The ravages of alcohol abuse are not confined to the alcoholic. Family members, especially children, bear the cruel brunt of untreated alcoholism. The National Council on Alcoholism estimates that nearly 30 million adults living in the U.S. today grew up in .alcoholic homes. Some experts estimate that one in every four or five American adults is a product of an alcoholic home.

While growing up these adults endured pressures and forces different from those being raised in non-alcoholic families. As one ' associate remarked to others, "I survived my upbringing, but I have scars to show for it. Scars that still hurt." Treatment data and research findings show that this person's experience is not unique.

Children of alcoholics carry painful internal scars. For survival's sake, most have developed a personal array of coping skills and perceptions about life. Most have characteristics that are common to someone growing up in an alcoholic household. Some individuals are cognizant of the forces operating in their lives. Some are not.

Many adults who grew up in homes where a parent was alcoholic are coming to similar conclusions. Their accounts to counselors and therapists underscore one fact: namely, that being an adult child of an alcoholic means more than just being a grown up off-spring of an alcoholic parent. It means being an adult who still has characteristics of a child because of alcoholic parents.

Alcoholism arrests and retards the growth and development of the alcoholic.  It has the same effect on children in the home. Alcohol abuse prevents the alcoholic from having normal interaction like communication, sharing, and showing affection. Alco

hol abuse by a parent causes a child to
retreat to the safe world of isolation. It forces the child to try to live and relate without the normal range of emotions. Alcohol abuse distorts the reality of the user. It distorts the environment of everyone in the family.

Because of an alcoholic parent, a child's emotions get capped. Values remain undeveloped. Coping mechanisms never get taught. Alcoholism stunts maturation - the child never completely grows up.

As one user related, it prompts the same level of denial and disease as the alcohol involved parent: Mom wanted the family to maintain an appearance of respectability. We were instructed not to aggravate dad's problem or cause the family more distress by discussing or referring to his drinking problem. The family eventually started to act like dad. We become as sick as him.

The litany could go on. Fortunately, we have become enlightened enough to recognize that alcoholism is indeed a family disease - affecting each individual in a unique and powerful fashion. At last, too, there are programs that treat alcoholic's spouses and children. The stone age thinking that looked upon the spouse of an alcoholic as someone long suffering and noble has been supplanted by an understanding of the nature of the disease of alcoholism.

What remains is for adults, who have been so victimized, to take heart. Health and personal recovery are possible. It begins with the most difficult step - identifying oneself as a child of an alcoholic It means confronting the pain and loss of never having had the perfect parent.

Once this is admitted the grieving necessary to get better can occur. Once admitted, the years of repressed sadness, anger and fear can surface.   A healthy sense of self esteem can begin, the healing process set in motion.