As others have mentioned, and it applies to me also, is that something happens to many/most alcoholics after the first drink that really makes it hard to stop. For me I don't think that will ever go away.
Maybe there are some alcoholics that have gone back to "social drinking" but we don't hear about them here as they would have no need for the SR board. But I would think they are a
very small percentage of alcoholics.
There is an organization called "Moderation Management" that tries to help people achieve this "Holy Grail" (to quote Spark42). However the founder of "MM" slid back into her old drinking habits and killed two people while driving drunk. A very tragic story:
Road to recovery - Dateline NBC- msnbc.com
And for myself, if I go to a party and only have coffee or a soft drink rather than a beer, I don't think I'm missing anything even if I did have only one or two.
In a thread a few years ago, someone mentioned that drinking just "one or two" would be too "white-knuckling" to be enjoyable anyways.