Habilitat offers no shortcuts on straight road to recovery
By Lee Cataluna
Advertiser Columnist
The old Bigelow estate on Kane'ohe Bay looks more like an upscale spa than a residential drug-treatment facility. It has a sparkling-clean weight room, a huge whirlpool bath, a long dock with a covered picnic pavilion over the bay's peaceful waters.
"This is no Club Med," says facility director Jeff Nash. "It's pretty here, but it's hard."
This is Habilitat, Hawai'i's oldest residential drug-treatment facility, where addicts are first "broken down and then built back up" over two years.
In the courtyard, drug addicts new to the program sweep up leaves with short, pendulum strokes over and over. A young man with a shaved head sits in silence near the front desk under the watchful eyes of more senior residents. The newer inductees do not speak to the senior staff. There is a chain of communication. There is order and discipline.
There has long been a kind of mystique about Habilitat. "I'm sure you've heard the stories," says executive director Danny Katada with a big grin.
Habilitat founder Vinny Marino was at the heart of those stories. He was a heroin addict in New York City who went through various treatment programs and spent five years in prison before getting straight. Marino worked his way through the hierarchy of a drug-treatment program and became a drug counselor himself. It was this firsthand knowledge and his larger-than-life personality that shaped Habilitat 33 years ago when he started with six residents in a two-bedroom house. He died in January 2000. His wife Vickie succeeded him as executive director until her death in November 2002.
By all accounts, Marino was a fast-talking, big-idea, hard-headed man. He disputed the idea of drug addiction as a disease, saying that took away too much responsibility for the addict's own choices.
"Drug addiction is a character disorder," says Nash. "We believe that addiction is a symptom of many other things: laziness, complacency, selfishness, dishonesty, lack of confidence, low self-esteem. If you fix all the problems that led to the addiction, then the addiction is no longer a problem."
Toward that end, Habilitat has an intense two-year residential program designed to instill discipline, self-esteem and personal responsibility in drug addicts. There are no shorter options, though many residents graduate from the program and stay longer as elders or staff.
There are some elements that evoke comparisons to the military or a martial arts dojo. The newly initiated focus on menial tasks around the grounds. They attend seminars and encounter groups. They are paired up with more veteran residents. There's not much room for messing up.
Over time and depending on conduct, residents are promoted to ever-increasing levels of responsibility and freedom. There are typically just over a hundred residents at Habilitat. That way, the 'ohana treatment model, where each member is responsible to the overall family, works best.
"It's not like we're looking at charts. We know each person. We know their whole stories," Nash says.
As residents progress, they move into job-training and skill-building programs. Habilitat runs a number of enterprises, including a landscaping business, a masonry company and hydroponic gardening. Over time, the residents transition back into the "real world," but slowly and, at first, always with supervision.
The staff proudly says there have been no acts of violence, not even a fist through a window, in all 33 years of Habilitat's existence. Part of the reason for that is the way potential residents are screened before being admitted. No one with a class A felony is allowed. No one with any history of sex crimes is allowed. No one who still needs detox is allowed. Habilitat does not take those with the "dual diagnosis" of both addiction and a major mental illness.
The other part of the reason is the discipline of the program.
Reprimands include having your head shaved (but not for the women) and being demoted to the lowest rank, losing all hard-earned privileges.
"You're not going to get someone's life together by pampering and coddling them," says Nash. "We're firm but fair. And the best interests of the person is always the goal."
But it's not all regiment and reprimand. There are outings on a fishing boat, step aerobics classes in the morning, field trips to sporting events and lavish, jubilant holiday parties.
"We really go all out at Christmas," says senior house manager Becky Harrison. "It's important to re-teach people the significance of a family holiday and how to have fun without alcohol and drugs."
One element of Habilitat that is particularly striking, given the public discussion of drug addiction, is that the organization does not take any state or federal money.
"We are very proud of the fact that we are self-reliant," says Nash. "How can we teach by example if we ourselves are dependent?" Katada asks. Residents partly earn their way through the program by working in the facility and on the outside in one of the Habilitat industries. Habilitat does receive grants from private funds, does a number of annual fund-raising activities like Christmas tree sales, and staffs a marketing and acquisitions department.
In 1990, 10 percent of Habilitat residents were crystal meth addicts while cocaine users made up 45 percent of the residents. These days, most addicts who come to Habilitat are crystal meth users. In 2002, meth users made up 79 percent of the residents.
"Although the type of substance abuse has changed over the years, the underlying causes have not," says Katada. Thus, treatment is based on the same principles, though crystal meth addicts have problems that other drug users don't. "They're enabled, entitled. They have problems with memory loss," says Nash. "They need a lot of help."
Most of the staff of Habilitat are graduates of the program. They're true believers who frequently quote their founder Vinny Marino.
"Vinny would say that Habilitat won't work for everyone, but it CAN work for anyone," Nash says. "Desperation and sincerity are our prerequisites."
Lee Cataluna's column runs Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at 535-8172 or lcataluna@honoluluadvertiser.com.
