THE NEW STRATEGY OF SOBRIETY

Starting Oct. 1, A Team Of Local Agencies Will Test The State's Latest
Overhaul Of Substance-Abuse Programs

David DeVaul arrived in Savannah broke, alone and hopeless.

Forty years of, at-times, hard drinking had cost him a successful career, a
marriage and family. It had robbed him of his desire to create art.

"I had burnt all my bridges with my wife, my brother and all of my friends,
period," DeVaul recalled of that May morning when he arrived here in early
morning darkness.

Today, DeVaul has been sober for five months.

Through the Savannah Area Behavioral Health Collaborative, a partnership of
four local social-service agencies, he is overcoming the darkness of
substance abuse. It is a journey he must make each day for the rest of his
life.

He plans one day to teach art at the Savannah College of Art and Design.

People such as DeVaul should be the major beneficiaries of the second major
overhaul of Georgia's mental health-addictive diseases programs since 1993.
A new law opened the door this spring for alternative service-providers
such as the local collaborative to enter the field formerly controlled by
community service boards.

Passage of General Assembly's House Bill 498 followed a series of problems
with the way some regional boards were handling their service-delivery duties.

One of those, Tidelands mental health programs, sank in 2000 under a sea of
red ink. Another, Gateway mental health programs, which picked up
Tidelands, also faced criticism for the way it handled substance abuse and
mental health care in Chatham County.

Ralph McCuin, executive director of the Southeast Coastal Regional Board,
said Gateway's stewardship resulted in improved services to more patients,
but said "local politics" favored local providers and the collaborative met
that demand.

The Collaborative System

The Chatham County collaborative takes over for Gateway beginning Oct. 1,
bringing programs targeting chronic substance abusers to those most at need
- - basically the homeless, indigent or those lacking insurance or money for
care.

Under a state contract with Recovery Place of Savannah, the collaborative
is scheduled to treat 364 people monthly, or 4,368 a year, in return for
state funding of $2.1 million.

The contract is expected to be finalized this week, said Wayne Bland,
executive director of Recovery Place and collaborative vice president.

"It's not just the collaborative but it's the whole community," Bland said.
"This is the most exciting opportunity I've seen for the community to pull
together for folks in need."

That brings into play collaborative members Recovery Place, Union Mission
Inc., Memorial Health University Medical Center and the Chatham-Savannah
Authority for the Homeless

The collaborative's budget is about $4 million, with some of the needed
funds coming from Medicaid reimbursement, HIV funds, and state Temporary
Assistance for Needy Families programs.

The partnership takes homeless advocate Union Mission and the homeless
authority out of their core constituencies, moving them into a wider client
group.

"We want people taken care of," said Peter Doliber, Memorial's director of
community benefits and collaborative treasurer.

Members of the target group are uninsured, under-insured and underserved,
he said.

"They are not all homeless," Doliber said.

The Rev. Micheal Elliott, Union Mission president who will fill the same
role for the collaborative, said the group also has a proposal for adult
mental health services which could kick in early next year.

Behavioral health encompasses both substance abuse - drugs, alcohol or both
- - and mental health.

Or all of the above.

"The state wants alternatives," Elliott said.

He said Gateway, based in Darien, will continue to have a presence in
Chatham County in other areas.

It will continue to handle eight other coastal Georgia counties, including
Effingham and Bryan.

For the collaborative members, alcohol and substance abuse provide the same
challenge.

"We don't make a distinction because addiction is addiction," said Craig
Cashman, executive director of the Chatham-Savannah Authority for the Homeless.

"A drug is a drug is a drug."

Central to the collaborative's effort is marrying housing with treatment.

Cashman said housing is "critical to preventing relapse," a concept largely
unaddressed in other models.

"We need graduated levels of care," Cashman said.

The Artist, The Alcoholic

DeVaul, a 55-year-old Ohio native who holds a masters in fine arts from the
University of Cincinnati, fits the collaborative's target profile.

He is indigent, homeless and seeking help.

DeVaul started drinking at about age 15, part of the mid-'60s culture of
"sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll," he said.

"It was rocking and rolling by the time I was in school (University of
Cincinnati)," DeVaul said. "It was part of everybody I was around."

After graduate school, he began selling insurance.

Alcohol, not drugs, became his drug of choice,

"I was a functional alcoholic," he recalled of 10 years in sales. "I worked
for managers who were functional alcoholics."

Very successful and very alcoholic, he said.

When business bottomed out, he turned to art, opening an art studio and
loved it. His art work - pastels and oils - is on display in several
museums, 50 corporate collections and about 250 private collections, he said.

He married in 1989, but his drinking quickly got him in trouble with his wife.

In 1992, he got into Alcoholics Anonymous. He stayed sober for nine months
until a plane flight to Mali for a delayed honeymoon steered him to free
booze and a return to the bottle.

"At the time it was foolish pride that prevented me from stopping the
relapse early," he said.

His wife left in 2000.

So he found himself on a Greyhound bus at 3 a.m. in Savannah.

He wanted to go to Charleston, but ran out of money.

Once here, he wanted to get to the Salvation Army but a clerk at the bus
station sent him across the street.

"Across the street" meant Union Mission's Grace House on Fahm Street.

Then to J.C. Lewis Health Center for medical treatment. He found help
during a session on depression there.

"It was like a light went off in my head," DeVaul said. "I realized I had
been self-medicating (with alcohol) for 10-to-15 years."

That help came at J.C. Lewis and Recovery Place's Residential Stabilization
Unit. DeVaul is learning how to cope. He has found AA, sponsors and a will
to overcome addiction.

A partial hospitalization program is helping him to transition back into
the community.

"They give you the tools," DeVaul said.

He is in after-care, attending group sessions at Recovery Place's Drayton
Street offices and continuing with AA.

detoxification programs for between 150-200 people who enter the
collaborative through the hospital's emergency department.

CHATHAM-SAVANNAH AUTHORITY FOR THE HOMELESS: will provide case managers for
each person entering the collaborative to usher each to needed services.