Is there any studies that show an alcoholic can begin moderate drinking?

[tapu]

Then I apologize. What’s a unit equal to? (Wouldn’t that be terribly important?) It’s not an ounce then, as in US measure, I gather.

[Jaledin]

I’m with nzinga – units of alcohol. So, I think a unit of 80 proof is about 1.25 ounces (can’t remember – I did the math once, and it worked out pretty near to that). So, a third a pint of whiskey is, what, a smidge over four drinks.

It is too bad there aren’t better numbers out there – the question is, I think, kind of fundamental to figuring out the relationship between society and alcohol, at least in the U.S. nzinga’s point about AA is salient in that regard – I haven’t thought about, and I confess it’s not a high (pun intended) priority of things to consider here, but certainly it’s worth considering.

Her request for studies would be an important way to begin. Erm, cheers!

[tapu]

Hmm… Went to your link and it seems a unit must be about a shot of hard liquor and more for the softer varieties.

So… I don’t know. I know four drinks (shots) is plenty for a large percentage of the population here.

[Nzinga_Seated]

Edit. Deleted post because tapu found the link.

[HoneyBadgerDC]

I posted a thread a few weeks ago about my girlfriend who has been alcoholic since her teens, she is now 61 yrs old. I think the count is something like 33 totaled cars, I lost count of the DUI but possibly about 14. Countless trips to hospitals for fall related injuries. Lost track of time spent in half way houses, rehab centers and jails. When not drinking she is fine well mannered meticulously clean, intelligent perfect citizen. She hsa always been periodic, meaning she would go some time without drinking and then after a few months or sometimes a couple of years would take a drink. With few exceptions she would end up in a hospital or jail before she could stop again. Over the last 5 years her slips became more and more frequent and have recently gotten to once a month or more.
Nothing seemed to work so I decided to try an experiemnt, I told her to go ahead and drink and I would not search it out and flush it. I would even buy it and bring it home. Well true to form she got very falling down drunk and was so sick after about a week she was ready to quit for awhile again. I said no quitting just drink as much as you want, as often as you want. To my amazement she has settled into a few beers or a glass or a few glasses of wine each night. Sometimes she starts a bit early around 11 am but has not gotten what I call drunk at all. Going through about a 8 cans of beer a day as best I can figure or a quart of wine and a couple of beers. Far better than the quart of vodka. She might be killing herself slowly but at least she is maintaining her dignity and seems to function very well, she is actually a lot of fun these days and has just about worn me out.
Funny thing is she is willingly wanting to attend aa meetings even though she is drinking. So for the time being, I buy her the booze, I take her to AA and am just waiting to see what happens.

[Jaledin]

@tapu

I know four drinks (shots) is plenty for a large percentage of the population here.

No doubt about it. Beyond that, it can’t be good for you to swill down four drinks in a few minutes, even if you don’t repeat that act a few times. Definitely not good for ones judgment ;).

[UltraVires]

@badger5149

I posted a thread a few weeks ago about my girlfriend who has been alcoholic since her teens, she is now 61 yrs old. I think the count is something like 33 totaled cars, I lost count of the DUI but possibly about 14. Countless trips to hospitals for fall related injuries. Lost track of time spent in half way houses, rehab centers and jails. When not drinking she is fine well mannered meticulously clean, intelligent perfect citizen. She hsa always been periodic, meaning she would go some time without drinking and then after a few months or sometimes a couple of years would take a drink. With few exceptions she would end up in a hospital or jail before she could stop again. Over the last 5 years her slips became more and more frequent and have recently gotten to once a month or more.
Nothing seemed to work so I decided to try an experiemnt, I told her to go ahead and drink and I would not search it out and flush it. I would even buy it and bring it home. Well true to form she got very falling down drunk and was so sick after about a week she was ready to quit for awhile again. I said no quitting just drink as much as you want, as often as you want. To my amazement she has settled into a few beers or a glass or a few glasses of wine each night. Sometimes she starts a bit early around 11 am but has not gotten what I call drunk at all. Going through about a 8 cans of beer a day as best I can figure or a quart of wine and a couple of beers. Far better than the quart of vodka. She might be killing herself slowly but at least she is maintaining her dignity and seems to function very well, she is actually a lot of fun these days and has just about worn me out.
Funny thing is she is willingly wanting to attend aa meetings even though she is drinking. So for the time being, I buy her the booze, I take her to AA and am just waiting to see what happens.

