Alcohol and Alcoholism Vol. 38, No. 3, pp. 287, 2003
© 2003 Medical Council on Alcohol
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
REPLY
Laboratory of Clinical Studies, National Institutes of Health, National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, Building 10, Room 6S240, 10 Center Drive, Bethesda, MD 20892-1610, USA
Received 27 December 2002; accepted 2 January 2003
Thank you for the opportunity to respond to Dr Lloyd’s letter concerning our study. The length of abstinence from alcohol reported by the alcoholics in our sample ranged from 6 to 76 months. We chose 6 months as the minimum cut-off time to be considered a long-term abstinent alcoholic after careful review of the literature. Unfortunately, there are relatively few studies examining biological features of alcoholics with long-term abstinence from alcohol. Many of these defined long-term abstinence as less than 6 months.
We continue to be interested in the possibility that sweets can help some alcoholics abstain from alcohol in the early recovery period. To clarify this issue, what is needed is a prospective study of recently abstinent alcoholics. Such a study should characterize both the quantity of sweets the alcoholics consume, as well as their ‘use’ of sweets to mitigate alcohol craving.
EDITOR’S NOTE
I agree with Dr Lloyd on the need to establish unified and agreed criteria for the broad definition of the duration of abstinence as short-, medium- or long-term. In the meantime, and until a consensus is reached, it would be prudent of authors to define the duration of abstinence in actual time units. A.A.-B.B.
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