I am not looking for an argument, but frankly there hasn’t been a time in American history other than directly before and then during Prohibition where drinking alcohol isn’t more looked down upon, considered morally questionable and generally demonized than right now in 2012.
I don’t buy that at all. Other than drunk driving laws being strengthed, which I happen to agtee with, i cannot think of anything being done in the U.S to seriously demonize drinking.
Got any examples? Especially outside of Utah*.
slee
*I was in Utah earlier this year on a buisness trip and found the state stores a rather odd thing. My coworkers wanted booze and we had to hunt down a state store.
Oh, and thanks tapu. I don’t know much except about alcoholism. I know it from the inside and out.
Erm, there is no reason you can’t give a food addict celery or something, where it really doesn’t matter how much they eat. You can’t really give an alcoholic non harmful alcohol.
Whether that’s true or not… what do you think about the basic question I’m posing? Why do people often try to help others “learn” to drink instead of looking up to not drinking? If you can reconcile the two observations, please do!
For me personally, at this point in my life, the positives I get in life by being a casual drinker outweigh the negatives.
I feel this is just an argument of definitions. If you define an alcoholic as someone who can’t drink any amount of alcohol without losing control - then by definition they can’t moderate their drinking. If you read the question in the OP as “Are their any studies that show a heavy drinker can begin moderate drinking?” then explore the links I posted upthread.
Jeez, Louise. In what parallel universe is 14 drinks a week considered moderate drinking?!
Because for some people, ‘learning to drink’ moderately may be their only path out of drinking themselves to death. (this is me just wildly speculating for the sake of argument. Not stating this as fact.)
Some people may be very different from you, in that they aren’t capable of never having another drink…so they go back to full blown alcoholism.
If there exists a certain kind of alcoholic for whom never taking another drink is an impossibility, then it would be an awesome thing if there were methods out there to assist them in moderating their drinking.
The definition of alcoholism is important to this discussion. Because while trying to research this topic I found that AA’s definition of alcoholism is really widespread. So anyone who has any success in helping an alcoholic manage their drinking, they pretty much don’t count as apart of their ‘success rate’ with alcoholics. Because the person is still drinking. That’s crazy! If you take someone who identified as an out of control drunk, and help them get down to a ‘social drinker’s’ level and they are able to maintain that long term, why shouldn’t that count as success?
I think AA has made this a difficult topic to even discuss, let alone research. My friend “Stan” has already pretty much crippled my argument by stating that I won’t be able to find any ‘real’ alcoholics who have learned moderation. Well I guess I won’t! Not facing the issue I just referenced in the above paragraph. This is from St. Jude’s website, for instance…
“Currently our success rate is 62%. Sober statistics are based on abstinence from all substances. While there are graduates who have successfully moderated their substance use and dramatically improved their lives, they still fall into the actively using category for the purposes of statistical analysis.”
Which is fair. But how do we ever count the ones that learned to drink responsibly and socially? We can’t count them if everyone has decided that they are still just alcoholics by the definition that AA has put out there. I hate to bash AA in this thread, because I don’t want my distaste for them to poison the discussion, but I am failing to have this conversation without feeling that the definition of ‘alcoholic’ has been hijacked.
How do you feel about people who don’t drink at all? Even if they might be able to drink moderately if they worked on it?
What would it be like to be one yourself?
I don’t feel anything about people who don’t drink at all.
What would it be like to be *what *myself? Someone who doesn’t drink at all?
My mother is one of those people who treat food as love; she turns every celebration into a banquet, feeds you to the gills, takes offense if you refuse seconds (or thirds, or fourths), spends an inordinate amount of time thinking about food every single day… and yet, we recently realized that she doesn’t like food. I think having any kind of unhealthy relationship with food is a bitch because, as you say, it’s not like you can just give the stuff up.
Thing is, there’s two different issues here:
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binge drinking vs drinking to a soft buzz vs taste drinking, which is heavily affected by society and by how, when, and in the company of whom one learned to drink.
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alcohol addiction, which is the part that (like every other addiction) has a heavy genetic component.
It’s possible to be an alcohol addict who doesn’t drink; it’s possible to be a binge drinker who is not an alcohol addict or a moderate drinker who is not an alcohol addict or a teetotaler who is not an alcohol addict. It is possible to be unable to drink because you had hepatitis as a kid and your liver is just shot. Is it possible to have learned that getting blind drunk is the objective of drinking, and to learn a different pattern? Dr. Miller’s studies say it is, my own anecdata says so too, but I haven’t factored genetics into who is able to do it and who isn’t; Dr. Miller probably hasn’t either. Looks like we may have found his next question 
And as a piece of anecdata unrelated to Miller’s studies, my grandma got puke-your-guts out drunk at age 3, she calls the brandy bottle “aspirin”, yet that brandy bottle lasts years and she’s never again gotten blind drunk. Happy-drunk yes, but never to the point where people who didn’t know her would realize she was drunk and not simply a merry lady.
OK, I’ll out myself. Sober for (only) almost four months now. Going to meetings, working the steps. Hi Sleestack!
