Holy crap that's a tough one. My dad was a serious alcoholic, I've seen from the front row what addiction can do to you and your relationships with others and if anything that taught me in the harshest way imaginable to a young kid to stay away from stuff that I'm not equipped to deal with even in moderation. My dads funeral was a 'small' affair. As in, the only people present there were two friends from his student days, his wife and my sister, me and my eldest. Everybody else either didn't want to come or was told to stay away by his wife. For someone who got to be 69 (in spite of all the booze) you'd expect a few more people to show up but his relationships with the rest of the world were so bad that he died quite lonely.

It looks - by your writing - as though you've come out the other end of this and are on your way to a better life, congratulations, it must have been extremely hard to get to where you are today, I don't think my dad would have been able to achieve what you have done no matter how much time he would have had.