I have a 20' by 20' deck that needs to be treated very badly. About 4 years ago, I put a dark brown pigment stain over the entire deck.

At the time I did not realize that it was more like paint or I would not have used it, but it was too late. The deck before this pigment stain appeared to have a clear coat on wolmanized wood.

Because of financial reasons i have not been able to restain the wood since i did it 4 years ago. Right now the upright piers, railings and steps are still pretty dark brown, but the horizontal deck that you walk on is really worn down.

My question is:

Is there anyway to get back to the wolmanized stain look and feel instead of the paint look?

Thanks for any advice.

Solid Deck Stains cannot be stripped off with a deck stain stripper. If it is a semi-transparent stain then it may come off but it depends on the brand name. Not all stains are created equal and some are extremely difficult if not impossible to remove. You may want to try to remove a much as possible with the stripper then sand off the rest.

Was it Behr Stain? Everyone has issues with it.

Sherwin Williams offers products to help with this

They have a 3 part system to remove the existing stain to prepare for a new color or stain application.

Sherwin Williams stripper will not remove a solid deck stain. It is a sodium hydroxide based stripper that is around 6-10% NaOH. This is not strong enough to remove a paint/solid stain.

This product is 15% NaOH and is still will not remove a paint/solid stain. It will remove pretty much all semi-transparents or semi-solids:
HD80 Wood Stain Stripper

So is it safe to say that once you go with a solid paint stain for decks, there is no way to go back to the stains that show the natural wood through?

In most cases yes. If you really want to get it back then you will need to strip multiple times then sand off the rest. It is not an easy task but if you have the time and patience then it is possible to get it off. Problem is that you just do not know what the result will be. I have seen many customers try and fail.