[Caregivers of alcohol addicted patients in the city of Santos, SP, Brazil].

The objective of this qualitative study is to assess the meaning of alcoholism to alcoholic's patient's caregivers. Fieldwork involved comprehensive ethnographic observation and in depth interviews with ten female caregivers of alcoholic patients undergoing treatment in health mental care in Santos. The study showed that family relationships were unstable and conflicting. It was difficult to recognize addiction. Women accepted addiction as illness when the patient was hospitalized. Addiction to alcohol had been hidden by social value of intake and by unequal gender relationships. There has been a social restraint of the caregivers. Women have assumed the care and were organizers of an unstable and painful everyday life.