Controversial Addiction Topics

While it may sound counterintuitive, would it not make sense to lower the drinking age from 21 to 20 or even less, provided the less-than-21-year-old imbiber obtains a separate license for drinking. And in order to get the license, there is a "drinking skills" program to pass. Not how to drink more, but how and why to drink like a mature grown up.

Can you fight the disease of alcohol addiction and still be a social drinker? Making such a stance was heretical only a generation ago. Yet controlled drinking, as it is called, has emerged as an accepted treatment option for those who find abstinence too daunting.

“Sometimes I feel like the only free person in America.” So says leading addiction expert Dr. Stanton Peele in the latest blog entry shortly to be posted on his authoritative and widely consulted addiction website.

Psychologist Bruce Alexander, a Canadian researcher who has compared popular views of addiction to beliefs about demonic possession, has been awarded the Nora and Ted Sterling Prize for Controversy, on the strength of his advocacy for Vancouver's "four pillars" approach to drug addiction, heavily criticized by U.S. anti-drug officials for its harm-reduction approach.

Alcoholism is not an incurable and progressive illness or disease, as Alcoholics Anonymous would have us believe, but rather a self-harming behaviour problem with its roots in childhood. So say former alcoholics Lilian and Murdoch MacDonald from Ayrshire in Scotland.

It is common for people who have completed alcohol rehab, and remained sober for a year or two, to begin to wonder why they are continuing to attend various groups and meetings. It’s a good question.