My dad started drinking I think around or before I was 7, and it seemed to get worse every year after that. At first I didn't know how to react to it; my biggest strategy was just to hide in my room and pretend that nothing was going on. It wasn't until he started getting arrested for DUIs that I started to realize that something wasn't right. I didn't understand anything about alcoholism, and I didn't even really know what it was, until I was a teenager.