I don't know if ordu has thought of that, but they don't appear to have from their comment.

I find the idea that the only way to know if you're not an addict is to give up for a period of years to be very problematic. Most definitions of addict suggest they are unable to control their compulsion, but I couldn't see any indication of that from the article. If the author of the article can sustain occasional use while maintaining a high profile job (science professor), their use doesn't appear to be out of control.

Yeah, something like this. I'm not entirely sure that alcoholic addiction would be just like a nicotine one, but I believe it would be similar enough for me to detect it. If I'm right I might hope that my experience with nicotine could be generalized to alcohol.

Maybe unrelated to a discussion of "is a period of abstinence is revealing", but I rarely drink alcohol, and a year or two without a drop of alcohol is a normal to me.

> Most definitions of addict suggest they are unable to control their compulsion, but I couldn't see any indication of that from the article.

I see no indication that he is able to control it. He is like "I want to take heroin, so I'm taking it". It is a very popular stance for addicts. When I tried to control my nicotine addiction it mostly ended with "I do not want to control". Even now I do not want to control, though I now see the difference between "I do not want to control" and "I want to smoke". I do not want to smoke and do not want to control my addiction.

When plane uncontrollable falling to a ground due to a failure, a pilot could state that it is his intention, and therefore the fall is a controlled one. People often do something like this, but for an addict it is a symptom by itself.