nuisance and moral weakness. You go into a mental institution because of a relapse of any mental disease you have, and they'll treat you like a patient who needs further help. If you go back as an alcoholic they want to throw you out or won't accept you at all. The cost of running a place like mine, which houses 25 men, last year amounted to $43,000, and we have 25 to 27 men living there and eating 3 meals daily, plus snacks.

Mr. DOWDY. The turnover you said was two weeks?

Mr. DONAHUE. The time element in our place, Mr. Chairman, would depend on the man's mental capacity for recovery-his time of drinking-and as an individual this would have to be treated as such. We run our patients anywhere from a three-month period to a nine-month period of time in the House, and this is freedom in coming and going on a daily basis. There are compulsory AA meetings, and we have a psychiatrist with the House who donates his services; we also utilize the public facilities in the State of Massachusetts for the out-patient and psychiatric treatment that might be necessary for the various individuals we have, particularly the Mass. General Hospital.

For employment opportunity, we use the State Employment Office; and, as in one question which I think Mr. Steiger brought out, we get them into the Mass. Training & Development Program, a training and a retraining program, Federally-financed, which utilizes the State unemployment agencies. We have placed five men through this facility in the past year, and they have all gone to work on the job they were training for.

The one big problem I find, with arrest for drunkenness, is that when you get a man with a lot of arrests on his record for public drunkenness, that when you go to get this man a job, and the employer asks for his police record, which is quite frequently requested in the City of Boston-and I noticed in the paper yesterday, Washington, D.C. is having the same problem-(we have one man in the House with 73 arrests for public drunkeness)—and when I try to get him a job they take a look at that record and they won't have anything to do with him regardless of the mental or physical shape he may be in at the time he presents himself to the employer. The lack of stability on the job is characteristic of most active alcoholics, so this is another area where you have a problem.

I think the drunk arrest itself is probably the biggest deterrent you have for re-employment of the sober alcoholic.

We also mention Antabuse here. We do use it at Hope House. Dr. Ruth Fox in New York has published a paper that says if you use Antabuse for a sufficient period of time, and this varies, it gives the man sufficient time to get mentally sober. You can be physically sober in 24 to 72 hours. Mental sobriety may take longer, and that is where such an agent might give the man a sufficient deterrent not to take a drink. Knowing the type of physical disabilities he will receive as a result of taking a drink will quite frequently stop him and make him think. And if it keeps him sober long enough-I personally would use anything, if I thought it were going to keep, or help to keep, a man sober long enough to recognize his alcoholic problem himself, and recognize that people are willing to help him, as long as he is willing to help himself.

In my closing remark, I have submitted this Bill, H.R. 6143, to the Massachusetts Legislators to have it implemented in our State,

because of all the bills I have read, it is the finest one I have come across. It covers everything I can possibly think of, and I wish I had had it a couple of months ago when we were submitting bills to the State Legislation in Massachusetts because none of the bills that we have written up there cover the multiple problems that this particular bill does. Now, we might as well help to try to get it in, under suspension of the Rules or something, when I get back to Boston, Massachusetts. But I am certainly going to do everything I can to try to have this Bill implemented there, and I hope Washington, D.C., will set up a pilot program for this because I know very well how much money this costs. In the State of Massachusetts it is high. We have the second highest rate of alcoholism in the Nation in the City of Boston. San Francisco is first. We have 25,000 arrests a year in the City of Boston on Alcoholism, so it is quite an expensive problem, and our police department-and we have the busiest police. station in the United States, Division 4 in the South end of Boston. And the biggest part of their arrests, if you will listen to their calls. during the night are for drunkenness or things relating to drunkenness and alcoholism.

Mr. Dowdy. I notice in your statement, about Hope House that, at least, on readmission-and probably that is true on admission-you analyze the man's record, and probably his statements, to determine that he has a desire for sobriety before you admit him.

Mr. DONAHUE. His attitude on a relapse, in the House. If a man comes to my door and says, "I'm an alcoholic and I want to do something about it," I take him in on this basis alone. If the man has a relapse while in the house I talk to him. What we usually do for a psychological effect is, there are a few rooming houses in our area where I can take a man and put him up for the night. These are flop houses, flea bags, call them what you will. We put him there if he is willing to go, and the psychological effect of being dumped in a 2 by 4 room with cockroaches and whatnot on the first night you are drunk has a tremendous therapeutic effect. When you realize that you have been in a place where you have had clean sheets, somebody to talk to and one of the most important things for an alcoholic is to get away from the loneliness. Once again he finds himself in a lonely room all by himself with nobody to talk to, nothing else to do. A man coming back to the house the following day, sober, and if he wants to stay sober he is taken back in. As many times as a man get's drunk we have we have not set any figure that a man could not come in. The only requirement is that his attitude is that he wants to try to stay sober again, and I will give him as many chances as he desires and I have room to take him in.

