Well, I have had friends who completely stopped, and it was clearly not a solution, and it was not realistic because they had the mindset that *one* drink represented a total failure. There was no accumulation of advantage - at any point, even 20 years later, a total failure could happen with one misstep. The 12 step programs are nothing but poorly hidden religious indoctrination, in which you either believe, or don't. There is no gray. But people are gray. Motivations are never pure. No one is completely rational.
So these people ended up in worse shape, even though they were sober, because all room for error was gone - they might as well have been living under some kind of final court order, although self-imposed. It seemed sad to me that the cure was worse than the disease.
I myself was concerned at one time about drinking to excess - so I attended a few AA meetings. I ended up with more real empathy for stone unrepentant drunks, who it seemed to me were waging an honest war with their demons. And I also knew that there was a lot more to alcoholism than drinking. So I think you have to attack the underlying cause, and the symptom - drinking to excess - will go away. It's a personal opinion but I'm sure it's right. The objective is to get better. Avoiding drink as an end in itself almost never works.
Personally, what "fixed" me in that regard was simply recognizing that I expected too much from myself and from others. Lowered expectations from others automatically lowered the impetus to drown in booze.
Another aspect is - you can't expect quick solutions. My drinking gradually tailed off to the point it was no longer a major component of life - but I still love a cold beer on a hot day.
Am I cured? Of course not - I never had a disease. I just stopped being self-indulgent.