I learned about alcoholism when I was eight. We were stationed in England and my father went to the base hospital to attend a treatment program after Mom said that if he didn't stop drinking she would leave him. They kept him in the hospital for two weeks straight, cooped up indoors with all the other alcoholics. He wasn't allowed to smoke, and the only food allowed was hospital cafeteria food. These conditions served to make him rather testy by the last two days of treatment, which were dedicated to family activities.

The program leader was a sanctimonious old woman named Gwen. I remember because she made us all play a stupid game to remember the name of every man, woman, and child in the program. Gwen had a habit of talking to everyone as if they were a slightly retarded infant, and the recovering alcoholics really hated her. On the first family day we sat through interminable lectures and film strips about the nature of alcoholism and its effects on the family. They even did a skit using one of the families. As best I can recall, the point of the skit was that children of alcoholics and their co-dependent wives will be ignored by both parents until they drop out of school and/or drown themselves in the lake.

The second day of treatment Gwen assigned all the family members to write down on a piece of paper the following statement, filling in the blanks from our own personal experience: "It makes me feel blank when you blank because blank." We each had to do three different versions of this sentence addressed to the alcoholic member of the family. Then everyone sat in a big circle in the conference room and Gwen asked for a volunteer family. My mother volunteered, because she had three sentences she really wanted to get off her chest and she felt safer doing it in a room full of people than doing it at home.

Gwen put six chairs in the middle of the room for us to sit on, so that everyone could watch us. I don't remember exactly what my parents said because I was too busy being embarrassed. My mother would accuse my father of something, he would make a sarcastic denial, she would reply with sarcastic skepticism, and they went back in forth like that until Mom started yelling. My mother had viable complaints, but Dad had a quicker wit and pushed the buttons guaranteed to bring out her raging lunatic side for the crowd.

My parents had three separate vicious fights in front of all those strangers, and when Gwen finally got them calmed down she turned to me, as the eldest child, and asked me to read my sentences to my father. I was already infuriated at Gwen for giving my parents an excuse to fight and I could not believe that she expected me to attack my father in front of everyone. They already knew he was an alcoholic, why did they need to humiliate him further? I glared at Gwen and told her that I didn't have any sentences written down. She insisted that I make one up on the spot. So I turned to my dad and said "It makes me happy when you play the piano, because you are good at it." He and I smirked at eachother, united in our hatred of this program and its administrator. Gwen was very disappointed in my non-combative sentence, and since the other kids were too young to write accusatory sentences, she asked for another volunteer family.

The next to go were a young couple with an infant. The wife was a timid little thing, and her first complaint was that it made her feel unloved when her husband smoked in the car unless the baby was with them, because she felt like he valued the baby more than her. The husband told her she was too sensitive and he didn't do it to purposely hurt her feeling. The wife accepted this, so my mom felt the need to jump up and argue for her, hoping to brow-beat the man into saying he would never smoke in the car again. It turned into a shouting contest, with my parents and the young couple all arguing at once, until Gwen said that we were out of time and had to go to another conference room for the final boring lecture.

My dad started smoking as soon as we got in the car. I don't remember how long he kept from taking a drink, but he started doing it on the sly some time before my mom found out. It was less than a year after the treatment program that he went back to drinking full time and telling my mom to shut the fuck up whenever she nagged him about it.

My father is an alcoholic, but it isn't the reason he's a bad person. His parents and siblings seem to think it's an excuse for every bad thing he's ever done, like the alcohol is somehow repressing the great guy he is deep inside. I don't think vodka changes your personality. It just makes it harder to hide who you really are.