By Thea Jarvis

Over a year ago, when Cafe 458 director Rev. A.B. Short looked for a worthwhile add-on to his restaurant he and his advisory board had several options.

They could go on with business as usual in their Edgewood Avenue location, a renovated store that backs up to the historic Auburn Avenue district of downtown Atlanta, or they could open a second cafe in another Atlanta neighborhood or in another city. A third option was to enlarge the services of Cafe 458: to expand food and fellowship to include the healing of troubled spirits.

A consensus was reached and the Cafe 458 Recovery Program, day treatment for homeless persons in recovery from drug and alcohol addiction, was begun. As of January, 1991, the program counts seven participants who have made a six-month commitment to daily therapy, job opportunities, and clean, sober living.

“The key is smallness,” A.B. Short said, adding that the model used by Cafe 458 emerged with input from a broad base of Atlanta’s treatment professionals.

Doug Satkofsky, a health educator and counselor for the state of Georgia’s Street Team for AIDS Reduction (STAR), heads the cafe’s recovery program. He is the venture’s only paid consultant; other professional help, including weekly commitments to lead 90-minute therapy groups, is voluntary.

“We’re trying to encompass everything, the physical, spiritual, holistic,” said Satkofsky.

“(The men) love it. Most have been in treatment before and have been exposed to some form of standard drug treatment. They are receptive to anything that might work.”

Although the Twelve Step philosophy of alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous has been incorporated into the recovery model, therapy sessions allow for a range of recovery tools, including guided imagery, reality therapy, massage, role-playing, life skills. The goal is to uncover and heal emotional pain masked by chemical addiction.

The approach involves “recovering lost identity, faith, family, race,” Doug Satkofsky explained, “releasing the inner child” who lives beneath the addiction.

The seven men currently active in Cafe 458’s Recovery Program form a core to which five more will be added at periodic intervals until a total of 12 is reached. Of the seven, five have been in treatment for over six weeks; the remaining two came into the program in late December.

“That’s a pretty significant time for someone on the street,” said Short, observing that most recovery programs have a time ceiling of 28 days. As progress in recovery continues, he explained, a halfway house will be incorporated into the program.

For now, recovery centers around a renovated red brick building on Edgewood, down the block and across the street from the cafe. Each morning around eight o’clock, the men arrive for an hour of relaxation, helping themselves to coffee from the kitchen pot, scanning the papers in the community room, listening to the radio, talking with friends. At nine, Doug Satkofsky comes in to lead some simple centering exercises that include meditation, prayer or spiritual reading.

On Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, two therapy sessions take up the shank of the morning. On Wednesdays, the men head for the Highland Club for a Narcotics Anonymous meeting. Lunch at 12:15 offers a break and a chance for light talk before work begins around one o’clock.

“Work is important in terms of keeping occupied,” Short is convinced. Moreover, “the work component is in house,” he said, narrowing the possibility of relapse in an atmosphere unsupportive of recovery.

Participants concentrate on tabletop assembly work at an hourly wage of five dollars. In December of last year, afternoons involved a mailout for Governor Zell Miller’s Inauguration Committee, folding, stuffing, stamping and posting invitations. This month, work began on a mailing project for Amoco Oil Company, and a similar contract has been negotiated with national Tire Wholesale (NTW) for February and March.

“We feel it’s a win-win situation for the business community,” said Short, who has “become the marketing person” for the program, hunting jobs and investigating funding. The men receive a fair wage and business is served by a job well done.

A modified banking system has been set up to facilitate savings and expenditures. Assisted by staff members, the men work out a weekly budget that allocates money for MARTA, snacks, cigarettes, savings. To foster ownership in their own recovery, the group was asked to consider donating a portion of their wages to offset the operating costs of the program. A tithe of 10 percent was agreed on, a figure which surprised and edified Short, who indicated that some participants wanted to give even more.

“I want it to be token,” he said. “It has to do with their recovery process,” not the cost of rent or renovation.

On days when no contract work is available, the men do odd jobs around the cafe or volunteer work in the community. This month, they helped youngsters from Our Lady of Lourdes School build a float for the Martin Luther King, Jr. parade.

When work is done, evening shelters provide a secure place of rest. Six men settle in at the Oakhurst Baptist night shelter, a drug and alcohol free atmosphere with individual rooms. A seventh man resides at Odyssey Three in Atlanta.

The “very supportive living environment” offered by these organizations means the men can more easily carry their recovery with them when they leave Cafe 458, Short feels.

Another piece of the support system is the requirements for outside NA and AA meetings the men must meet. Check sheets to verify their attendance are submitted to staff during the week. Cafe 458 is host to a large NA meeting on Friday nights, with more Twelve Step meetings planned for the future.

Evaluation sessions every six weeks, with input from the recovery professionals who conduct therapy, should insure the program’s vitality, said Short. Meanwhile, the recovery program is carrying out the directives of the mission statement drawn up by Cafe 458’s advisory board over two years ago, providing “a place for the empowerment and nourishment of those homeless men, women and children in our community who are striving to take their next steps in life,” offering “a variety of resources necessary for personal growth...in an atmosphere of safety, dignity and friendliness.”