There are a lot of issues involved in the inclusion of moderation in this book, on which I could write forever. We try to present the facts, as best we can identify them. One important fact is that "loss of control" doesn't exist. In the appendix section on the topic, we laid out the best research we could find that attempted to test the loss of control theory. This is various priming dose studies done by Nancy K Mello, Alan Marlatt, Carl Hart, and others. They all show that when the options are stark, confirmed "addicts and alcoholics" demonstrate the ability to have a drink or hit (or a few) and stop. Crack users will turn down another big hit of crack almost all of the time when they have the option to take $20 that they'll receive a few weeks after the experiment is done. Drinkers will self-limit their drinking several days in a row when offered credits for doing so that they can save up for a binge on a later day. Drinkers who don't know they've consumed alcohol do not proceed to crave more, or even take more drinks from a pitcher of the concoction that is right in front of them and from which they can have as much as they want.
If "loss of control" were a biological reality, they couldn't do these things in the lab, but they do. You can't pay an epileptic to not have a seizure, but you can pay an "addict" to not have the symptoms of their "addiction."
The demand for abstinence from "addicts and alcoholics" is based on the idea that they are incapable of stopping. We are not incapable of it.
The fact that we often do keep using at high levels is not because we lack control, it's because we want to keep going. We want to keep going because of how wonderful we believe intoxication to be; we prefer using often/heavily more than using less. We prefer heavy intoxication more than a mild buzz. We, for example, think a 2 drink buzz sucks, but getting totally trashed with 12 drinks in a night is where it's at. Or, we don't think of heroin as a fun high to have once in while, we think that it's the only thing that makes life bearable and which we need every day. And so on.
This is what I think is correct, and so it's in the book. I also don't think our preferences are set in stone and unchangeable. People do change their infatuation with substances/intoxication throughout their lives. Half of "alcoholics" who get over their problems become moderate drinkers. That was found in the NLAES epidemiological survey of 1992, and NESARC in 2002. I've also learned tons of people's stories of moderation of all sorts of drugs, and there is even evidence of former heroin "addicts" becoming moderate heroin users in a decade long study by Zinberg. So, "addicts" can and do change their desire for these drugs and are not destined to continue using at problematic levels. I definitely wouldn't recommend moderate heroin usage, especially with the tainted supply currently going around, but to say it's impossible would be wrong. In 2016 I had to take a dozen percocets a day for a few weeks following surgery. I didn't "lose control." I definitely recognized the feeling from my days as a heroin user, but I didn't really find it pleasurable any more, and discontinued at will when I no longer needed them, because I wanted to be clear-headed again. I didn't become "re-addicted" because my preference had changed.
It is my belief that anyone who only wants to use moderately, will use moderately without "losing control." That isn't to say that everyone should, or that everyone would want to use moderately. Nor is it to say that people who want to be moderate users actually have a desire to use moderately. Many have a desire for heavy use only, while also wanting the lower costs of moderate use. This usually does not end well when they "try" to moderate. It becomes a losing game of resistance and management to stick within some kind of limits defined as moderate. If you prefer the intoxication of 12 drinks, two is not satisfying, it is a tease. From there, you either hate the experience while painfully resisting drinking more, or you say "screw it" and keep drinking more until you get the level of intoxication you prefer. It's still not a matter of "loss of control", it's just a matter of doing what you really prefer to do.
You can know about yourself that you only prefer constant/heavy intoxication, and that moderate use is not enjoyable to you, and you don't think that'll change. You can know that about one or all drugs. I haven't tried moderating cocaine because I'm pretty sure from experience that I would only like that drug in binge style use, injecting it for the quick headrushes every 15 minutes (before I used it that way, snorting it never turned me on at all). I also know those binges got boring and left me feeling worse at the end. I happily do not use cocaine. Not because I think I'll "lose control", but because I just don't see a place for it in my life that would enhance my life and be enjoyable. A middle ground is possible, but I don't see it as potentially enjoyable. I did however find a place for moderate drinking in my life after several years of full abstinence, I find it enhances my life in some times and settings, but it is not a feeling that I want all the time, by any stretch.
The point of that last paragraph is that we don't have to believe that we "can't" moderately use a drug to quit it altogether - we can just no longer want it for a variety of reasons. We don't have to scare ourselves into quitting. It's not the only way. Unfortunately, I think the abstinence or destructive-levels-of-use binary serves to coerce people into begrudgingly agreeing to abstinence as a goal, and robs them of the chance to make their own un-coerced choice for their own positive reasons.
We don't discuss moderation to promote it - we discuss it because it is a viable option, and because the abstinence only model serves to manipulate and coerce people into a choice, instead of letting them make their choice based on their own judgment of the options. When I say coerced, I mean that it instills fear to force an action. When a mugger points a gun and says "your money or your life", that's a coercive choice when yo hand over your money - it's not the same as you thinking "gee this guy has it rough, and I'd like to give him some money to help him get back on track." One is a coerced choice, the other is a positive self-initiated choice. The threat of abstinence or loss-of-control as the only two options is the gun in this analogy. We chose to take the plastic gun out of the interaction in our approach to helping substance users.