Admission is dependent strictly on the rooms that are available. Because we have one of the few places in the State of Massachusetts, we have an awful lot of people calling up every single day from every institution that you can conceive of asking if we can take certain people from their institution.

Mr. Dowdy. The person has got to recognize his problem and want to do something about it.

Mr. DONAHUE. Yes.

Mr. Dowdy. If he doesn't do that you can't help him, really, can

you.

Mr. DONAHUE. The only ones we have of that nature, Mr. Dowdy, is usually the man from the penal institution. When we have a man from a penal institution he comes out under AA supervision to a recovery house and a part of his parole is the attendance under my jurisdiction. I recently appeared in Newton Court-and I am not a lawyer; and I had a man released to my custody for a period of three months. They are going to stay the disposition of this case for a period of three months, as long as this man stays sober and complies with what I want him to do as far as his sobriety is concerned. Mr. Dowdy. Thank you, sir. Mr. Hagan.

Mr. HAGAN. I want to express my appreciation for this enlightening testimony which you have given this morning, and I would like to add, Mr. Chairman, that Mr. Donahue is in my opinion one of the unsung heroes. He knows the problem first hand, he recovered from his problem, and he is spending his every day and hour working and doing a wonderful job up there, and it means a whole lot to have you make the statements you did about this proposed legislation, Mr. Donahue.

I believe, is it not true, our Distinguished Speaker of the House knows very much about the work you are doing and is quite interested in it.

Mr. DONAHUE. Yes, and he also has donated $25 to me. The Speaker has been very instrumental in doing a lot of favors for me because his constituents, as I imagine your constituents, quite frequently call up and say, "I'm getting fired from my job, can you do anything for me?" Or, "I'm looking for a job." "I want to get out of jail." Or, "I want to get into a hospital." Or the wife calls up. The family is usually the one hurt the most by alcoholism, and these are the people seeking the legislators-whether they be State or Federalasking for the help of the legislators to see if they can assist them with their husband and the alcoholic problems.

I know the Speaker has called me many times and asked me to help somebody from my locale since we both come from the same section, South Boston, which is a very close-knit little society of Irishmen by themselves.

Mr. HAGAN. Mr. Donahue, I'll close my remarks by saying that I predict that in the very short future you and all the rest of the folks who have been going this battle alone mostly in this country are going to have a lot of help and a lot of wonderful programs, so that this great mass of people who compose the major helps in this country will get much more of the type help that you have been getting. Thank you, sir.

Mr. DONAHUE. Thank you, sir.

Mr. Dowdy. Mr. Donahue, I'm sure it is correct, you have no provision for women alcoholics?

Mr. DONOHUE. We have a provision in our charter, Mr. Dowdy, but the cost of setting up one of these places is a little on the fantastic side and I have had to scrounge through the Salvation Army and various people I know just to get the beds and the equipment that we need to fill this place. We have no State support from this. We had a grant from the Ford Foundation through ABCD, $3,000 last year for furniture and supplies. This is the only private-this is the only outside money that has been given to me for help in this problem in this House.

We certainly will, in the future, if we can, set up a place for women because there is a great need for it. A woman alcoholic has a much more difficult time than a man does because everybody looks down on her. Even alcoholics in AA do not give a woman alcoholic the break that they do a man.

It is

Mr. DowDY. I've got an impression that probably the most secret thing in the United States is the number of women alcoholics. hidden by their families and friends. And I know all the figures show that the greatest number of alcoholics known are men.

Mr. DONOHUE. 3 to 1.

Mr. DowDY. I also feel the figure, if exposed is going to show a great number of women. I know the families help them conceal their alcoholism. I think that is a serious problem.

Mr. DONOHUE. If you get into the suburbs, Mr. Dowdy, you will find in AA meetings in the suburbs your women alcoholics will quite frequently outnumber your male members in the group. As people migrate from the cities to the suburban areas, you are not going to get a bigger alcoholic problem but you are getting a bigger pill problem, on the tranquilizers and whatnot that are being used. The alcoholic ratio used to be 5 to 1 a few years back, and I would say it is at least 3 to 1, and possibly closer to 2 to 1 at the rate it is going now.

