Hi All, I'm new here.  I am a middle aged Mom, happily married, recovered alcholic.  I have five sisters and we are all the classic product of Alcoholic parents who destroyed their careers, marriage and for awhile, some of us.  Of the six sisters, three of us beat the disease and live happy healthy lives.  The other three still drink. One to such excess that she is lucky to be alive.  She is energy draining,and to be blunt I cut her out of my life a few years ago.  Parents still drink to excess and both live alone.  father will be 80 tomorrow.  The snipes behind our backs from the older drinking sisters hurt.  It hurts when they drink.  They chose to feel threatened by our sobriety rather than to respect it and and to respect our boundries and our intolerance of their drinking that so stifles their lives and inhibits their forward going. This all gets overwhelming.  My life is full and I guess I find it too easy to block out my family except for my two sisters that I love so much. We took a stand to make things better for the next generation.  My kids are confident and loved, they will not need to find those things in a bottle.  Every once in awhile the guilt creeps in when I realise that I neglect my elderly parents but when I call they are drunk and so I retreat and block.  I guess maybe that is the way it will stay.  Just makes me so damn sad as tomorrow my Dad will be eighty.  he used to be a young handsome surgeon so long ago with the world at his feet.  I hate booze-wish they'd ban it.  Thanks for the ear.