Moderated Drinking: A Shameless Marketing Ploy

Most alcoholics in recovery drank normally at one point, at least on occasion. We didn’t black out every time we drank, make horrible life-changing decisions or end up with a debilitating hangover. Heck, at times, we enjoyed ourselves. It’d be difficult to make it 5, 10, 20 or 30 years into a drinking career – to develop into an alcoholic – if we drank as we did before we were quit.

I believe there’s a line many alcoholics cross – from a heavy drinker who is mostly functional to becoming a straight-up alcoholic who is drinking to feel normal while suffering severe physical, mental and social consequences. Once you cross that line to alcoholism, it’s extremely difficult to come back. I’ve never encountered someone who has done it. The days of one or two drinks are no longer possible. One drink triggers an insatiable thirst that cannot be quenched regardless of intake.

Now that I’m in recovery and middle-aged, algorithms on the interweb constantly target me with sober-curious advertisements. Many of these ads feature a once-problematic-drinker touting the promise of cutting back on consumption without quitting. You can be healthy, they say – without ever having to completely stop. Their modern-day program or clinic is built for today’s renaissance man who bases their pragmatic dogmatism on logic, reason and science.

I see these ads and I get angry. Furious. Why? Moderated drinking is a fucking bullshit marketing scheme preying on the gullible souls of problematic drinkers. I know from experience.

In 2018, I decided to explore treatment options. I did some research online. Like most, I was familiar with Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). Apologizing to people I’d wrong, branding myself an alcoholic and sharing my intimate feelings with a room full of miserable chain smokers did not sound appealing.

Apparently, there had been some research showing that heavy drinkers could be culled back slowly to consume a moderate amount of alcohol without quitting. Or, it appeared, after a period of sobriety, they could resume drinking responsibly. AA, some argued, was an institution founded by white men in the 1930s before science and research had unlocked the genetic keys to addiction, and before there were medications and clinically proven treatments and therapies to aid in recovery.

AA relied on abstinence, God and white-knuckling periods of sobriety. AA members also follow a rigid set of 12-steps and principles for living that must be strictly adhered for the remainder of an alcoholic’s life if one wished to remain sober. Those who return to use will end up dead, in prison or in an insane asylum, the Big Book of AA argues.

New treatment centers and addiction scholars were preaching that this old way of thinking is akin to leeching. The never-ending shackles of AA sounded like a prison sentence. There were even medications that could be taken to quell cravings for alcohol that enlightened medical experts could prescribe.

Just my luck – one of the pioneers in this school of thought had an outpatient treatment center in the heart of downtown St. Paul, not too far from my office.

The organization employed a marketing strategy that depicted treatment as an intimate individualized plan based on patient needs and preferences. And treatment plans would be rooted in evidence-based care and the most recent scientific research – a major change to typical recovery plans.

A passage from its Facebook page read, “Rehab programs and centers offer standardized, cookie-cutter approaches, where all patients receive the same treatment. They have fixed lengths of stays, and require a major commitment of time and money, no matter what kind of problem their patients may have. In contrast, (at our clinic) patients have no set program, cost, type or fixed length of treatment. One patient could come for a consultation only, while another may receive treatment for years. For lasting results, addiction and alcohol recovery treatments should be unique and tailored to the individual.⁠”

I was sold. This was the smart way to abstain AND it didn’t even necessarily include sobriety. I called the clinic and made an appointment for an assessment. I was to meet with one of its psychiatrists and a therapist who would ask me some screening questions and set me up with a treatment plan.

During my initial assessment, I sat down with the psychiatrist for an hour to discuss the best method of drinking for my long-term health. My doctor has recently been featured as an addiction expert in scientific features in the New York Times, the Atlantic and an HBO documentary. I felt like I was going to become fast friends with a celebrity.

I was expecting my doc to give me the green light on the cut-down approach to alcoholism that I’d read about in those news articles and the clinic website. During my first session, I shared the intimate details of my drinking career and my current rate of consumption. The expert addiction psychiatrist responded frankly and somewhat unexpectedly.

“You have to quit. You have no chance. You’ve been at this awhile. All our clients would like to continue using their drug of choice for the rest of their lives, but that’s not a realistic option for most of us,” he said. “If you want to try cutting back, you certainly can. Sometimes people need to fail on their own.”

It appeared the organization’s clinical strategy and marketing messages did not align. I had already made up my decision to continue using before our meeting. I was selectively listening and prescribing my own tailored made approach of moderated drinking. So, my response to his assessment was, “Okay. Sounds great. We’ll go with the cutback routine!”

To begin my journey on moderated alcohol consumption, I downloaded an app for my phone to track and log my drinks every day. Fourteen drinks was the magic number, according to the National Institute of Health. I could consume that much and not be considered an alcohol abuser. That’s exactly what I recorded every week. About two drinks a day, every day. For an alcoholic, not surprisingly, 14 drinks a week is not enough. I discovered that quickly. Thus, began my decent into secretive drinking.

I continued to see providers at this clinic – professionals who coached me on how to moderately drink – for nearly five years until I got sober on my own volition. Through plenty of failure, I finally grasped the concept that drinking was simply not in the cards for me. Meanwhile, the clinic happily took thousands of my hard-earned dollars month after month, despite zero success. When I finally got sober, I quit seeing my therapist at the clinic almost immediately. I quit seeing my psychiatrist once I weaned off my anxiety medications.

For help and community, I took a page out of the Old Testament and began going to AA – which is free. It works. In addition to staying sober, it has helped me become a better person.

Let me assure every problematic drinker out there: If you are drinking enough to be searching for treatment options on the internet, there is little to no chance that you’ll be able to moderately drink. Ever. Moderated drinking is for people who don’t have a drinking problem. Not alcoholics.

By the time you’ve developed a drinking problem outside of a boozy vacation or stressful week, moderate drinking is no longer an option. If you’re struggling with alcohol, you need to hear that quitting is the best – and probably only — option. No matter how appealing the moderated drinking advertisements seem.