Why do controlled-drinking outcomes vary by investigator, by country and by era? Cultural conceptions of release and remission in alcoholism.

Variations in the reported rates of controlled drinking by former alcoholics are notable, at times startling. Reports of such outcomes (which in some cases involved a large percentage of subjects) were common for a brief period ending in the mid- to late 1970s. By the early 1980s, a consensus had emerged in the United States that severely alcoholic subjects and patients could not resume moderate drinking. Yet--at a point in the mid-1980s when the rejection of the possibility of a return to controlled drinking appeared to be unanimous--a new burst of studies reported resumption of controlled drinking was quite plausible and did not depend on the initial severity of alcoholics' drinking problems. Variations in controlled-drinking outcomes--and in views about the possibility of such outcomes--involve changes in the scientific climate and differences in individual and cultural outlooks. These cultural factors have clinical implications as well as contributing to the power of scientific models of recovery from alcoholism.