Doctors normally treat people with drinking problems as drinking too much and are loathe to brand them as alcohlics. I agree with these reactions or attitudes, and so does this book.
It is refreshing to realize without saying it that AA is "ONE" unique way to respond to heavy drinking, and that everyone is not necessarily an alcoholic. There may be other well-founded ways to react to heavy drinking, a way that has been considered a normal reaction.
Each of us is unique and each of us reacts to alcohol differently. This book seems to capture those sentiments, and with a little bit of research, stamps these thoughts as normal and valid.
I like the way the author compares he! avy drinking with heavy eating or heavy smoking, and how people react wonderfully when such a person signs up for a new diet or a smoking cessation clinic, as being responsible and taking their lives into their own hands: it smacks of being a common-sensible way to deal with an ordinary problem.
Unfortunately, heavy drinking can maim or kill others, whereas smoking or heavy eating rarely hurt others. Because of this, possibly, society has overreacted and jumped on the band-wagon of branding heavy alcohol users as sick, insane, diseased, or whatever. As a result, this book is a refreshing look at a problem millions of alcohol-users deal with in the privacy of their own thoughts, but whose thinking has been stymied by the existance of the AA system, good in itself, but too much for some for whom AA does not apply. Surprisingly, even AA says it may not apply to everyone.