Big Rock Canadian Mountains

From the March/April issue of Modern Drunkard magazine (and eerily similar to this piece at Breitbart.com) comes this eye-opening tale:

Winos Benefit From Free Drinks

Free drinks may improve the health and lives of homeless alcoholics and reduce their run-ins with police, according to a study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

Let me be perfectly clear about this. Free drinks improve the health and lives of everybody...especially me. I must admit that nearly all of my run-ins with police occurred directly after consuming copious amounts of alcohol, very little of which was obtained free of charge. Perhaps if my cheapskate friends would have loosened the purse strings that night at Al's Bar and Cheddarwurst Parlor 15 years ago I wouldn't have spent two hours in a St. Louis Park jail. But I digress...

Seventeen chronic alcoholics who drank upwards of 46 glasses a day over the past 35 years, including cheap substitutes such as mouthwash that often led to unconsciousness, were offered a glass of wine or sherry each hour, from 7:00am to 10:00pm at an Ottawa shelter over five to 24 months.

Whoa...upwards of 46 glasses a day!? That, my friends, is some serious drinking. My personal best has to be close to half of that but there's no way I could sustain such a pace for 35 days, let alone 35 years. Chalk up yet another skill at which Canada's homeless have bettered me.

Reading on, we find that of the seventeen test winos:

Three quit, three died of alcohol-related disease before the end of the study, but 11 others reported "a markedly decreased consumption of beverage and non-beverage alcohol, and most reported improved sleep, hygiene, nutrition and health," according to the authors of the study.

Three of them quit? I can forgive the three that died, but why in the world would any self respecting alcoholic, Canadian or otherwise, quit a program that provides them with free booze? Perhaps the quality of the hooch was not quite up to some of their quite rigorous standards. I'm sure that once you go the "non-beverage alcohol" route to getting soused, it's very hard to go back to the more traditional means and methods.

As for the "improved sleep, hygiene, nutrition and health" of our friends, I can guarantee it was because they no longer had to worry about where their next drink was coming from. Without that horrific burden to consume their every waking thought, more time could be spent sleeping last night's bender off...or simply combing the sand out of their hair.

The article concludes with this little teaser:

The program will soon be expanded to 24 beds and health care providers in other Canadian provinces and the United States have expressed interest in setting up their own.

When this little experiment comes to my neck of the woods, you better believe I'm going to be ready. I knew all those times I dressed up as a bum for Halloween as a youth would not be wasted. I guess I just won't need to use the Canadian accent now.