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Where both alcoholism and the joys

of recovery hit home

Alcoholism has always been a family business. As the stories in this section on the family happily illustrate, so is sobriety. Our writers in this chapter reinforce the truths we live by in fresh, insightful ways. “One by one we crashed into the rooms of AA,” writes Kirk K. in “Struck Sober,” yet “the disease lives on even as we try to break the chain in our generation.”

These accounts of recovery’s ripple effects through families once shredded by active alcoholism offer their own kind of quiet drama. In “A Family Affair,” Alan D. reports the birth of the first child on either side of his family to be born to sober parents. H.W., in the story “How My Child Came to Believe,” describes herself, a sobering parent, as one “who has returned to the human community through the healing influence of the AA life,” and is grateful for her attorney, also in recovery, who offers her a profound, unique take on regaining custody and “spiritual rights.”

In “Game Changer,” Susan B. gets caught up in comparing her alcoholic dad to the father in “The Brady Bunch” and, after she finally gets to her first meeting, her father greets his birthday with a message to her: “You never have to give me another birthday present for the rest of my life.”