Great post. I’m sure it takes the patience of Job to live with an alcoholic, but from my experience, when the SO starts pouring the booze down the sink, the alcoholic starts thinking that his whole problem is the SO. If you eliminate that, then he or she can’t use that as an excuse.

Either way, you shouldn’t feel guilty for “letting” her drink. She is a free human and can do that if she wants. Making her home a police state, IMHO, doesn’t help. Best of luck to you.

[Simple_Linctus]

@tapu

Hmm… Went to your link and it seems a unit must be about a shot of hard liquor and more for the softer varieties.

So… I don’t know. I know four drinks (shots) is plenty for a large percentage of the population here.

I have before me a 500ml bottle of O’Kells Smoked Celtic Porter, 4.7% ABV. It says it contains 2.35 units.

So in other words, a middling to middle-low strength beer, even two bottles would be more than 4 units.

[FluffyBob]

@obbn

The point being is that there is a huge difference between someone who likes an activity and someone who is an addict.

This.

If one is an alcoholic or any other kind of addict, moderation ***already ***didn’t work.

If you have no control over alcohol you cant moderate it. And compartmentalizing is not control - for the bingers out there.

[sleestak]

@Nzinga_Seated

I just wonder if zero is *too *round of a number for some alcoholics. They end up not able to do it, and fall back in hard. Maybe if they had tried to moderate instead of eliminate, they may have done better. And AA has such an influence on society that their philosophy of total abstinence is the go-to advice that most people default to. Maybe we are missing an opportunity to help lots of alcoholics who would be much more successful if they had learned to moderate.

Just wanted to comment on this. The A.A. big book and people in meetings pretty much all have the same advice to anyone who wonders if they are an alkie. Try controlled drinking. If you are unsure, then run a test. If you can have one drink and stop, right on for you. If you can have one drink but strongly feel the need for another, you should watch it. If you have one drink, intending to have only one, and go on a bender, well, we will be here when and if you finish.

We do not like to pronounce any individual as alcoholic, but you can quickly diagnose yourself. Step over to the nearest barroom and try some controlled drinking. Try drinking and stop abruptly. Try it more than once. It will not take long for you to decide, if you are honest with yourself.

A.A Big Book, page 31.

I’ve given this advice to numerous people. So far everyone who has tried failed. Of course, since they went to an A.A. meeting it wasn’t all that surprising.

On a side note, I’ve posted numbers from various studies on alcoholism and treatment on this board in the past. I’m rather burnt, installed wood floors in my house all day and don’t feel like hunting up the cites again. Anyway, the studies show that the best results are A.A. and therapy, followed by A.A. alone. Moderation comes in dead last. The NIH has an alcoholism/addiction section that has studies if anyone wants to hunt them down.

Slee

Clean and sober for 8 years and 7 months.

[Nunzio_Tavulari]

@Shagnasty

Your hypothesis sounds like a reasonable one to a normal person but it doesn’t make any sense to an alcoholic. The only reason to drink is to get buzzed or drunk. You can just drink anything else if you want something that tastes good.

To an alcoholic, there is no reason to drink other than the behavioral effects. Once you know those are damaging for you, it is best to stay away from it completely so that you don’t lose your judgement and fall in the trap completely.

This describes me precisely. I only drink rum & water. I love the rush I get when I take that first drink every day. I like the mellow buzz that sets in after I’ve finished it. I like it enough that I’ll have another drink thirty minutes later to sustain the buzz. I have other liquids in the house and the only reason I pull out the booze is because I like what it does to my head. When I have booze in the house, I rarely drink anything else.

