I haven't done an exhaustive sweep of alcoholism through the ages, Mike...I just happened on the 18th and 19th century temperance movements in the course of studying something else
My point was that temperance movements were powerful enough to affect Government and even effect legislation at one point in history.
If you want to argue that none of those hundreds of thousands of people were chronic alcoholics in the AA sense, I guess you're right in that I have no answer to that LOL.
I have immense respect for AA. It's saved many of my friends lives.
It's peer support model is ubiquitous and infinitely preferable to the Victorian workhouses jails or ill-named Benevolent Asylums that used to house what society termed the hopeless alcoholics.
But people did, and still do find recovery without AA...even chronic alcoholics like myself.
To be honest I'm not sure why that seems to be such a contentious statement here?
D