Controlled drinking, treatment effectiveness, and the disease model of addiction: a commentary on the ideological wishes of Stanton Peele

Abstract

Despite a long history of extravagant claims followed by sobering discomfirmations, advocates of controlled drinking continue to promote nonabstinent treatment goals and procedures for alcoholics. Recent claims by Stanton Peele in favor of controlled drinking are examined critically in the context of a continuing debate concerning empirical studies of nonabstinent treatment goals, treatment effectiveness, and inpatient versus out-patient treatment of alcoholism. Peele's views concerning "conventional disease-based alcoholism treatment," controlled drinking, and "the disease model" are shown to be based largely on inadequate scholarship, misrepresentations of the literature, inappropriate comparisons, unwarranted generalizations, and straw-man arguments.