Feb. 4, 2019 — The Sobering Center in downtown Austin started 24/7 operations on Oct. 1 and so far has seen more than 600 clients. Its goal, executive director Rhonda Patrick said, is to provide police and emergency officials with an alternative, safe place to take people under the influence instead of jail or the emergency room. Its services are free.
On an October afternoon last year, Darcy Donovan found herself alone in the Rundberg neighborhood of North Austin, miles away from home and four days into a bender that had torn her from her latest stretch of sobriety. She had lost her job and blown $400 during this relapse. Losing three family members in a period of about a year caused her to spiral.
“I was at the point where I was afraid I was going to die because I was drinking so much,” Donovan said. “I didn’t want to die, but I didn’t care if I woke up.” Unsure where to turn, Donovan called 9-1-1, and when police arrived, she asked them to help her however they could.
Just a few months ago, officers would have had no other option but to arrest her for public intoxication. But, after the Austin Sobering Center opened this October, they had another choice — one that local leaders say is better.
The center, at 1213 Sabine St. in downtown Austin, opened in August, started 24/7 operations on Oct. 1 and so far has seen more than 600 clients. Its goal, executive director Rhonda Patrick said, is to provide police and emergency officials with an alternative, safe place to take people under the influence instead of jail or the emergency room. Its services are free.
While the center is still collecting and analyzing data, officials at the Austin Police Department and Austin-Travis County EMS say that the center is helping their units run more efficiently and care for the publicly intoxicated in a more compassionate way.
As Patrick describes it, it’s a win-win situation: Officers spend less time arresting and booking people whose only crime is public intoxication and get back on the streets more quickly. Hospital staffers, meanwhile, can focus their attention on patients in need of care they can receive only in that setting.
For their part, clients of the center avoid criminal charges and expensive hospital bills and are instead counseled and connected with long-term treatment and other support for substance use and mental health disorders.
A stay at the center can often be a wake-up call, Patrick said, causing some clients to be more willing than usual to listen to their options and seek out help. “That’s the real benefit,” she said. “When people are having difficulties and when they’re at risk for having difficulties … we have a mechanism to identify that and provide them with proactive intervention.”
Austin Sobering Center: by the numbers
Officials at the recently opened Austin Sobering Center said the facility treated 695 clients from September through December. Other numbers of note for the center during that period:
493: Male clients, 71 percent of the total.
202: Female clients, 29 percent of the total.
34: Average age of clients.
0.23: Average blood-alcohol content of clients.
114: Clients who were homeless.
54: Clients who were students.
Source: Austin Sobering Center
On a recent early Saturday morning, officer Brian Huckaby happened upon a 24-year-old Austin man who was so drunk after a night of partying on Sixth Street that he came very close to urinating on a homeless man.
“Can I go home?” the man, who asked not to be identified for his privacy, repeatedly asked Huckaby, to which the officer repeatedly answered “no.” “Why not?” he asked.
“Because you’re not in any position to take care of yourself,” Huckaby said. “You’re a danger to yourself and others. … Do you want to be cooperative and go to the sobriety center? That way you face no criminal charges and stuff — and if you’re cooperative in there, you just go to sleep for a few hours and then you go home?” After a few more exchanges, Huckaby persuaded the man to go to the center.
The man had already been arrested and charged twice — once in 2016 and again in 2018 — with driving while intoxicated. In the 2016 case, he pleaded no contest and was sentenced to 20 days jail time and 180 days of a suspended license. A third DWI charge rises from a misdemeanor to a third-degree felony under state law.
“It’s helpful in the fact that it gives you a chance to not go to jail,” the man said after his stay at the center. “In my specific case, that was definitely helpful.”
By law, an officer’s only other option for a publicly intoxicated person aside from jail or the hospital is to release them to a responsible adult. If someone is alone but does not need medical attention, that increases the odds an officer will take them to the center, Huckaby said. As much as they might want to, he said, officers seldom have time to wait for the person to call for a ride or reconnect with lost friends.
Even when officers release people to friends or a ride, “you’re just kind of throwing to the wind that he gets home safe,” Huckaby said. The sobering center instead gives officers like Huckaby peace of mind that the person is in good hands.
“Even if they’re friends, they’re going to take them home, they’re going to lay them down on the bed, and they’re going to bed — well, who’s watching this person (to make sure) that they don’t vomit and choke?” he said. “That’s why this (the Austin Sobering Center) is a good option.”
Austin’s Sobering Center is one of about 35 in the country, though their set-ups vary, said Shannon Smith-Bernardin, president of the National Sobering Collaborative, a nonprofit coalition of the institutions. For example, some accept only people under the influence of alcohol, while others, like Austin’s, accept people under the influence of drugs as well. And some only take clients from police, while others, like Austin’s, take from police and EMS.
Smith-Bernardin, a registered nurse who from 2007 to 2017 worked at the San Francisco Sobering Center, said she has conducted some of the only research that exists on these centers in the U.S., and few widely available cost analyses have been done. That’s why one of the main goals of the National Sobering Collaborative is to encourage centers to collect and share data on their progress, she said.
