ABSTRACT
In this chapter and the following two, we describe what we conclude is the common experience of family members around the world living with excessive drinking or drug use. The present chapter considers the ways in which family members find the drinking or drug taking to be a problem, how they try to make sense of it, and how it makes them feel. The following chapter examines how family members try to deal with these circumstances, and Chapter 7 considers the support they receive from others in their efforts to cope. We found many of the same experiences retold in places as different as poor communities on the edge of Mexico City, villages in semi-rural South-West England, and remote Aboriginal communities in Northern Australia. These experiences, we suggest, may be universal. Later, in Chapter 8, we offer a number of conclusions about the ways in which the experience of living in close proximity to a drinking or drug problem varied according to sociocultural group.
