Congratulations on your winning attitude and your ability and strength to take the first frightful steps. Those first baby steps, in any situation, are the scariest.
I come from an alcoholic family, although in each generation's time, they wouldn't admit it. My mom's dad was a heavy drinker, my birth father (versus my {step})was a heavy drinker, my brother is a heavy drinker and my ex-husband still is a heavy drinker. As far as genetics go, I wonder if rather being pre-disposed to it because of heredity, if people are alcoholics because the need/desire to drink is controlled by addictive personalities. Just a thought because it's not known for sure.
My sibling and I knew from an early age that we best be quiet until our father passed out in the chair. Even then we were careful not to wake the sleeping giant(as we use to call our dad). He was a great dad when he was sober, but a raging bull when he was drunk.
Thankfully he never got physical abusive, but my Irish mom did. I remember many nights that we were sent in bed early and laid there with our covers over our head because mom and pop were screaming at each other while mom was throwing her china at him.Nice thing about that was at least once a month we had pretty new china to set the table with.
One thing we hope would never happen was he would come home drunk the day we brought out report cards home from school and God forbid you got anything lower than a C cause we knew we would get the belt.
Still 4 out of 5 of us became an alcoholics and the other one a drug addict. Wouldn't you think we would have known better????