It was important for me to be brutally honest about the alcoholism in our family to my four children. My husband's father drank himself to death at the age of 59 and his mother had very bad cirrhosis of the liver until she quit drinking about 10 years ago, my mother is an active alcoholic and her mother and her mother's mother had major issues with alcoholism. I was well on my way to being a "full blown" alcoholic, but seeing my mother's actions and feeling the terrible feelings of helplessness, held me back from the brink and I have been sober for almost a year. I refused to sweep things under the rug or deny what my children witnessed with the alcoholics in our family. I have always been extremely frank about what this illness is and how badly it has effected the very people we love. I have three teenaged sons and I have never once seen any of them under the influence. I am not naïve enough to think that they have never nor will ever drink, but they are fully versed in alcoholism. I also hope that my husband and I are examples of living a healthy, loving, peaceful life. A lot of my drinking was escaping from the pain of a dysfunctional family of origin. Now, I get that every family has its dysfunction, but my children are not being raised in a chaotic, violent, controlling, shaming household, so I honestly don't think that they feel as much the need to "escape" as my sister and I did. There are no guarantees, but I am doing everything in my power for my children to have an entirely different experience than my husband and I had growing up.