Mike Harden

About the author: Mike Harden is a Columbus Dispatch columnist.

Audrey Kishline, a recovering alcoholic and the founder of Moderation Management, proposed that people with drinking problems could learn to control their drinking through moderation. Kishline believed that for many problem drinkers, moderate drinking was a more realistic goal than all-out abstinence. However, this view contradicts decades of experience showing that alcoholism is a disease that can only be cured with abstinence. In March 2000 Kishline killed a man and his 12-year old daughter during a drunk driving accident where her blood-alcohol level was .26, more than three times the legal limit. This tragedy demonstrates that alcoholics cannot learn to moderate their drinking.

Six years ago, the mere mention of author Audrey Kishline's book Moderate Drinking was enough to set the alcohol-treatment community on...