Map showing the distance between Morgantown, WV and North Central Regional Jail the distance is 68 miles.

The distance between Morgantown and the North Central Regional Jail is 68 miles. 

A public Sobering Center may soon be available in Morgantown.

The Sobering Center will provide a safe environment for intoxicated individuals to sober up and begin recovery, said Daniel Shook, director of Mountain Safe in the WVU Injury Control Research Center. It aims to decrease alcohol-related injuries and enhance public safety by providing an alternative to jail and the emergency room.

Shook works with injury prevention in the Morgantown community as well as throughout the Appalachian region, and he’s helping make the Morgantown Sobering Center a reality.

“The Sobering Center, or Sobriety Center, is a place where people who are acutely intoxicated can go and safely recover without fear of further medical problems, injury or crime being applied to them,” Shook said.

Shook said that sobering centers are fairly new, with only 28 in the United States.

“This is not a safety issue throughout the state of West Virginia,” Shook said. “It’s in Morgantown, and it’s because we’re a university town, but we are geographically put in the places where we have a lot of access to our downtown or to alcohol.”

Morgantown city code allows bars to stay open longer than other surrounding states. Students from surrounding state universities come drink in Morgantown because the environment downtown is constructed so that people can drink an excessive amount of alcohol and be easily admitted into bars, Shook said.

Emergency medical services or law enforcement usually handle intoxicated individuals, Shook said. He said on weekends the emergency department at Ruby Memorial Hospital have hallways packed with intoxicated people the police have taken there, and the hospital doesn’t have the resources to handle them.

Shook said this can also lessen the problem that police and emergency responders have dealing with intoxicated people when they could be responding to actual emergency situations.

Another issue is the financial impact that’s imposed on the county by sending these people to jail.

“We really want to look at this from a financial standpoint. This is very costly to the county to transport, arrest and deal with drunk individuals,” Shook said. “A lot of resources go into taking care of these individuals who are coming out of bars intoxicated.”

He said about 10 percent of all emergency room calls are alcohol-related and many of those are not emergency cases, just a place where somebody can be taken.

Currently, intoxicated individuals who are arrested are sent to the North Central Regional Jail, which is about 60 miles away from Morgantown, Shook said. Students could be sent to the Sobering Center instead of the regional jail.

There will be criteria in place to determine treatment for people and make sure they’re medically stable to come to the Sobering Center, Shook said.

They can spend the night at the center and later be assessed to see if they’re medically stable enough to be released.

Students will be medically monitored for simple things like their vital signs, heart rate and blood pressure while at the center. Officials are also hoping to create a follow up with social services a few days later to see if students can receive some help for treatment, Shook said.

Shook liked the idea of working with the WVU School of Nursing and letting nursing students, or students who want to become nurse practitioners, assist at the Sobering Center. It could also extend beyond nursing students to include social science, neuroscience or overdose and substance prevention students.

“We’re hoping to make this a community service and something that really could save the lives of these people but also provide an educational experience for people at the university,” said Shook.

There will also be supervision with law enforcement coming from Morgantown Police Chief Ed Preston’s personnel, Shook said.

Preston said in an email that he had no status update on the project.

“We do not have a sobering center or intox shelter yet, therefore I can not make any statements,” he wrote. “My apologies, but I am not in a position to comment on a working proposal.”

Funding for the Sobering Center will mainly rely on public contributions, Shook said. Ideally, officials would like to have a volunteer staff, social service workers and psychologists paid or on call.

“The county stepped up this year and has granted me a $25,000 fund, which would go toward purchasing equipment or whatever we need to help make this thing function,” Shook said.

Preston wants to turn one of the first floor training rooms at the Morgantown Public Safety Building into the Sobering Center, Shook said, where there will be separate rooms for men and women.

In two weeks, Shook said he is meeting with Morgantown Deputy Chief Eric Powell, deans at WVU and Dr. Toni Rudisill to put the health care component into the Sobering Center project.

Rudisill is an epidemiologist at WVU, and Shook said she will be determining how well the Sobering Center works when it’s here.

Based from the data shown in states with sobering centers around the country, Shook said it’s proven that the center will save the county money and ensure safety for intoxicated students.

Correction: The wrong map appeared in the original online article. The map should lead from Morgantown to 1 Lois Lane, Greenwood, WV 26415, which is the address for the North Central Regional Jail.