REGAINING CONTROL – Helping problem drinkers moderate without quitting
Photo A successful Redondo Beach businesswoman in her 40s, the single mother of a teenage son, had been using alcohol to cope with emotional issues, and had come to identify drinking as a problem “on and off” in her life. Then she got a DUI. “It was my wakeup call,” she said. “I realized I had an unhealthy relationship with alcohol.” She wasted no time getting to Alcoholics Anonymous. At AA meetings she found people she liked and admired, but she wasn’t like them in a key way: while she had become a problem drinker, she had not developed alcoholism, an addictive state that is typically addressed with total abstinence. “I went to multiple AA meetings to address whether I am an alcoholic. I really appreciated AA, it is a great service for people who are alcoholic. But I did not fit the profile at all,” she said. “In the middle of a meeting I realized, I’m not an alcoholic,” she said. “And I realized why I was so uncomfortable there.” She came across the book Sober for Good by Anne M. Fletcher, which mentioned another organization, Moderation Management. “Not everybody has to stop drinking,” she said. “AA is not the only option.” Then in late 2010 she found a weekly Moderation…
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