When we say, “You can cut back on alcohol,” alcoholics hear this as “this includes you.” This is perhaps the most dangerous myth.
“You can cut back on alcohol.”
So found a survey by the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions, reported by Shari Roan in the L.A. Times, regarding the reported 30% of Americans who had experienced an alcohol “disorder.” The study reportedly found that about 70% quit drinking or cut back to “safe consumption patterns” without treatment after four years or less and that only 1% fit the “stereotypical image” of someone with severe, recurring alcoholism who has “hit the skids.”
Unfortunately, such statistical “findings” can seriously mislead and are, in fact, downright dangerous.
Only 10% of Americans are estimated to have the disease of alcoholism. Of the 30% of Americans experiencing a “disorder” in the study, 20% are, therefore, non-addicts. Many young people “abuse” the drug—get stinking drunk—during periods of their lives, but do not abuse others. Since alcoholism, by the far more useful definition (than the commonly accepted one) presented in How to Spot Hidden Alcoholics, requires that one act badly at least some of the time, this 20% contingent is not addicted. This 20% is roughly 70% of the 30% of those experiencing “disorders.” It is this 70% that can quit drinking or cut back to safe consumption patterns because they are, simply, not addicts.
Statistics like this are dangerous. They can lead addict and non-addict alike to think they are among the 20%–in fact, it reinforces the idea since alcoholics do not typically self-diagnose and most spend at least part of their drinking careers “proving” to themselves and others that they are not alcoholics by abstaining for periods of time.
The 1% who fit the stereotypical skid-row image consists of the rare late-stage alcoholic, not the other 9% of the population who spend most of their drinking lives as “functional” alcoholics.
It’s amazing that this nonsense is repeated, well, repeatedly. The idea that addicts can learn to drink safely indefinitely is thoroughly debunked on pp. 53-55 of Alcoholism Myths and Realities, where the Mark and Linda Sobell study is cited (which resulted in seeming success after two years and utter failure after ten). Another study tried, according to the great alcoholism authority George E. Vaillant, “every technique known to behavior modification” to keep addicts off the hooch, which resulted in such bad outcomes that the researchers called off the experiment, announcing it would be unethical to continue. Another found that after seven years only 1.6% of 1,289 diagnosed and treated alcoholics had become successful moderate drinkers. Most of the 1.6% contingent showed few of the obvious symptoms of true alcoholism. While there may be 1% who might be an exception, it’s impossible to know who they are—and, therefore, it is immoral to suggest that a person identified as having the disease try this failed approach.
Audrey Kishline developed a group, “Moderation Management,” that espoused and taught the idea that alcoholics can control their drinking. It worked for her, as it can, for several years, before she got into her car one day with a blood alcohol level of .28 per cent and killed two innocents. She now admits that her group was “nothing but alcoholics covering up their problem.”
Every alcoholic reading this headline thinks it’s directed at him. It’s like starting little fires in the brush here and there on a windy day. This myth is perhaps the most destructive of the all-too-numerous myths of alcoholism.