Audrey Kishline had herself had a drinking problem, had been in AA, which she didn't like at all, and then in Rational Recovery, which she also apparently didn't like because of its insistence on abstention. She wanted to start a self-help alternative to Alcoholics Anonymous and Rational Recovery, based on the findings in studies showing that even the heaviest drinkers could moderate their drinking. She asked me for help.

Since I'd been interested for some time in encouraging the growth and development of diverse approaches to helping heavy drinkers and drug users, I agreed to help her. (I have served on the boards of Rational Recovery, SMART Recovery, and Moderation Management.) I helped Ms. Kishline get in touch with leaders in the field of alcohol research such as Stanton Peele, Alan Marlatt, Martha Sanchez-Craig, and Fred Glaser. Audrey Kishline wrote a book entitled Moderate Drinking: The New Option for Problem Drinkers (1994), which first appeared with a foreword by me (dropped from recent printings). In addition to helping her with securing the Moderation Management service mark at the U.S. Patent Office in Crystal City, Virginia, I was able to get her featured in a film on the disease model of alcoholism produced by James Morrison of U.S. Health Productions, Columbus, Ohio, which aired throughout the U.S. and Canada in 1994-1995, marking the media birth of Moderation Management.

Audrey Kishline, her husband Brian, and I formed the first board of directors of MM. It became incorporated as a non-profit organization in 1995. In Jan 1995 I was interviewed by Leslie Knowlton who was interested in doing a story on MM for the Los Angeles Times. The story appeared on January 31st, 1995. A similar story by Knowlton came out in the February 1995 issue of Psychiatric Times entitled 'Just One? Exploring Moderation Management.'

Soon thereafter, the producers of NBC's Leeza show contacted us. Audrey Kishline and I were flown to Hollywood to tape a show entitled 'Can Alcoholics Drink?' That was taped on March 30th, 1995. It was a raucous show. Audrey Kishline was nervous and the producers of the show had planted the audience with disease-model advocates who were extremely hostile to the idea that heavy drinkers could control their drinking. During the show, to my surprise, Audrey Kishline declared that MM was only for 'problem drinkers', not for people with the disease of alcoholism.

Following that show and largely as a result of it, Audrey Kishline and MM were featured in The New York Times, Newsweek, Time, Business Week, and U.S. News and World Report, as well as on The Late, Late Show with Tom Snyder, Good Morning America, ABC World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, Dateline and Oprah, among many others.

In 1996 I created an Internet mail list through St. John's University in Jamaica, New York, for people with drinking and drug problems who wanted to use the moderation Management approach to controlling their consumption. I also created another Internet mail list for the new board of directors we had now gathered together for Moderation Management, Inc.

However, I was becoming uneasy, because Audrey and Brian Kishline continued to emphasize that Moderation Management was appropriate only for 'problem drinkers', not for 'real alcoholics'. They asserted that people with the 'disease of alcoholism' should not attempt moderation, and that they should use an abstinence-oriented approach to their drinking problems. This was in direct contradiction to what I had supposed was the fundamental distinguishing mark of MM.

Critics of Moderation Management began to say that Kishline's program was dangerous for people who had the disease of alcoholism. They asked her how she could tell the difference between 'problem drinkers' and those with the disease of alcoholism. Of course, she could not, sincere there is no conceivable way to do this: alcoholics just are problem drinkers, end of story. The critics went on to say that those with the disease of alcoholism, understandably wanting to believe they could drink in moderation, were being misled into believing that they could learn to control their drinking when in fact they could not. Loss of control would be triggered because of Moderation management. This criticism is quite logical, once we accept the premise that there is such a disease as alcoholism for which MM would be inappropriate.

I objected to Audrey and Brian Kishline's view that there was a disease called alcoholism and that somehow people with this putative disease were different from 'problem drinkers'. Since neither they nor anyone else could differentiate between the two, and since the Kishlines believed that some drinkers suffered with the disease of alcoholism, their critics were in effect right to point to the conclusion that MM must be dangerous to alcoholics who were attracted to it. However, I also pointed out that they were misunderstanding the basis upon which MM had apparently been established: MM was founded because of research showing that the heaviest drinkers, that is, precisely those alleged to 'have' the disease of alcoholism, could in fact control their drinking. There has never been any research showing that controlled drinking approaches were appropriate only for non-alcoholic 'problem drinkers', whoever they are.

As more and more publicity of MM became available, the more I emphasized the importance of the false distinction between problem drinkers and those with the disease of alcoholism, as well as the fact that the most important studies on controlled drinking and loss of control had been done with the heaviest drinkers, that is, indisputably those with the strongest claim to have the putative disease called alcoholism.

Brian Kishline told me that I ought to consider resigning from the MM board of directors and I quickly agreed. I severed all relations with MM in 1996.