I simply can’t imagine someone who is incapable of never drinking, and yet IS capable of stopping after moderate consumption.
Not taking a first drink is a decision that can be made by a sober person.
Stopping after the second drink is a decision that must be made by a person who is under the influence of alcohol. Alcohol lowers inhibition, and distorts judgment. Thus this requires a far stronger act of will than simple abstinence, as the weakening of the willpower must be overcome.
People who can do the second one and be happy about it probably don’t need AA. When I was drinking, I could do that, but I would be seriously grumpy and stabby pthe rest of the night. I wanted more, and I wasn’t going to be happy until I got it. Basically the only reason I would do that was to prove I could do it…either to myself or to those around me. “Look, I had two beers and I’m done…not an alcoholic!”
No kids say “When I grow up, I want to be an alcoholic, so I can go to AA meetings!” People go to AA only as a last resort, or under threats from a spouse or an employer. Nobody was ever happy about walking in that door the first time.
Of those who go on their own initiative, very few go to AA when they first start thinking their drinking may be a problem. The vast majority have tried various ways to drink in moderation: Drink only beer. Never drink before noon. Never drink alone. Drink only when you don’t have to work the next day. It is pretty rare that someone comes willingly to AA without having made many attempts to be a “social drinker”. The majority who come to AA probably don’t want to stop forever when they first get there. It takes another failure of moderation or maybe several before they decide that maybe they do want to live without another drink. You don’t have to be there long before you see new comers (and occasionally an old timer) prove it over and over again, looking worse and worse each time they come back, and you can also read obituaries of those who didn’t make it back. Two so far in just four months for me.
As for me, there is a part of me (I call it my inner addict) that would love to be able to drink in moderation, and occasional that part of my mind will start trying to convince me it is a good idea. I have done the experiment enough times to know how it works. So I tell that part of my mind that our drinking days are done. That makes the inner addict VERY unhappy. Sometimes he throws a tantrum and I have to set him on his naughty bench and give him a timeout. He is learning that the tantrums don’t work, and learning to live with not getting what he wants. If he behaves, sometimes I buy him ice cream.
When I drink, I lack the parenting skills to control this inner two-year-old, and he ends up running the household. I don’t really care to go back to living there.
So please clarify for me: are you proposing the opposite True Scotsman (if you can stop drinking then there are no circumstances under which you’ll have problems saying “no” to a drink, or actually want one)?
I know many people who don’t drink at all most of the time but who occasionally do drink. Some of us stop quickly because our physical reaction is negative, all of us stop because we’ve already fed the psychological reason we had for taking those few drinks (in my case, I’ll try the local beer/cider/wine, but just try it, stopping a long time before the physical reaction begins). There are people for whom it is very hard to not drink at all under certain social circumstances, who see no reason to refuse to do drink in those cases, yet who are perfectly capable of stopping: millions of them, in fact.
Then I misunderstand… the OP. Completely.
As for your restatement of my question, yes, you’ve got it.
Sounds about right surely? Say 3.5 days a week, that’d be 4 drinks on a “drinking night”.
I don’t think many people go out drinking and have less than 4 drinks.
P.J. O’Rourke advises that if you’re anywhere alcohol is served, at least order something. Because, he says, “It is an odd but widely held opinion that anyone who doesn’t drink must be an alcoholic.”
It’s that sort of astute observation I’d like to examine. I suppose I should have just started another thread.
I think you should, and I think he’s right. I think this is a big problem with giving up drink for a lot of people actually, as they don’t want to appear to be an alcoholic so have to have one drink socially (and then after leaving whatever it was they were doing and appearing sober-ish, getting plastered somewhere else).
Similarly I think that one of the reasons people don’t like being around someone that doesn’t drink is that at some level they know they drink too much, and they don’t like being judged, which is what it can feel like.
Wait,* I’m* not the alcoholic . . .
Yeah, everyone sure always wants me to drink. Nice, nice people, I mean. I have occasion to dine and wine with really, really great businessman types after seminars, conventions, whatever. We hit it off great, but they’ll prompt me more than once to “just have one.” If I know we have sufficient rapport, I’ll finally say, “Oh, okay, I’ll have one, and soon I’ll punch you, and then I’ll do your wife.”
(Lots of har har har–and choking sounds–all around.) No wonder they think I’d be fun drinking.
What I am saying is that for problem drinkers, no subsequent drink will be any easier to refuse than the first one. If for some reason you can’t (not talking about don’t want to, or social pressure) say no to the first one, then there is no way you are going to refuse the third one. Willpower and the ability to think rationally dissolves in alcohol. If you still have enough will to say no to the third, then you had it to say no to the second and first, and you just chose to drink.
For an alcoholic, wanting to drink, or choosing to say no doesn’t enter into it. I would frequently find myself drunk when I known full well beforehand that it was important to stay sober and at some earlier point had every earnest intention to do so. Not wanting to drink while at the same time driving myself to a liquor store is part of what AA people are talking about when they refer to insanity. I have never met an alcoholic who could not tell similar, if not identical, stories, and plenty of them. It is never a matter of “Do I want a drink?” but “When can I get a drink?” and “How will I avoid getting found out?”