Peele is the author of nine books including, Love and Addiction (1975), The Meaning of Addiction (1985/1998), Diseasing of America (1989), The Truth about Addiction and Recovery (with Archie Brodsky and Mary Arnold, 1991), Resisting 12-Step Coercion (with Charles Bufe and Archie Brodsky, 2001), 7 Tools to Beat Addiction (2004), and Addiction-Proof Your Child (2007), as well as 200 professional publications.

Peele began his critique of standard notions of addiction when he published Love and Addiction (coauthored with Archie Brodsky). Love and Addiction According to Peele's experiential/environmental approach, addictions are negative patterns of behavior that result from an over-attachment people form to experiences generated from a range of involvements. Most people experience addiction to some degree at least for periods of time during their lives. He does not view addictions as medical problems but as "problems of life" that most people overcome. The failure to do so is the exception rather than the rule, he argues. Stanton Peele's Approach

Peele maintains that, depending on the person, abstinence or moderation are valid approaches to treat excessive drinking.Psychology Today article which compared the Life Process Program with the disease model Recovering from an All-or-Nothing Approach to Alcohol, he also argues against the views of Alan Leshner and others that addiction is a disease. Hungry for The Next Fix: Behind the relentless, misguided search for a medical cure for addiction.

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.

In The Truth About Addiction and Recovery (1991) and 7 Tools to Beat Addiction (2004) Peele laid out the elements of alternative treatment. He developed these ideas as the Life Process Program, which is the basis for the non-12 Step residential treatment offered at the St. Gregory Retreat Center

1989. Rutgers Center of Alcohol Studies Mark Keller Award for Alcohol Studies for his article "The limitations of control-of-supply models for explaining and preventing alcoholism and drug addiction," JSA, 48:61-77, 1987. Rutgers Center of Alcohol Studies

1994. Alfred R. Lindesmith Lifetime Achievement Award for Scholarship from the Drug Policy Foundation , Washington, DC, Alfred R. Lindesmith Award for Achievement in Scholarship, Drug Policy Foundation

1998. Creation of the Annual Stanton Peele Lecture, 1998, by the Addiction Studies Program, Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia.

2006. Lifetime Achievement Award, 2006, International Network on Personal Meaning, Vancouver.

Lindesmith Center (now the Drug Policy Alliance): grant to write an adolescent drug guide (1996).

Distilled Spirits Council (DISCUS) and the Wine Institute: unrestricted grants (1999—2000).

Peele supported Moderation Management founder Audrey Kishline, who also subscribed to the belief that addiction is not a disease. After giving up her own attempts at moderation to seek help with AA, Kishline was convicted of killing a father and his 12-year-old daughter while driving under the influence of alcohol. This was widely claimed to invalidate Kishline's position and by association, Peele's. Peele was one of 34 addiction professionals who published a statement about the Kishline incident stating that "the approach represented by Alcoholics Anonymous and that represented by Moderation Management are both needed."

In a review of The Meaning of Addiction, Addiction researcher Dr Griffith Edwards stated the following about Peele's work:

"With these and other issues treated in cavalier fashion, with referencing highly incomplete and crucial work often ignored, one begins to feel that this is a book where polemic and scholarship have become inextricably and unhappily mixed. ... Peele is not only a psychologist of distinction, but someone who can make use of sociological and biological ideas. ... So there's the dilemma."

—Griffith EdwardsReview of The Meaning of Addiction.