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Dad was just an emotional wreck. He was drinking a lot of the time, he was smoking a lot of pot. And because he takes certain medications, the drinking was making him... you know, he wasn't even present, really.

My dad was a violent alcoholic. Really aggressive.

Any kid who grew up with an alcoholic parent will tell you how nauseating it feels never to know what it will be like when you come home.

People come up to me and talk about the alcoholism in their family.

There's sometimes a weird benefit to having an alcoholic, violent father. He really motivated me in that I never wanted to be anything like him.

As an alcoholic, you have no appreciation for your wife or your children's feelings, but I'm making up for that now. I'm winning my children's trust back.

The good news is that parents are the leading influence on kids' decision not to drink alcohol.

Whether the family goes on a spiritual basis or not, the alcoholic member has to if he would recover. The others must be convinced of his new status beyond the shadow of a doubt. Seeing is believing to most families who have lived with a drinker.

My mother is still battling alcoholism.

But I'll tell you something: We had a big family discussion about it recently, my two sisters and I, and I pointed out that we all have the same genes as our mother and we're all susceptible to becoming alcoholics.