Abstract
While 90% of Americans believe that alcoholism is a disease, two central notions, loss of control and abstinence, constitute the main explanations and references of this discourse in North America. Contrary to this model, many European countries, some social services in Ontario and Quebec in Canada, and some American organizations like Men and Women for Sobriety, Rational Recovery, Secular Organization for Sobriety, Empowerment groups, Moderation Management, Smart Recovery, etc., have adopted the controlled drinking approach whereby alcoholics are seen as capable of exercising a certain control, with abstinence not being considered to be a precondition for treatment. This significant opposition in understanding the phenomenon of addictions translates into two different conceptions of human behavior that have a direct impact on the intervention processes on both a psychological and a social level. The first one is the American model of disease, while the second represents a multifactorial model inspired by a wide spectrum of human sciences disciplines such as sociology, psychology, philosophy, anthropology, and so on. An overview of the most significant research results on controlled drinking since 1962 will allow us to clarify certain psychosocial issues in relation to this complex question