Drunkenness is powerful behavior. In time, families and friends will react to it in predictable ways. Working from this premise, family therapist Michael Elkin shows how alcoholic families develop, how they train their members, and how a therapist can interrupt their lemminglike march to disaster. The book is written for people who work with alcoholics and their families. Its informal style and commonsense approach, however, make it enlightening reading for anyone interested in America’s number-one health problem.