Director defends rehab clients

Sober Living by the Sea runs part of its rehabilitation center out of a cheery blue clapboard house in Cannery Village.

The rows of telltale bike racks outside are a clue to rehab home activists that the place isn’t your typical office space or vacation home. Each client is issued a bicycle, or “beach cruiser,” when he or she arrives.

The largest and most visible residential drug and alcohol rehabilitation program in Newport Beach, Sober Living by the Sea has become a lightning rod for criticism.

Newport Beach City Council members could pass an ordinance as early as next month that would require operators to get a special-use permit to run programs like Sober Living by the Sea.

Angry Balboa Peninsula residents say such programs bring a criminal element into their neighborhoods and claim clients leave a trail of loud swearing, second-hand cigarette smoke and trash behind them.

The majority of rehabilitation home operators have shied away from commenting publicly on the issue — but Sober Living officials say it is a good neighbor.

“There’s a need for what we do here,” said Bill, executive director of Sober Living by the Sea. “Addiction is a deadly disease. It kills.”

Bill, who has been with the program for the past 15 years, did not want the Daily Pilot to use his last name.

He fears rehab home activists who say programs like Sober Living by the Sea are a nuisance to neighborhoods on Balboa Peninsula will track him down and attack him publicly for his work with the facility.

“I don’t want to put my family though that,” he said.

A row of computers lines the wall of one sunny, spacious room in the blue house. White vans take some of the residents each day to classes at Saddleback College and Orange Coast College.

“Addiction often disrupts people during the time in their life where they’re supposed to be going to school,” Bill said. “They can get back on track here.”

The average Sober Living by the Sea client is middle to upper-middle class, in their mid-20s, has at least a few years of college, and “comes from a good family,” said John Peloquin, vice president of operations for CRC Health Group, which owns Sober Living by the Sea.

Sober Living claims it has about 85 patients in treatment in Newport Beach, about 60% men and 40% women. About 6% of Sober Living’s clients are on probation of some sort, typically for driving under the influence, drug-related charges, “or other charges relating to their addiction,” Bill said.

Rehab home activists have often claimed rehabilitation centers in Newport Beach are primarily filled with criminals funneled through state-funded alternative sentencing programs that send felons to rehab instead of jail.

That’s not true, Bill said.

“When I see a house full of petite, young women going through treatment, I just don’t understand why they say these things.” But Balboa Peninsula resident Cindy Koller says she wishes Sober Living by the Sea and other Newport-based rehab programs would conduct background checks on their clients.

Koller said she’s had incoherent and apparently intoxicated rehab home residents show up on her doorstep late at night.

People have urinated in front of her house and on her fence, she says, and second-hand cigarette smoke and loud swearing on her block are constant reminders of who lives down the street.

“I don’t walk by myself anymore,” Koller said.

Despite rehab home activist claims, Sober Living by the Sea does not receive any funding from the state to administer any alternative sentencing programs, nor does any other in-patient rehabilitation center in Newport Beach, according to company research — numbers the Daily Pilot has confirmed with county officials.

The only rehabilitation center in Newport Beach that receives funding for alternative sentencing is Nancy Clark and Associates, an outpatient treatment center near Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian, according to the Orange County Health Care Agency, which administers state funds for alternative sentencing programs.

Most of the clients at Sober Living by the Sea in Newport Beach have already been through a medical detox program or another 30-day drug treatment program before they arrive in Newport Beach, Peloquin said.

Housed in duplexes and houses scattered across Balboa Peninsula, Sober Living clients learn how to function in everyday life without drugs, he said.

Clients cook and clean for themselves, do their own grocery shopping and attend daily counseling and group therapy sessions. They also do things like deep sea fishing or golfing, Peloquin said.

“Going to Disneyland or fishing can be therapeutic,” Peloquin said. “They’re learning how to have fun without drugs and alcohol.”

Recovering addicts do relapse, Bill said, but all of Sober Living’s clients are tested for drugs and alcohol use every 72 hours. Clients who get caught using are immediately removed from the program until they sober up, Bill said.

The program, which has been headquartered in Newport Beach for the past 21 years, was featured in the A&E; reality television show “Intervention,” which profiles people battling addiction and sends them to some of the country’s best rehab centers.

The show followed an alcoholic, middle-aged, interior decorator named Sylvia to treatment at Sober Living by the Sea.

The last few shots of the episode show a sober Sylvia walking across the sand in Newport Beach outside of one of Sober Living’s houses.

She’s still sober and doing well after completing treatment at Sober Living a year ago in September, said Jen Sneider, an associate producer for the show.

“We reach out to treatment centers we hear good things about from one of our interventionists, and we do a lot of research on where we send people,” Sneider said. “We were very lucky to get Sober Living by the Sea on board.”

Balboa Peninsula resident Bill Spitalnick has lived next door to a duplex Sober Living by the Sea, has rented to house male clients for the past 10 years and says the residents are quiet for the most part.

He says he has more problems with people who rent summer vacation homes on his block and throw loud parties.

“They’re quiet, because they’re sober,” Spitalnick said. “People are afraid of the unknown and what they don’t understand. There’s a certain stigma to people living in a rehab home.”

BRIANNA BAILEY may be reached at (714) 966-4625 or at brianna.bailey@latimes.com.