If I have a a 1.75 liter bottle of rum, it will take me about three weeks to finish it. If I don’t buy another for three months, I don’t drink any alcohol. Every once in a while I have a craving for that buzz, mostly that first head rush, but I can easily push it aside. By your definition, I’m an alcoholic. By my definition, I can moderate my intake to an occasional drink. As I said earlier, where fail is in a social situation. Put me in a crowd with alcohol and I will get seriously buzzed. It is possible to moderate alcohol. Now that I’ve acknowledged the addictive draw of nicotine, I believe I could moderate that as well. I’m strong willed (most would say stubborn).

As a counterpoint to a previous post, quitting smoking has been a horrible experience. It took less than three days to kick the habit entirely and I didn’t have a lot of anguish doing so. However, after seven years, I have much less energy and concentration. I do not feel any better, I do not breathe easier and I snore more. I do not have a better sense of smell. I am fatter and more depressed. I really love the smell of tobacco on people. The statistics do not support a strong link between lung cancer and smoking. I did not quit because of scare tactics. I quit because a bunch of zealots and their quasi-fundamentalist tactics made me feel like a nigger.

[Nzinga_Seated]

@sleestak

Just wanted to comment on this. The A.A. big book and people in meetings pretty much all have the same advice to anyone who wonders if they are an alkie. Try controlled drinking. If you are unsure, then run a test. If you can have one drink and stop, right on for you. If you can have one drink but strongly feel the need for another, you should watch it. If you have one drink, intending to have only one, and go on a bender, well, we will be here when and if you finish.

A.A Big Book, page 31.

I’ve given this advice to numerous people. So far everyone who has tried failed. Of course, since they went to an A.A. meeting it wasn’t all that surprising.

On a side note, I’ve posted numbers from various studies on alcoholism and treatment on this board in the past. I’m rather burnt, installed wood floors in my house all day and don’t feel like hunting up the cites again. Anyway, the studies show that the best results are A.A. and therapy, followed by A.A. alone. Moderation comes in dead last. The NIH has an alcoholism/addiction section that has studies if anyone wants to hunt them down.

Slee

Clean and sober for 8 years and 7 months.

Thank you for this information. I did not know this about AA.

[Hari_Seldon]

@Fear_Itself

I cannot say. I doubt anyone can. Except him; what does he think?

He certainly thinks he was–and isn’t. His wife agrees with both assertions. His wife told me that their vacations were spent at a small cottage they owned in an out-of-way-spot and she said the main reason was so that he could pass his days in a semi-stupor with no one to bother him. They stopped going there after he dried out.

[Trom]

You’d probably be interested in the research of William R. Miller. From his personal website:

Although there are hundreds of published studies on what treatment methods are most (and least) effective in treating alcohol use disorders, this literature is not very accessible to practicing clinicians. I decided early in my career that one service I could provide for the field was to summarize the findings of this large body of clinical research, to make it available and useable for those who provide treatment. With the very earliest of these reviews (Miller & Hester, 1980), it became obvious that there was a very large gap between the treatment methods most strongly supported by research and those commonly used in practice. This well-documented science/practice gap eventually led to the international “evidence-based treatment” movement in addiction treatment and other fields.
…
Our analyses of the treatment outcome literature led to some interesting larger questions. How much has the treatment of alcoholism actually changed over the course of 40 years (Miller, 1992)? If you wanted to stack the deck in your favor when evaluating alcoholism treatment, how could you do it (Miller & Sanchez-Craig, 1996)? How effective is alcoholism treatment on average, as delivered in the United States (Miller, Walters & Bennett, 2001)? Why are clinicians often unimpressed by clinical studies, and how large does a treatment effect have to be before it matters to treatment professionals (Miller & Manual, 2008).

One of the books he has authored is on moderating drinking - Controlling Your Drinking.

