Can successfully treated alcoholics safely engage in controlled drinking?
In a word, “no.” After a highly controversial 1976 Rand Corporation report suggested that sucessfully treated alcoholics can become controlled drinkers, some clinicians began to use controlled drinking (CD) as a part of the treatment for alcoholism. However, results of studies have been inconsistent, some showing success rates as low as 3%. Some European countries still routinely use CD, but U.S. agencies have quite uniformly rejected it as a dangerous, unnecessary, and unjustified goal of therapy (Peele, 1992). For more information, see: Peele, S. (1992). Alcoholism, politics and bureaucracy: The consensus against controlled-drinking therapy in America. Addiction and Behavior, 17(1), 49-93. 1998 Copyright by the McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
