Give bottle away seems best advice

Press, 3 July 1985, Page 30

Give bottle away seems best advice

NZPA-AP Boston A new study of people with drinking problems has found that fewer than 2 per cent are able to drink regularly without losing control and strongly suggests that giving up the bottle completely is the only sure cure for alcoholism. It is the latest scientific venture into a long-running dispute over whether alcoholics can take an occasional drink without wrecking their lives. This study suggests that there is little cause for optimism about the likelihood of an evolution to longterm, stable, moderate drinking among treated alcoholics, the researchers wrote. Landmark research conducted two decades ago at Patton State Hospital in San Bernadino, California, purported to show that alcoholics could be trained to drink moderately. The work was highly controversial, and follow-ups showed that many of the people who took part in the programme continued to have trouble with liquor. In 1980, a Rand Corporation study suggested that some alcoholics, particularly younger men who are not severely dependent on alcohol, could return to moderate drinking with no greater chance of relapse than if they abstain totally. The latest study was conducted at Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis and published in the “New England Journal of Medicine.” It examined the drinking habits of 1289 people five to seven years after they were treated for alcoholism. Nearly 79 per cent were still drinking heavily, and 15 per cent never touched alcohol. Five per cent took a drink once in a while but abstained most of the time, and only 1.6 per cent were regular social drinkers.

“We would have to urge alocholics that the only feasible cure for their problem at this point is total abstinence,’’ said Dr John Helzer, who directed the study. “That would seem to be the case for the vast majority.” Dr Helzer said most of the people he studied had been urged to give up drinking totally, so his survey does not definitely prove that behaviour modification aimed at controlled drink-

ing cannot work. But if such an approach were likkely to succeed, moderate drinking

habits would probably have 7 evolved naturally among a . larger proportion of the al- ! L coholics he reviewed. , Alcoholism is the leading K form of drug abuse in the. Western world. The United ’ States has an estimated 10 million alcoholics. In their study, the researchers considered moderate, or social drinkers to be people who had done some drinking in at least 30 1 of the previous 36 months, 111 but had not drunk exces-

sively or had any social, ; medical or legal problems from alcohol.