A woman's guide to enduring and overcoming her mate's alcoholic problems. Demystifying the complicated issues of dependency, denial, self-abuse and self-esteem, women are shown how to cope with the personal, professional and familial conflicts that result from alcoholism.

Alcoholism has been called a "family disease" and yet the family, in particular the wife, of the alcoholic seems to go unseen by the addiction and recovery communities. And what support, advice and programs there are for the women married to alcoholics tend to be alcoholic-centric. "The Alcoholic Husband Primer" is advice for the wives of alcoholics based on their needs - not the needs of the alcoholic. It doesn't label women as "co-dependent." It doesn't accuse them of being "enablers." It's real, practical, everyday advice for the wives of alcoholics...written by the wife of an alcoholic.

"Living with a Functioning Alcoholic" is a book about hope, written specifically for women living in the chaos of alcoholic families yet unable to seek help from a psychologist.

Wren Waters knows that most women who are married to alcoholics live in the constant mental state of "should I stay? I need to leave." As the days turn into months, the months into years, no decision becomes a tragic decision. When a woman finally looks up from the years lost to trying to mitigate life with a compulsive drinking, she often feels it's "too late." Too late to be happy. Too late to embrace her life. Too late to live her dreams. "Leaving 101" is not about leaving today, tomorrow or necessarily at all. It's about arresting the erosion of your soul that is the eventual by product of living with someone else's alcoholism. It's about learning to live more consciously - rather than reactively - so that you regain control and power in your own life. It's about working to create a life that one day makes it your choice as to whether you stay or go.

"To me the sound of a metal bottle capunscrewing against a glass bottle isthe worst sound in the world.To my husband it is heaven."This true account is my story. My personal observations and feelings as I lived with a husband addicted to alcohol, on a roller coaster ride of hope and despair, love and loathing, embarrassment and anger, dreading each day. I was isolated, confused and upset that I was not doing enough to help him.You become worn down by the windscreen wiper mentality. The good guy, bad guy, drinking, not drinking, telling the truth, lying, worrying, hope, please not this time, maybe he will stop - or maybe I am going mad - perhaps it is me.This is the life I have written about. How I slowly came to realize that I was always waiting, wanting him to change. Trying to change him. Wrong. It had to be me who changed.I describe how I reached these conclusions, the choices I made and acted upon, to improve my life.Without implementing change, everything will stay the same as it is now.In writing this book I hope that some one else who lives with an alcoholically dependant person can be helped.We are not going mad.We did not cause the problem.We alone cannot change the alcoholic.We must change ourselves in order to get our life back.

In this fascinating history of alcohol in postwar American culture, Lori Rotskoff draws on short stories, advertisements, medical writings, and Hollywood films to investigate how gender norms and ideologies of marriage intersected with scientific and popular ideas about drinking and alcoholism. After the repeal of Prohibition in 1933, recreational drinking became increasingly accepted among white, suburban, middle-class men and women. But excessive or habitual drinking plagued many families. How did people view the "problem drinkers" in their midst? How did husbands and wives learn to cope within an "alcoholic marriage"? And how was drinking linked to broader social concerns during the Great Depression, World War II, and the Cold War era? By the 1950s, Rotskoff explains, mental health experts, movie producers, and members of self-help groups like Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon helped bring about a shift in the public perception of alcoholism from "sin" to "sickness." Yet alcoholism was also viewed as a family problem that expressed gender-role failure for both women and men. On the silver screen (in movies such as The Lost Weekend and The Best Years of Our Lives) and on the printed page (in stories by such writers as John Cheever), in hospitals and at Twelve Step meetings, chronic drunkenness became one of the most pressing public health issues of the day. Shedding new light on the history of gender, marriage, and family life from the 1920s through the 1960s, this innovative book also opens new perspectives on the history of leisure and class affiliation, attitudes toward consumerism and addiction, and the development of a therapeutic culture.