believe the major import of this result is that one cannot generalize from one study of LTAA to the population of LTAA. LTAA cohorts may differ in alcoholism severity and in their ability to recover from such burden. Finally, given the cross-sectional nature of this study, we cannot definitively state that differences between STAA and LTAA are the result of differences in abstinence durations — the differences may be due to some unmeasured cohort differences. Nonetheless, the similarity of STAA and LTAA on demographic and alcohol use variables supports the idea that differences between STAA and LTAA are a consequence of differences in length of abstinence.
