John had lived in the back of a downtown Toronto community center for as long as anyone could remember. "He was there for the past 14 years as far as we've been able to tell," says Art Manuel, the director of the harm reduction program at Toronto’s Seaton House homeless shelter. "He was blind when we found him - drinking anything he could find that had alcohol in it."

Manuel’s harm reduction program took John in to care for him in a way that was unheard of until just a few years ago. In 1996, a coroner’s investigation into the freezing deaths of three homeless men led to the start of the Seaton House program. Recommendations in the report ordered authorities in Toronto to provide an alternative to abstinence-based recovery. "No one was allowed in shelters if they were drunk and certainly not if they were still drinking," he says. "That left many of the most vulnerable people in the system on the streets drinking whatever they could find." The neighborhood stores around the Seaton House shelter stock plentiful supplies of mouthwash, Lysol, cheap colognes, and Chinese cooking wines - the drinking stuff of the bottom-end alcoholic. As a long-time drunk once taught me: "Mix it with orange pop and you can drink anything." More...