Source: Toronto Star (Canada) Contact: http://www.thestar.com/ Copyright: 1998, The Toronto Star Pubdate: 27 Oct 1998 Section: Page B1 Author: Jim Coyle SEEDS OF HOPE SEWN ON 'DRUNK FARM' WHEN BORIS ROSOLAK arrived at work yesterday he found bottles of Lysol and Aqua Velva on his desk. No one was cleaning, nobody getting dolled up. They had been some clients' beverages of choice the night before. And they rather made Rosolak's point that there ought to be a better way. Rosolak manages Seaton House, the downtown men's hostel. On Wednesday, city council is to consider his plan to set up a farm outside town for homeless alcoholics. It would let up to 20 men live, work, learn a routine, while still being allowed to drink. It would produce cash crops and apparently be cost-effective. And, of course, it's already been dubbed a ``drunk farm'' and made fodder for 1,000 jokes. The sneering disappointed Rosolak. Maybe if others sat where he does, there would be less of it. Seaton House is where the casualties of life's harsher vicissitudes end up. Most days, success means keeping a lid on the place; to make progress is to make things less bad. Ergo, the hostel's philosophy of harm-reduction and Rosolak's hopes for the farm. For two years, a Seaton House annex has allowed some homeless alcoholics to bring bottles in at night. The theory is it does less damage to the client to drink alcohol than solvents, does less harm to the community when they are less drunk or less ill. Alcoholism is a complex disease, about which even the medical establishment is woefully ignorant. That heredity, neurochemical function, social custom, life trauma all contribute is a debate for others. To Rosolak, the question is simple: ``Are we going to watch him die in public for the next 20 years of his life? Or are we going to try to take more determined stances to try to get this guy help?'' To insist on absolute abstinence, he says, is to lose the chance for improvement. ``Our experience would say that once you're drinking Lysol and rubbing alcohol and Aqua Velva, you're beyond conventional goals. Very few guys make it from drinking Lysol back to Bay Street. So who are we fooling?'' If the client gets healthier, if less damage is done, less cost incurred, so be it. And if modern times are short on compassion, Rosolak hopes economics will win support for the farm. What he knows is that ``some of our poster boys for this campaign'' are responsible, when on the streets, for dozens of 911 calls a year, which can easily eat up $100,000 in costs. And what his staff has found is that, once inside the so-called ``wet'' hostel, weaned off things like Lysol, improvement can occur. ``They put together a community of 30 guys who individually are very difficult to get along with and manage. They put them in a communal setting, they created a sense of partnership, they created a sense of interdependence, friendship. I don't want to sound too hokey, but they created an atmosphere of concern and compassion and love.'' It's really not very hokey at all. Most recovering addicts will tell you that the journey back began with a tiny glimmer of hope, maybe something heard and recognized in another's story, the peace seen in a stranger's eyes. And if hope is the seed of recovery, some structure and renewed human relationships form the trellis on which it grows. ``Without a pathway out of homelessness, you're beyond hope,'' Rosolak says. ``And being beyond hope is a very desperate place to be.'' One often hears politicians say of their pet programs that if it saves a single life it's worth it. On Wednesday, when council considers the Seaton House plan, we'll know whether that applies to all lives. Or just the neat and tidy ones. - --- Checked-by: Mike Gogulski