Skip to main content Currently Reading After a decade of alcoholism, I'm working to make sure my boys don't repeat my mistakes Jessica Lahey, The Washington Post April 6, 2021 FacebookTwitterEmail 3of3 I got sober nearly eight years ago, after about a decade of very well-camouflaged alcoholism. My husband and two sons may have been unaware of what I was up to when their backs were turned, but without their knowledge or consent, I'd forced them to participate in my lies, obfuscation and evasion. Worse, I'd replicated the part of my childhood I hated most, the parts where my sister and I were not allowed to talk about the alcoholism that took up so much space in our small childhood home, not even as our resentment over its outsize role increased.