Alcoholism and Treatment

The Rand report achieved coast to coast media coverage and generated a lot of heat simply because it was found that, out there in the real world, some people labelled "alcoholic" actually achieve a controlled drinking goal. This, of course, is not a new discovery. More than 100 research reports have reached a similar conclusion since 1962, when D. L. Davis published his famous paper in the Quarterly Journal of Studies of Alcohol. The authors of the Rand report must have been amazed to find that their very sober, data-based report was attacked unmercifully by an army of angry crusaders, mostly people associated with the U.S. National Council on Alcoholism.