Mr. DoWDY. Is there really-well, for instance, any of these programs that have been proposed-has there been anything effectively done as far as women alcoholics are concerned? Or proposed?

Mr. DONOHUE. I-There are proposals that are out, but I think you will find every thing is in a proposal state. I think there have also been some Bills passed on this, but there has been no monies passed to finance it.

Mr. Dowdy. Mr. Steiger.

Mr. STEIGER. I would also like to express my very warm congratulations, Mr. Donohue, for taking the time to testify before us.

Do I understand from your colloquy that you have determined that there is a correlation between large families and alcoholism?

Mr. DONAHUE. No, Mr. Steiger, but up to a few years ago your average alcoholic-all figures have been released-has been a single, mother-oriented type of individual, mother-dependent type. This has been true, from all the figures I know of myself on the personal work I have done-I worked as a U.S. Post Office Clerk and I find that we had quite a few alcoholics there and I find the married menwe had as many, if not more, married men that were alcoholics, than were what we call the single man alcoholic. All figures for years would always put the alcoholic on skid row. There are only 3 to 5 percent of your alcoholics on skid row, from my figures and the figures I have read for the past few years-from California to Canada. The alcoholics that I run into have been family men that have still some semblance of a family relationship in many instances. The only thing we have to do is try to restore this. This is what we have been able to do.

This idea of the skid row alcoholic-this is not the man we are trying to face. I have two Harvard graduates in my House, I have doctors in my house. I have had every element of society that you want to speak of. Some of them have been single men but the majority-there are actually right now 32 men in the House and

four are single and the rest are all married men; and they are all working, because I believe work is part of the therapy in recovery from alcoholism.

Mr. STEIGER. Your point then in mentioning the five member family was to simply dispel this illusion of the single man?

Mr. DONAHUE. Only the single man living in a room, or living with a mother and being dependent on a mother.

Mr. STEIGER. Frankly, Mr. Donahue, I fail to make the connection between the family man and the fact that you say loneliness is such a significant factor.

Mr. DONAHUE. The alcoholic could be lonely in a crowd. I mean I have seen myself many times sitting in a bar and I couldn't communicate with the people. This is the type of thing I'm referring to; the guilt and the fear and the remarks that an alcoholic knows. You get on a round-robin where you are drinking to forget and in forgetting you end up drinking more. Once the physical compulsion of alcohol starts in, when you put a drink in you it is like priming the old pump. Once it starts going it is going to become a great problem, and the great fear of withdrawal becomes a traumatic thing with you. You don't know what's going to happen; you are scared. A real fear that you have, an unknown fear which I don't think anybody can put into words. I know I can't, but I know I had it myself. What this fear is or was I did not know. I don't have it today. I don't have the desire for a drink today, and I don't worry too much about drinking today. I found I can live a life without alcohol and enjoy a life without alcohol. I'm living a much better life than I ever knew before and this is what I find with many many people. The figures that we use with AA and outside are rather loose. There is nobody that really knows what the true figures are; but we do have cases that do prove that alcoholism is a preventable thing. It can be arrested, and it is a beatable disease. And with the cooperation of the medical, the judiciary, and all the forces we can get together on this thing, we can solve this problem, because it is getting bigger and bigger.

I think if the true death rate from alcohol was ever put on the record it would be the number one killer in the country. Because anybody sitting here knows, who has any access to any records-the insurance companies years ago wouldn't pay off on insurance if death was due to alcohol. These insurance companies have changed their figures. They are treating alcoholism today. Kemper Insurance was a pioneer in the field. My own father died from alcoholism and yet I don't believe alcoholism appears in the death certificate. Pneumonia, heart disease, anything alse, but don't put the stigma of alcoholism on my record.

Many people I talk to, the first thing they hit you with, "He can't be an alcoholic." The executives I work with and in the post office department that had the disease of alcoholism, they were scared to death that somebody was going to mention alcoholism. We have seen many men die down here in Washington, D.C., in Mass., etc. in the streets, every place else, from alcoholism. Everybody around knew it but nobody talked about it or did anything constructive.

We have the same thing all over the country. Everybody is going to stick his head in the sand and hope that this great big problem is going to go away, which it isn't.

Mr. STEIGER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.