Controlled drinking by chronic drunkeness offenders--a British experience

Twenty-seven of the 235 drunkenness offenders treated at the Manchester Detoxification Centre and followed-up for 2 years attempted controlled drinking for varying lengths of time and for different stated reasons, even though the treatment goal at the Centre was total abstinence. Only nine of the twenty-seven were able to sustain controlled drinking for periods of up to twelve weeks. The overall sub-group controlled drinking performance was 10.2% which compared favourably with the 10% overall abstinence performance of all patients followed-up. It was observed that there was little argument in favour of offering the option of controlled drinking as an alternative to the traditional treatment goal of total abstinence. It was advocated however that while total abstinence must remain the treatment goal of therapist, controlled drinking as an alternative goal may be suitable for carefully selected individual alcohol dependent persons and an important future research area should be the criteria for selecting such individuals.