When my AXH was going through rehab, they had family meetings where counselors helped explain to the family what alcoholism is and what it does to your brain and behavior and how sobriety and recovery is a treatment that doesn't magically "fix" everything, but that it's a long-term solution.
My kids also met with AXH's alcoholism counselor separate from the family meetings, and he used a metaphor I liked because it worked with my kids. He said when you break a leg, you have to put your leg in a cast. Rehab is sort of like the cast. It helps you heal and it sort of protects you -- that's why they can't call him any time they want, or see him any time they want, because he's in this "cast" that's supposed to protect him while he heals.
Then once you remove the cast, that's not the end of it. Once you remove the cast (come back home and into society again), just like with a broken leg, you have to learn how to use it again, and it's going to be different than you're used to. And just like you have to go to physical therapy to get exercises to get your formerly-broken leg stronger, you have to go to meetings to make you stronger. And you get exercises at meetings just like you do at the PT that help you get stronger and heal.
And when you've broken a leg and you're going through that PT phase, you tend to get impatient and antsy and frustrated. You want so badly for everything to be normal but you know it's not and you can't do what you used to do and that can make you grumpy and sad. And it's a grumpy and sad that you sort of have to work through on your own, it's not a grumpy and sad that you can be cheered up out of with a hug and a movie.
That analogy worked for my kids. They got that. But I'm really grateful there were a couple of counselors who took the first stab at explaining alcoholism to them in the presence of AXH. That made it easier for me, even when he relapsed into full-blown active alcoholism again, to build on what they had learned.
And it also made it easier for me to explain is behavior when he was back to drinking in a context of disease. It helped me talk about his alcoholism in a way that didn't rob him of his dignity. They don't have disdain for him because of his alcoholism; they really do see it as a disease. They hate his behaviour, but they don't hate him. And I think that's a really good thing -- even though I can't always bring myself to feeling the same way.