approaches to treat excessive drinking. In a Psychology Today article which compared the Life Process Program with the disease model, he also argues against the theory proposed decades ago by modern physicians, mental health professionals, research scientists, etc. that addiction is a disease. In Diseasing of America (1989) Peele contested Dr George Vaillant's pro-disease treatise The Natural History of Alcoholism. Peele has been concerned with identifying cultural factors (those differentiating Temperance from non-Temperance societies) in support of positive alcohol experiences, as well as medical and psychological benefits due to positive drinking practices. Primarily, he has found, such drinking occurs where alcohol use is socialized in young people in family and community settings. He has also sought to generalize this paradigm to drug use. Views on 12 step/disease treatment In a co-authored book, Resisting 12 Step Coercion (2001), Peele outlined his case against court mandated attendance of twelve-step drug and alcohol treatment programs. He argued that these treatment programs are useless and sometimes harmful, he presented research on alternative treatment options, and accused some addiction providers of routine violation of standard medical ethics, an accusation that is likewise often leveled at Peele by disease proponents. In The Truth About Addiction and Recovery (1991) and 7 Tools to Beat Addiction (2004) Peele laid out what he believes to be the elements of alternative treatment. He developed these ideas as the Life Process Program, which was the basis for a non-12 Step residential treatment program and is now offered as an online treatment resource by Dr. Peele and colleagues. Peele attributes the intensifying drug crisis in the US to the continuing acceptance and spread of the disease model of addiction in both its 12-step and brain disease forms since, he feels, the disease model undercuts the sense of self-efficacy that characterizes positive, controlled substance use. Criticism In a review of The Meaning of Addiction, addiction researcher Dr Griffith Edwards stated the following about Peele's work: Recognition [make a Blockquote]“Stanton Peele has done as much as anyone to reveal the inadequacies, absurdities, and injustices of the idea that addiction is a disease and, specifically, that it is a disease of the brain. In a constant flow of influential books, articles, and blogs over more than forty years, he has persuasively extended the critique of the disease theory of addiction beyond the scientific community to the general public. When the disease theory is eventually replaced