

“It’s hard enough trying to get them to see they need help,” Fontanez said. “When they do, there’s nowhere to go. They finally hit bottom and there’s no place to send them.”

In places like Bridgeton, a city of 18,000 that is home to a large and undocumented number of migrant laborers from Mexico’s southern states, instances of alcohol abuse by Hispanics are pronounced.

The police blotter often includes reports of Hispanic men being arrested for public drunkenness or driving while intoxicated. Residents still mention the year-old case of an 80-year-old woman who was killed in a hit-and-run by a drunken and unlicensed illegal alien.

Aaron Gehring, a clerk at a downtown Bridgeton liquor store named Hummel’s, said he sees many Hispanic men drink to the point of excess. Of the customers to whom he refuses to sell alcohol because they are already visibly drunk, about 80 percent of them are Hispanic, he said.
Almost all of the alcoholics referred to ADACO are migrant laborers, Fontanez said. Because they require services in Spanish and not many of those services are available locally, they often relapse. And it causes many families to be torn apart.

Fontanez recalled one alcoholic from San Salvador whose wife and four children had left him because of his illness. Another client, a man from Peru, was deported after a second drunken-driving conviction, leaving behind his wife and six children, one of whom is autistic.

Limited services
There are few substance-abuse services available to Spanish-speaking alcoholics in each southern New Jersey county, and almost all of them are either referral or treatment centers.

All county agencies carry literature in Spanish, and all have an Intoxicated Driving Resource Center, or IDRC, which provides court-mandated classes and counseling for drunken drivers.

The centers, however, rely on Spanish-speaking employees to interact with the Hispanic community, but they are only able to make referrals. The exception is Ocean County, which Fontanez said offers the only 16-week IDRC course in Spanish statewide.

According to the state’s Department of Human Services, about 3,000 people of Hispanic origin living in Atlantic, Cumberland, Cape May and Ocean counties participated in the IDRC’s Education and Evaluation program in 2005. Ocean County hosted the highest number, with 1,391 people. In Cumberland County, Hispanics made up the highest share of participants, at more than 28 percent.

For Hispanics in southern New Jersey, referrals are often made to Vineland’s CURA, or Community United for the Rehabilitation of the Addicted. Formed in Newark in 1973, the organization offers an intensive outpatient treatment center on Landis Avenue.

Also available in Cumberland is the First-Step Clinic, offered through the Cumberland County Alcohol and Drug Abuse Services in Bridgeton. According to director Juanita Nazario, it is one of only two county-operated treatment centers in the state.

Support groups key
Battling alcoholism, however, goes beyond initial treatments, and professionals said that support groups are fundamental to recovery. In Ocean County, only one Spanish-speaking support group meets in Lakewood. In Atlantic County, a group called “Grupo Sobriedade” meets everyday at a Pacific Avenue location in Atlantic City while another meets in Hammonton. The group in Bridgeton, which meets everyday but Monday, is called Grupo Hay Una Solucíon. Grupo Hay Una Solucíon is the only Spanish-speaking AA meeting in Cumberland County, an area that’s home to thousands of Hispanic immigrants who work as day laborers in the region’s many farms and industries. There used to be an AA meeting in Vineland some years ago, but it has since shut down.

Considering the culture of anonymity at AA meetings, it’s not surprising that the Hay Una Solucíon group has gone under the radar of county substance abuse professionals. Nazario said last week that she wasn’t even aware of its existence.

Arturo, a Bridgeton group member, gives out his mobile phone number to those who inquire about the group. On his outgoing message, he has recorded in Spanish an impassioned account of how he came to Alcoholics Anonymous and how it has transformed his life. “It’s like a sacrament,” Arturo said, “a walk with God. I now have inside me very strong faith that things will change.”

For more information on Grupo Hay Una Solucíon, call (856) 455-5235. The Cape-Atlantic Intergroup Hotline can be reached at (800) 604-HELP.
To e-mail John Martins at The Press:
JMartins@pressofac.com