Part of the armoury of recovering alcoholics is their finely-developed line in grim humour. For example, they'll often refer to non-alcoholics - or people blessed with the ability to take a drink without the drink taking them - as 'civilians'.

This month is the 50th anniversary in this country and Eire of Al-Anon - the Fellowship founded, like Alcoholics Anonymous itself, in late 1930s America.

Al-Anon exists to help anyone affected by someone else's drinking - parents, partners, spouses, children, friends and relatives. These are the 'civilians' who live in a war zone.

Like AA, Al-Anon members follow a simple 12-Step Programme by attending local meetings where they share their experience, strength and hope. It's as simple and as powerfully effective as that. No more, no less.

There are innumerable members of Al-Anon who will tell you that without the Fellowship and its comfort of relative strangers, they would have been left staring into an abyss of hopelessness, stranded there by the effects of someone else's drinking, left hurt, beaten and sick by someone else's illness.

For every alcoholic, there are believed to be no fewer than 15 people affected by his or her drinking, yet the corresponding membership figures between AA and Al-Anon do not even come close to matching that.

Which would suggest that there are an awful lot of people out there in need of Al-Anon but who either don't realise that help is at hand, or who don't, or can't, bring themselves to reach out for it.

Sometimes, the process takes years. Jeannie was married to an alcoholic for 39 years. For three decades, she was physically and sexually abused and, on one occasion, knifed by the man she loved.

It took Jeannie a long time to find Al-Anon and even longer to realise that she, too, had a problem.

"I had to accept that I couldn't control everything. I thought it was my job as the breadwinner to provide sufficient cash for him to drink - because when he drank he'd eventually sleep it off and then I'd get peace," she explains.

Jeannie has two grown-up children but lost another three in the first seven months of her pregnancies. She tried leaving her alcoholic husband, but when she did, he'd take an overdose and she'd end up back with him.

Today, Jeannie is a member of Al-Anon and a qualified counsellor who works with alcoholics. Often, they ask her if she herself suffers from the illness; for it is a hard truth that only an alcoholic can truly understand other alcoholics. Jeannie reached her level of understanding through being around the illness for so long. "I'm the daughter of an alcoholic and living the way we did inside my marriage was the only system I knew.

"I'd carry him home from the pub and never tell a soul. Instead, I'd tell myself that he just drank a bit too much. I'd phone in sick for him when he was off work and I'd go to work myself with black eyes and bruises and say I'd fallen over. He didn't work much and eventually he didn't work at all."

"The abuse got worse and worse. He started to give me the odd slap, even when I kept my mouth shut."

She pauses, and smiles, a smile suffused with dignity and sadness. "You know, I loved him in the beginning and I loved him the day I finally left him," she says.

"I used to think that I could change him - when he wasn't drinking, he was a totally different guy. But I wouldn't have survived without Al-Anon," she adds bluntly.

It's given me the rules for a new life. Once you find Al-Anon, you'll never walk alone again."

Jeannie's ex-husband is still alive and still drinking. Sometimes, she'll see him on the street, but he's beyond recognising the woman he married and the mother of his children.

Recovering alcoholics have to remind themselves on a regular basis of many things, not least of which is that they are not bad people trying to become good, but are, instead, sick people trying to become well again.

Jeannie's understanding of this is illustrated by the simple answer she gives when you ask her what she feels toward her former husband today: "Compassion," she says.

Margaret and Elizabeth, like Jeannie, are members of Al-Anon, women who have been left broken-hearted and bewildered by the effects of another's drinking.

Elizabeth is a widow now, but still remembers the hell she lived through as a wife. "It's a lonely existence for both parties because there's no communication," she says. "I went down the drain with my alcoholic until he reached his rock bottom - a place I didn't even know existed.

"You're dealing with a lot of anger and resentment and self-pity. We lost so many things - our home among them. I drove him to his first AA meeting. When I eventually discovered Al-Anon, it was such a relief; here were people who understood.

"My relatives had given me all sorts of advice, but Al-Anon didn't. Instead, they understood how I felt, because they'd been through it."

"I think," says Margaret, "that people do not understand alcoholism. I didn't. I had a judgemental attitude, I thought his drinking was all his fault and that he could easily do something about it.

"But your whole day is ruled by whether your alcoholic is drinking or not. Al-Anon allows us to progress, it lets us get on with our life."

"I used to sit and think, 'Why me?'," admits Elizabeth. "I kept casting around for reasons. Somehow, somewhere, it had to be all my fault. I had such tremendous guilt over my husband's drinking."

"We had four young children, so the deprivation caused by his drinking bit harder," explains Margaret. "He managed to keep a job most of the time, but we were always hard up.

"My older two children acted as policemen for me. They kept an eye on him when I was out, which was wrong, because we were forgetting that he suffered from an illness - he wasn't a criminal. He's made a lot of amends since he stopped drinking," she adds quietly.

Elizabeth smiles. "My husband thought he was groomed for stardom. But we ended up losing everything and he ended up doing menial jobs," she says. "I remember him drinking whisky one day with the tears rolling down his face. 'If you think I enjoy this, well, I don't,' he said.

"I ended up crying with him. You love and hate the alcoholic at the same time, because you're stuck with him and you don't move or grow as a person. It took a long time for that anger to go. Al-Anon offers hope - and honesty. It's a tough thing, but a nourishing one."

The Fellowship describes its 50th anniversary in these islands as "golden" because where there was despair, Al-Anon has given hope.

And, as every 'civilian' who has had to confront a loved one's alcoholism knows, you don't have to be in the army to fight in the war.

*Al-Anon can be contacted at 61 Great Dover Street, London, or via its website: www.hexnet.co.uk/alanon