RobbyRobot

I can understand from personal experience that one's rate of drinking can have a purposeful variance. Also from personal experience though, such variance really did not allow for creating an easier final end to my addiction to alcohol. Reduced intake certainly would make a particular detox less troublesome, but my addiction itself was unchanged by my having one single drink or having a thousand drinks. Alcoholics have crossed a line, and that is the way of it thereafter. There is no such idea for the alcoholic "a little is better then a lot" that even remotely is recovery whatsoever. Certainly more alcohol one would think causes more "damage", but not always so, since the "damage done" has wide variance between individuals. Some people are less or more susceptible to alcohol addiction right from the start, and so intake is not really all that important in coming to terms with addiction.

For those guys who are not alcoholic, then tapered drinking makes sense. They are still on the "good side" of the line. For the alcoholic, it makes no remarkable difference of any importance in their addiction or recovery, imo.

Having a hard or easy detox is not indicative of discerning success in permanent sobriety. Its just not that simple, for the alcoholic.

Taking breaks between drinking experiences, and falsely calling those breaks success in recovery, is as well a common misconception of properly living a truly happy and successful recovered lifestyle.