Alcoholism involves every member of the family; how else do you explain the fact that children who come into Alateen rooms generally report that they have more problems dealing with the non-drinking parent than they do the alcoholic.

What? I'm not an alcoholic! He... him... he's the alcoholic! He's the one who is in trouble all the time! He's the one who causes all the problems...

This might be true, but the alcoholic is also predictable. Kids can read an alcoholic like a book. Kids know when it's the right time to ask for extra money, or if they can go out with their friends; they also know when it's time to make themselves scarce and get out of the way. As far as the alcoholic is concerned kids know the routine. However, they never know where the bedraggled non-drinking parent is coming from next.

One minute the non-drinking parent is screaming at the alcoholic and the next minute she may be compassionately rescuing him from the consequences of his latest episode, i.e. dutifully cleaning up his messes, making excuses for him and accepting an increasing degree of unacceptable behavior.

The truth of alcoholism affects the entire family's life, the attitudes and thinking of everyone changes perhaps more dramatically than it does for the drinking spouse and is often hard to recognize. Why? Because it creeps up slowly.

Frog in the Water A few years ago there was a story going around the 12-step rooms about a frog in the water. The story goes like this:

If you put a frog into a pan of boiling water, it will jump out faster than the eye can see. But if you put the frog into a pan of water that is the frog's body temperature and then slowly turn up the heat the frog will stay in the water -- even to the point of boiling alive. Why? Because the frog does not notice the gradual change in temperature.

Alcoholism works much the same way... the heat is slowly and continuously turned up but nobody notices the change. Cunning and baffling! It's a progressive disease. It typically begins with casually accepting unacceptable behavior. As time passes the behavior has slowly grown more and more intolerable, but it is still being accepted and becomes the "norm."

What you finally end up with is chaos that a few short years ago would have been unthinkable. If you looked out the window and saw the same kind of things taking place across the street at the neighbor's house, you undoubtedly would pick up the phone and call 9-1-1 to get those people some help!

An Insidious Disease As the behavior becomes a daily routine, the last thing that occurs to those of us who live in this situation is to pick up the telephone and get help. We are inexorably drawn into the belief that the alcoholic should be protected. We learn to cover for him, lie for him and hide the truth. We learn to keep secrets, no matter how bad the chaos and insanity all around us has become.

Few realize that by "protecting" the alcoholic with little lies and deceptions to the outside world we are in fact creating a situation that makes it easier for him to continue in his downward spiral. Rather than help the alcoholic we actually enable him to get worse.

The heat increased so gradually, over such an extended period of time, nobody noticed the water was beginning to boil and it was time to jump out of the pan.

The disease will continue to progress for the alcoholic until he is ready to reach out and get help for himself. Waiting for the alcoholic to reach out is not the family's only choice.

Other family members can begin to recover whether the alcoholic is still drinking or not. But it can't happen until somebody picks up the telephone and asks for help. There is hope and help out there.