Wine related articles
Can alcoholics drink, thrive? Canada program gives homeless wine therapy
By Laura Crimaldi
Sunday, February 26, 2006
It sounds like a recipe for disaster - a homeless shelter where the street’s most hardened alcoholics aren’t just allowed to booze, but get served wine on the hour from morning until night.
But the breakthrough Canadian program is not just raising eyebrows from Minnesota to Massachusetts - it apparently is delivering healthier lives to chronic alcoholics and cleaning up city streets once riddled with public drinking.
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The Shepherds of Good Hope shelter in Ottawa is home to the Managed Alcohol Program, where 25 homeless alcoholics are served up to 5 ounces of home-brewed wine hourly from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. under medical supervision.
Over 16 months, 17 MAP participants cut their emergency room visits by 35 percent, had half as many clashes with police and cut their drinking from 46 to eight drinks a day, the study said.
The approach is akin to the methadone-maintenance and needle-exchange programs used nationwide, but MAP has no U.S. equivalent. Seattle and Minneapolis are host to housing for homeless alcoholics where some on-site drinking is permitted.
The Canadian study has piqued interest among local professionals who work with alcoholics and the homeless, but most are blunt about its chances in the Bay State.
“The reality is there’d be an uproar, but we are doing a miserable job of treating people who are chronic drinkers,” said Dr. James O’Connell, head of Boston Health Care for the Homeless and a street doctor for more than 20 years.
The Executive Office of Health and Human Services, the agency that oversees homeless shelters, including “wet shelters,” where people are admitted even if they’ve been drinking, shot down the idea.“It appears more people died than conquered their alcoholism,” said spokesman Dick Powers, who was referring to the deaths of three participants in the Canadian study. “Maybe Amsterdam would be interested in something like this, but Massachusetts isn’t.”
MAP’s approach is typical of the harm-reduction treatment model.
“The point of harm reduction is to say: ‘I want to help you reduce harm related to substance abuse,’ ” said Michael Levy, clinical director at CAB Health & Recovery Services. “It doesn’t really help people not drink or not drug.”
Some MAP participants, however, were able to do so, Podymow said. For example, staff just kept adding grape juice to the wine of one participant until he was able to kick the bottle altogether.
That case is more exception than rule for chronic drinkers.
“It’s hard when you have been on the street for 10 years and drinking for 20,” said Lyndia Downie, president of the Pine Street Inn. “They’ve already lost everything. What can we take away? It’s already gone.”1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30
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