Rick Doblin (1999, January 11), Personal communication.
Reprinted with permission.
Drug policy reformer's father, a CompCare physician, recommended controlled drinking!
Stanton,
My dad actually worked as an addiction physician at a CompCare facility in Chicago. He was uncomfortable with the corporate mentality. When I asked him whether CompCare ever did research, he said that they didn't have a research department and didn't want to know their actual results. He was the first person to tell me about the Sobells' work on controlled drinking treatment for alcoholism. He believed it was accurate and encouraged me to read about them.
I've met some remarkable ex-alcoholics who became controlled drinkers. I sat with one woman while she tried MDMA for the first time. She told me about how difficult it was at first for her to try a drink with her family around the Christmas holidays since she had been taught that one drink meant she would relapse. She told me that after achieving controlled drinking for several years, she realized that she would have not been able to attain a certain level of maturity and self-confidence if she had continued to believe that she had no control over her drinking. To hear her reveal her agonizing over her emotions related to her struggle to become a controlled drinker, and how the prevailing dogma made it more difficult for her to become what she defined as more healthy, convinced me that controlled drinking is possible for some ex-alcoholics and that to deny that possibility is to keep a subset of people dependent and unhealed.
Rick Doblin, founder of MAPS – The Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies
