Editor’s Note: Kaylie Jones is the author of  Lies My Mother Never Told Me, just published by William Morrow. The daughter of celebrated writer James Jones, she has written several novels, including A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries, which was adapted into a film starring Kris Kristofferson and Barbara Hershey.

The summer I turned 15, I got a small part in a play produced by a local theater group. Every night for many weeks, we rehearsed in the echoing, wide-open meeting hall of the Bridgehampton Community House. On several nights during our rehearsals, an Alcoholics Anonymous group met in the basement below us. I was terrified of those people and avoided them at all costs. Most disturbing was their raucous, gut-splitting laughter that rose up through the floorboards as we rehearsed our lines. What in the world could they have to laugh about? I thought. To me, there was no fate worse in life than to end up an alcoholic and no longer be able to drink.

At 15, I was already a good drinker. Sometimes after rehearsal, I’d go out to bars with the other cast members, who were much older than I. This was already the greatest pleasure of my life. If any of the other cast members found this appalling, they didn’t say; at least not to me and not to my parents, who knew exactly where I was. They were down the street in Bobby Van’s, having a few cocktails themselves.

I grew up more than just privileged. I grew up in Paris, in the heart of the expatriate literary world, the daughter of James Jones, in a home where drinking was de rigueur, and anyone who did not drink was considered a square, or a phony. I learned that a little shot of booze was the answer to almost anything – illness, heartache, good news and bad news alike. As a child, I filled martini glasses with water and sipped demurely, an unlit cigarette between my fingers. I couldn’t wait to grow up so that I could drink. I drank as soon as I could, and as much as I could.

In May 1977, three months before my 17th birthday, my father died of congestive heart failure, brought on by the malaria he’d caught in the Pacific during the war and exacerbated by years and years of heavy drinking. When he died, my world was ripped apart, and the only solution I could find to ease the pain was to drink more. For a long time, it worked.

I grew up believing what I was indoctrinated to believe: People who don’t drink are squares. Alcoholics are people who lose everything and end up in the street, people who can’t handle their liquor. Crazy people. We are not crazy. We can handle our liquor. We are just heavy social drinkers. We just like to have fun. Life is full of fun, and we intend to have as much fun as we can. There is nothing wrong here. To hell with people who don’t know how to have fun.

Being raised by alcoholics is like being born into a family where one of the first lessons you’re taught is that red is blue. Every time you see red, you’re told it’s blue. You’re even complimented on your acuity when you point to red and say, "Blue!" Everyone within the family’s inner circle agrees that red is blue, and they feel so strongly about it that they will fight anyone who disagrees.

You grow up, step out into the world and there you meet people who say, quite comfortably, "No, no, that’s not blue, that’s red." You say to them with a snort, "You’re crazy!" And you go about finding others like yourself who believe that red is blue. And there are lots of them. But enough people have pointed out to you that you’re wrong, red is red; you begin to doubt your own sanity. And the more doubts you have, the more vehemently you feel the need to defend your family’s position that red is blue.