Since I wrote this article back in ’85, it has become increasingly clear that the long term emotional dynamics that happen to someone who grows up in an alcoholic home are quite similar to what happens to a person who is raised in a home where a parent is addicted to drugs, or has an eating disorder, or has a compulsive gambling problem, or a compulsive debt problem; or is addicted to work, shopping, sex, TV, social media… What’s more, as I describe at length in the first audio on this page, this dysfunction then ripples out into society in many destructive forms. That is, for instance, domestic violence spikes; violence on the streets spikes; the health system gets tremendously stressed by the physical and mental maladies that result from all the dysfunction; our prisons become overcrowded; the next generation gets caught in the loop… Again, listen to the 1st audio for a more comprehensive picture of this.

--Joe