Abstinence - the best route to recovery for alcoholics

Complete abstinence from drinking offers alcoholics the best chance of a lasting recovery — though it may not work as well for the younger alcoholics. Researchers from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) studied 2,109 US adults who were alcoholics at the outset and followed up their progress for three years. Just over 38 per cent had completely stopped drinking. A similar percentage were considered "low-risk" drinkers; they were free of alcoholic symptoms — such as craving and physical withdrawal symptoms when they were not drinking — but were drinking at moderate levels. The rest were free of alcoholic symptoms, but were still drinking at levels believed to put them at high risk of relapse — 14 or more drinks per week for men, or 7 or more for women. Three years later, 1,772 study participants were interviewed again. Half of the high-risk drinkers had an occurrence of some alcohol abuse symptoms, while 10 per cent had relapsed into full-blown alcohol dependence. The corresponding figures for the abstainers were just 7 per cent and 3 per cent. Among low-risk drinkers, 27 per cent reported some symptoms of alcohol abuse, while 4 per cent had relapsed. When the researchers looked at the group by age, however, they found that alcoholics younger than 25 years had the most difficult time with long-term recovery — even if their chosen route was abstinence. Nearly 30 per cent of young abstainers were suffering alcohol abuse symptoms three years later, and almost 12 per cent had relapsed into dependence. Most of the previous alcoholism treatment studies have been in middle-aged adults, because the youngest alcoholics are typically not the ones who seek treatment. However, the findings suggest that young alcoholics need more help in achieving a lasting recovery, and thus more ways need to be found to reach out to younger alcoholics where they are — on college campuses, for example, or in emergency rooms after a binge. Also, younger patients may need more help in dealing with these social influences.