Drydock for Sailors

Whether bossing a deck detail or spending hours in a saloon ashore, Frank, 47, a chief petty officer with 29 years of service in the U.S. Navy, thought that he could take care of himself. The Navy disagreed. Aware that the chiefs drinking was ruining both his health and his efficiency, his superiors assigned him to one of the service's newest installations, the Naval Alcohol Rehabilitation Center (ARC) at Little Creek, Va. At first, Frank objected to the assignment: "I'm a chief petty officer and nobody is going to push me around." Several weeks of therapy changed his attitude. "I'm an alcoholic," he acknowledged later. "But there's a cure for this thing."

Drinking during duty hours has long been outlawed in the armed forces; the daily grog ration, which persisted in the British navy until 1970, was abolished for U.S. seamen in the 19th century. But off-duty boozing is another matter. Waterfront bars stand ready to quench the thirsts of a long, dry cruise, while service clubs, which dispense top-quality liquor at bargain prices, encourage the heavy drinking that is almost endemic on military bases. The Pentagon estimates that there are between 50,000 and 115,000 alcoholics among the 2.4 million men in the armed forces, and alcoholism is a factor in the discharge of several hundred men each year. Alcoholism, in fact, is a far bigger problem than heroin addiction and other, newer forms of drug abuse. It is, of course, expensive in financial as well as human terms. A radar repairman lost to alcoholism costs about $10,000 to replace; the price of training a bomber pilot is around $200,000. Among sailors alone, the Navy estimates, the disease costs the taxpayers $45 million a year.

All three services conduct rehabilitation programs at base hospitals. Their efforts were encouraged in March by a Defense Department directive providing for treatment rather than punishment of the condition, and declaring that alcoholism, if arrested, would not disqualify a man for promotion and security clearance. So far, however, neither of the other services has gone as far as the Navy in drydocking problem drinkers. Besides the Little Creek center, which opened last January, the Navy has maintained a rehabilitation center at Long Beach, Calif., since 1967 and is opening a third at Great Lakes Naval Training Center this week. Fifteen smaller centers, attached to naval hospitals, will also be in operation by year's end.

Typical of the Navy's approach, Little Creek treatment combines strictness and sympathy. Navymen, assigned there either by doctor's orders or by request, are welcomed aboard with an orientation lecture and a physical examination. Then, provided that the checkup discloses no other medical problems such as high blood pressure or heart disease, they are started, sometimes for life, on daily oral doses of Antabuse, a drug that causes the body to react violently to alcohol. Those who drink after taking Antabuse usually experience a variety of unpleasant effects: stomach cramps, nausea, rapid heartbeat, sweating and chest pains.

Restricted to the base for the first two weeks of what is usually an eight-week stay, the sailors spend six hours a day in counseling sessions with ARC staffers, many of whom are themselves recovered alcoholics. The point of these conversations is to get the man to understand both the physical and psychological aspects of alcoholism. Five evenings each week, the center's 75 patients travel to civilian Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. On the sixth evening, they hold their own A.A. meeting at Little Creek, involving their wives whenever possible.

Most men arrive at Little Creek like Frank--sullen, hostile, and if they recognize that they have a drinking problem at all, convinced that they can deal with it themselves. All but a handful quickly realize that they are wrong. A former crewman from the U.S.S. Pueblo, who spent eleven months in a North Korean prison camp after his ship was captured, used to blame his drinking on the ordeal of incarceration. Only after therapy did he admit to himself that he would have needed help even without that trying experience. "You can only be a dummy for so long," he says now.

His fellow patients agree. Surrounded by posters warning of the dangers of alcoholism, they consume innumerable cups of coffee and smoke countless cigarettes while trying to help themselves--and each other--to stay away from booze, including beer, the downfall of about a sixth of the men at Little Creek.

Captain James Baxter, 47, an Annapolis graduate who is a director of the Navy's Alcohol Abuse Control Program, has good reason to believe that liquor can be beaten. He is a recovered alcoholic himself. Of the nearly 200 patients treated at Little Creek since it opened, only 30% have relapsed to the bottle; 70% are now performing regular duty--soberly.

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