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Sahara Club struggling to help alcoholics, addicts
By ED RUNYAN
WARREN
Wayne Graham isn’t real sure whether establishing an alcohol-free and drug-free club in a former tavern has been a blessing or a curse.
On the one hand, he wants people to walk into the Sahara Club at 2345 Youngstown Road anticipating a good time, such as they might have had in the 1970s and 1980s, when the building housed Lefty and Jim’s, a popular nightclub.
On the other, there are recovering alcoholics and recovering drug addicts who associate the building with drinking and drugs and don’t think they’ll feel comfortable there.
But Graham, the volunteer manager of the Sahara Club, has tried to remove any reminders that his club was once a bar.
“There’s nothing in here that would even make you think it’s a bar,” he said.
In fact, the part of the building the Sahara Club occupies — the basement — was actually a banquet room called the Pompeii Room.
Each Friday night, around 200 people pack the Sahara Club to attend an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. Throughout the week, 14 more meetings of AA, Narcotics Anonymous and Al-Anon (for families of alcoholics) use the facility for meetings.
The club is having trouble coming up with the rent, Graham said. Because the club is the only alcohol-free and drug-free facility of its kind in the Mahoning Valley that offers leisure activities geared to the recovering alcoholic and drug addict and his or her family, Graham will be sad if the club has to close.
“You can’t play a game of pool without alcohol. There aren’t many places where you can dance without alcohol,” Graham said, adding that recovering alcoholics and recovering drug addicts need a place where they can have fun without the temptations of their addiction.
“The meetings last one hour,” Graham said of AA and NA. “After the meeting, there are 23 more hours. Where do they go?”
The Sahara Club has tried to answer that question by providing several nice pool tables, a table-tennis table, pinball machine, stage for dances and music, 12-foot television screen, and food.
There have been dances and spaghetti dinners, craft shows and other events.
The club tried to raise the money through club memberships, but few people could afford it.
The club made contact with various social agencies in an attempt to acquire a subsidy and have tried to apply for grants. So far, nothing has worked, said Ray Tesner, a member of the club’s board of directors.
“We want people who don’t have money to be able to come to the club,” Tesner said. “What we need is a safe haven — a place where people can go, for instance, when they are laid off.”
Maxine Miller of Brookfield, who serves as a volunteer food cashier at the club several times per week, said the Sahara Club is safe for families.
Donna Schufelt of Warren said she’d probably be homeless if not for the Sahara Club.
April Caraway, executive director of the Trumbull County Mental Health and Recovery Board, formerly Lifelines, said the Sahara Club fills an important need in the community.
For more information, call 330-399-4444.