Homeless alcoholics who get blitzed-out drunk in public are a danger to themselves and a blight on our community. They're repeatedly picked up by the Community Service Patrol and held for their own safety until they sober up. Then they totter off to start drinking again, lest they start to suffer the physical agonies of alcohol withdrawal. It's an expensive cycle of substance abuse. The city's shelter for drunks helped 3,300 people in 2007, but just 200 chronic users accounted for 56 percent of the shelter's business.

The first step in breaking this pernicious cycle is offering detox treatment. The heaviest drinkers get medical supervision as they go through withdrawal symptoms. (Coming off alcohol can be almost as physically wrenching as heroin withdrawal, and it can be fatal.)

Detox also helps drinkers who don't have withdrawal symptoms by offering a safe, supervised place to clear their bodies of alcohol and its aftereffects. Once they reach that stage, detox patients may decide to pursue further treatment for their addiction.

As reported in Sunday's Daily News, though, local detox beds are scarce.

"There is a significant shortage of detoxification and pretreatment beds in Anchorage," the municipality's Safety Links program reported in January. "Many addicts lose motivation to enter treatment if they are not admitted immediately."

That municipal report noted that "Every 24 hours, 15 to 20 individuals requesting detoxification services are turned away" from the Ernie Turner Center. At the time, it was the only local detox program still operating.

Since then, the Salvation Army got a $1.1 million grant to open a secure detox facility with 10 beds at Point Woronzof. Those new beds will be easily filled by just a handful of the 200 chronic alcoholics repeatedly cycling through the city's emergency shelter.

Caring for homeless alcoholics is not the most politically popular way to spend public money. In part, that's because there is no guaranteed cure for alcoholism, no sure-fire anti-alcohol elixir that works for everyone. The path to sobriety is a long, often tortuous journey filled with relapses and missteps.

But we do know one thing: Our society pays for these chronic alcohol abusers one way or the other. Without offering more help to alcohol addicts stuck on the streets, the expensive cycle of abuse will continue unabated.

BOTTOM LINE: Underinvesting in alcohol treatment does have consequences.