Few concepts in alcohol treatment have been more controversial than the idea of “controlled” drinking. And few researchers have been more influential in the field than Miller, a Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of New Mexico. This updated (and re-titled) version of his clinically tested 1975 manual will be of great interest to people who are concerned about their drinking, as well as to family members and clinicians. Clear, concise, non-judgmental and practical, it lays out the facts that are often obscured in the heated debate over alcohol treatments. As Miller and co-author Muñoz write, under previous conceptions of alcohol problems, a person was either alcoholic or not, and “if you are an alcoholic, then it’s too late for moderation. If you’re not alcoholic, then you don’t need a book on it.” Research has since disproved these assumptions, finding that alcohol problems occur on a spectrum and that moderation, like other behavior, can be learned. (The authors stress that readers needn’t concern themselves over whether they’re “alcoholics” but should instead focus on changing harmful drinking behavior.) The new book offers tools for successful moderation-like spacing alcoholic drinks with non-alcoholic ones and timing drinks to maintain low levels of blood alcohol concentration-as well as tactics for dealing with common challenges, like hard-drinking friends and social anxiety. It’s also been updated to better highlight the most useful techniques. Contrary to fears that offering tips on moderation might help people rationalize further heavy drinking, Miller’s work and that of others has found that trying moderation helps drinkers decide for themselves if it is an achievable goal. If not, the self-discovery provoked by being unable to learn to moderate often spurs abstinence-an outcome the authors also applaud.

[Simple_Linctus]

@Nunzio_Tavulari

If I have a a 1.75 liter bottle of rum, it will take me about three weeks to finish it.

Which says it all, most alcoholics would have that done in three days.

[tapu]

@Simple_Linctus

I have before me a 500ml bottle of O’Kells Smoked Celtic Porter, 4.7% ABV. It says it contains 2.35 units.

So in other words, a middling to middle-low strength beer, even two bottles would be more than 4 units.

I’m calling a bottle of beer a drink, or a gin and tonic or a shot of scotch a drink. Then I’m saying that 4 of any those drinks, imbibed over 1-2 hours, would have me shnockered. What’s shnockered in your dialect?

[tapu]

@sleestak

Just wanted to comment on this. The A.A. big book and people in meetings pretty much all have the same advice to anyone who wonders if they are an alkie. Try controlled drinking. If you are unsure, then run a test. If you can have one drink and stop, right on for you. If you can have one drink but strongly feel the need for another, you should watch it. If you have one drink, intending to have only one, and go on a bender, well, we will be here when and if you finish.

A.A Big Book, page 31.

I’ve given this advice to numerous people. So far everyone who has tried failed. Of course, since they went to an A.A. meeting it wasn’t all that surprising.

On a side note, I’ve posted numbers from various studies on alcoholism and treatment on this board in the past. I’m rather burnt, installed wood floors in my house all day and don’t feel like hunting up the cites again. Anyway, the studies show that the best results are A.A. and therapy, followed by A.A. alone. Moderation comes in dead last. The NIH has an alcoholism/addiction section that has studies if anyone wants to hunt them down.

Slee

Clean and sober for 8 years and 7 months.

Bumping this post. Well said, Slee. I’m glad for your time spent sober in life.

[tapu]

@Trom

You’d probably be interested in the research of William R. Miller. From his personal website:

One of the books he has authored is on moderating drinking - Controlling Your Drinking.

Bet that’s a fun night out at the bar, using all those “techniques.”

[Leo_Bloom]

@Nzinga_Seated

…Now that’s some ‘no true scottsman’ stuff right there.

::quick query::
I don’t understand this. I’m not looking for PC justification, just implied meaning. I would think a lot of USA-ers are in the same boat…

[UltraVires]

@Simple_Linctus

Which says it all, most alcoholics would have that done in three days.

Most drunks I know would drink the majority of that bottle in one day and go to the liquor store the next day because the remainder wouldn’t be enough for the next..