Irene is a “double winner” – part of a special group of people who are members of the fellowship of both Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon. Both her parents and her brothers were daily drinkers. Her father, a police officer, was a believer in corporal punishment with her brothers. But eventually Irene’s parents would divorce – her mother would take her to live with herself and the man with whom she was having an affair. And the drinking would continue. Irene herself began drinking at fifteen. She would eventually lose her oldest brother to alcoholism, and her parents would not admit the alcohol was a factor. When she and her surviving brother decided to get sober, her parents could not understand why they stopped drinking.