“Every year, tens of thousands of people are going to sobering centers,” Smith-Bernardin said. “And it’s pretty impressive, but literally (almost) no one knows anything about it except our tiny little crew in the middle of it all.”
Austin’s center was a joint project between Travis County and the city of Austin. The county covered the cost of renovations of the former medical examiner’s office at about $887,500, and the city is covering the center’s annual $1.7 million operating budget.
The Austin metro area has one of the highest rates of binge drinking among adults in the state, according to data from the Texas Department of State Health Services.
Arresting and treating people for public intoxication can be extremely costly for local police and hospitals. The average ambulance ride costs $876; the average jail booking costs $152; and the officer time per booking costs $55 to $97, state data show.
The center’s goal is for drop-off to take eight minutes. So far, law enforcement drop-offs average about four minutes and 23 seconds, and EMS workers average about 8½ minutes, Patrick said. About 71 percent of clients have been brought by law enforcement so far, and 29 percent have been brought by EMS. A booking at the Travis County jail, by comparison, takes at least a couple hours.
Sgt. Maria Calagna has been the supervisor of the contingent of officers that patrol Sixth Street for about two years and has been with the department for 11 years. Calagna and Chief Brian Manley said use of the sobering center has allowed officers to get back on the streets faster. “It gives us a place where we can take them where we know they’re going to be taken care of,” Calagna said.
Clean clothes and counseling
One of the biggest hurdles in the first few months of opening a sobering center is raising awareness in the community, Patrick said.
That’s why when the drunken man from Sixth Street entered the building with police on that recent early Saturday morning and was met by a sobering center staff member in scrubs, one of the first things the staffer made sure to say was, “You’re not in trouble.”
During the intake process, sobering center staff members assess clients’ intoxication, based on criteria — such as their blood-alcohol content, the type of substance ingested and their vital signs — and give them a wristband color-coded to designate their level of needed care, Patrick said. The levels determine how often a person’s vital signs are monitored and where they are placed for observation, she said. People of the same levels are generally grouped in the same area.
The center has a smaller room for women with eight cots and a larger room for men with 32 cots. The rooms also have recliners for those who prefer to sit. From the moment clients enter the center, Patrick said, the center’s goal is to make them feel comfortable and respected. Staff members give them water and a light snack, allow them to take a shower, and wash their clothes or provide them with a clean set if needed.
“When they have sobered up, we don’t want them to also feel badly,” Patrick said. “They already feel physically bad, there’s a lot of stuff going on emotionally, and then we don’t want to put dirty clothes on them. It’s just a human, compassionate thing to do.”
Clients are never left unsupervised, Patrick said; there is always at least one staff member in the room, and staffers monitor feeds from cameras throughout the center as well.
“Once they sober up, we spend a lot of time talking to them,” Patrick said. “People don’t generally go out and go, ‘I’m going to get really super drunk and pass out on the sidewalk.’ There’s usually a lot of other things going on that we find out about. A lot of stress, just a lot of things, a lot of grief. … So, we’re really talking to them about those risk factors and being mindful of that when they’re going out and when they’re drinking.”
The average length of stay for people intoxicated with alcohol is eight hours; with opiates, sedatives and benzodiazepines 14 to 16 hours; and for other drugs about 12 hours, Patrick said. The longest stay so far was 26 hours, and the shortest was about two to three hours.
To be released, a person has to no longer be a danger to himself, herself or others, have a blood-alcohol content lower than 0.08 and be able to safely get home either on their own or with a ride.
Before leaving, every client has to meet with a counselor to talk about what led them to the center that night and whether they might have a larger problem that needs to be addressed. If the latter is the case, Patrick said, the counselor will help the person get connected to treatment and other services.
“We can’t force anything on anyone,” Patrick said. “We can force some education, because we do say the price of admission here is you have to listen to our education blip, but surprisingly enough most people — the majority of people — they ask questions. They want to know. They talk to us about what’s happening.”
Bridge to treatment
After spending the night at the sobering center, Donovan was connected with Cenikor, an Austin substance use disorder treatment center. The very next morning, she went directly there and completed first a detoxification, then a treatment program. Donovan now lives in a sober living home and says she’s been alcohol-free ever since and recently started a new job.
“A lot of people who have a substance abuse problem don’t always know where to find treatment,” said Nick Vaché, facility director at Cenikor, one of the center’s many community partners. The sobering center “can really help them navigate getting into treatment,” he said.
OPINION: Beyond saving dollars, Austin Sobering Center can save lives
Donovan is one of three people who have been admitted to Cenikor after being referred by the Austin Sobering Center. Donovan and one other person successfully completed the program.
“If it wasn’t for the Sobering Center, I don’t know where I would be, because they really stepped up and did much more than I expected,” Donovan said. “Doing my laundry was great. Giving me something to eat was great. But that was only a temporary thing. They got me to where I am: well on the road to a recovery.”
As Donovan left the center to go to Cenikor that October morning, she recalls she had parting words for the staff.
“I told them they hadn’t heard from the last of me … and it would be a positive ending,” she said. “That I had no other choice but to go up.”
