This was one of the more hurtful things for me. My family took it semi-seriously, and kept pressuring me to stay with him and wait for a miracle, while his did not, and treated me like a jerk for calling attention to his problem and dealing with it straightforwardly instead of allowing them to live in their bubble of ignorance and denial like they want. (Who's bitter?!)
I think most of the weird reactions from bystanders are born of ignorance or not knowing what to say. People who haven't experienced this have weird beliefs about addiction -- hell, think of yourself 3-4 years ago and all the things you told yourself about your AH. Additionally, there's the "it takes two" narrative around troubled marriages/relationships, and it's easier to believe that "b****es be crazy" than the possibility that the guy they know and respect has the kinds of problems you read about in medical journals. They minimize, excuse, and avoid the subject.
Also, mental illness in general, including addiction and substance abuse, still has a HUGE social stigma attached to it. If you've never experienced this, and you see the married guy in a polo shirt maintaining at family parties compared to the bum in the street that most normies think of when it comes to alcoholism, you're going to think that this is all dramatic and can't be reflective of reality.
Just last night someone was telling me about a mutual acquaintance who has a textbook case of addiction, including the crazy outbursts, and how he drank a bunch and did a bunch of drugs, got in a fight, broke some glass, and got cut up enough that the cops were called and he had to go to the hospital. I mean, dude drunkenly tried to slit his own throat with broken glass, and this is only ONE in a string of similarly dramatic events over ten years, and my friend STILL couldn't believe that the acquaintance might be an alcoholic who would be better off if he quit using. You know, maybe he could just cut back a little bit, or stop mixing cocaine and whiskey. Sure, maybe. *cough*
Long story short, if denial is a river, it runs deep.
I had to have another way to talk about this stuff, and I found SR.