I can explain why I abhorred Wendy. To me, she seemed one of those females for whom a man is only a means to have a child. She was exactly a type of wife that is a doom of a troubled man. Her main attitude, throughout the book, was "he is bad, he is against us, and we, the two of us, are defending against him as we can."
And one more thing... while I agree with the AA (now I am using the Doctor Sleep material) that for an alcoholic himself it must be beneficial to think that nobody is to blame for his drinking except himself, it is only what the alcoholic
himself must think, and how
s/he must feel -
not everyone else around him. Otherwise, it's all only relieving ourselves of all responsibility and refusing him any support: very modern thinking, in terms of "nobody is responsible for anybody", but something I personally will never buy. It's only if the two sides fully accept the responsibility (a drunk, a suicide, a depressee, a neurotic, whatever) that something can really be achieved.