Somers Shares Her ‘Secrets’ : * Alcoholism: Actress tells of her dysfunctional family and reminds audience at a Mission Viejo hospital that recovery takes much time and patience.

MISSION VIEJO —  It’s hard to imagine Suzanne Somers--she of the Vegas-sleek figure, ultra-trendy tresses and effervescent laugh--being the bearer of serious messages.

But there she was, speaking on the podium under a revival-like tent Saturday , her face lit by sweet smiles, bringing her gospel of hope and salvation to an audience of 600 rapt listeners.

And her topic--the shattering impacts of alcoholics and other addicts on their families--was light years from the sitcom inanities of “Three’s Company” and “She’s the Sheriff.”

“There are 28 million of us--children of alcoholics--in this country,” the 44-year-old television and nightclub star told those gathered on the grounds of Charter Hospital. “(Recovery) can happen, but it takes much time and patience. Don’t give up on yourself. You can find help--you can save yourself.”

Although the topic was unmistakenly grim, Somers’ incessantly upbeat tone was in keeping with the overall mood of the hospital-hosted free event. It seemed a festive familial outing on a picture-perfect sunny day--the hundreds of visitors, including small children, gathered as if for a church picnic.

But many in the audience were all too familiar with the underlying realities--some were recovering alcohol and drug addicts, while others were children, spouses and other relatives of substance abusers.

And most in the audience already knew of Somers’ own disastrous upbringing as a child of an alcoholic father--a story she has vividly detailed in her 1988 autobiography, “Keeping Secrets,” on the community-and-hospital lecture circuit, and most recently in a two-hour TV-movie version of her book.

So most audience members were there to hear Somers’ story from her own lips and to indulge in a bit of stargazing as well--after the talk, scores of people also lined up to buy hardcover copies of “Keeping Secrets” and to have Somers sign them.

“It’s important to have famous people like a Suzanne come out in the open. It wasn’t easy, I’m sure,” said one of those waiting in line--a woman in her 20s whose sister is being treated for chemical dependency at Charter Hospital. “I mean, if they can do it, then so can we.”

Somers said she has no intention of letting up on her newfound advocacy in the field. She is still active with the National Assn. for Children of Alcoholics, still makes the lecture circuit, even testifying recently at a hearing before a U.S. Senate subcommittee on family relations and substance abuse.

Her weekend visit was to publicize a tie-in between the Charter chain of psychiatric centers and the newly formed Suzanne Somers Institute to provide expanded support-and-educational programs on substance addiction and related family problems. The Palm Springs-based institute was established by Somers and husband Alan Hamel.

And next year, Somers said, she has another book on the subject of dysfunctional families coming out, a collection of interviews with other celebrities who have lived through “abusive childhoods.”

Indeed, she hopes the candor of her own family saga has helped lay to rest the ditzy image that has dogged her since she played Chrissy Snow, the voluptuous naif of the “Three’s Company” hit sitcom more than a decade ago.

“I had been in what I call my ‘dumb blonde’ box, which is so difficult to get out of. It’s so hard for some people to see beyond that earlier TV character image,” Somers explained in an interview after her book-signing chores. “So I realized that to put out my own life story the way I did, it very easily could have been ridiculed and not taken seriously.”

But, she said, she decided to “take the risk” after she got permission from her family to go public. “I realized it didn’t matter what people might think or how it would affect my career--not if it was really something I had to do, to share with others who had gone through what we had gone through.”

On the value of celebrity clout in the profound social issues, Somers put it this way: “You don’t speak out like this to be part of a trend. But, yes, our status gives us greater opportunity to do something useful. We’re more visible, we have a louder voice and greater access to the media.”

Added Somers: “If you’re honest about what it is you’re talking about, then people will really listen.” Besides, she observed, “people also have the ability to pick out if you just jumped on a bandwagon to get the publicity.”

Celebrity confessions seem bigger and franker--and more keyed to America’s mass social ills--than ever before.

Some revelations seem to strike a more titillating chord in readers, such as the backstage tales of childhood abuse told by Christina Crawford in her 1978 book, “Mommie Dearest,” about her late mother, the Hollywood icon Joan Crawford.

But other disclosures are being made by stars themselves on equally once-taboo subjects and generally treated to less sensational reception. On the matter of children of alcoholics, Somers isn’t the only such case. Other stars, such as Carol Burnett and Chuck Norris, have publicly acknowledged similar childhood turmoil from alcoholic parents.

And Roseanne Barr Arnold recently told a meeting of incest survivors that she had been sexually abused as a child by her parents (who have denied the accusation). Others who have come out with stories of childhood sexual abuse include Oprah Winfrey and a former Miss America, Marilyn Van Derbur.

To many counselors and other specialists in the field of family relations and substance-abuse treatment, such celebrity revelations, including the public admission in 1978 of an alcohol dependency by former First Lady Betty Ford, are basically beneficial.

“In general, such admissions can’t help but be on the plus side. They help to de-stigmatize the problem and to emphasize that families from all areas of society are subjected to this disease and its effects,” said Dr. Charles Grob, director of UCI Medical Center’s adolescent psychiatric unit.

“We are talking about families who have felt isolated and mired in shame for so long, they feel totally powerless to seek any kind of help,” said clinical psychologist Louis Stoetzer, director of the Orange County-based Adult Childrens Center. “This growing trend in prominent people speaking out helps bring other victims out of the same shadows.”

However, specialists argued, there can be at least one pitfall in this wave of highly publicized celebrity experiences--that is, reinforcing a belief that such social ills might be easily cured.

“The feeling is that if these stars can overcome these terrible problems, then there’s something magical to it, that somehow these problems will easily disappear,” explained Margret Dugan, director of the Orange County-based National Assn. for Children of Alcoholics.

But, Dugan added, “to their credit, stars like Suzanne Somers don’t suggest that at all. They make it very clear that recovery is a slow, very long process, with many stalls and lapses.”

Somers’ father, Frank Mahoney, who had a naturally rough-edged charm and vitality, became one of the “town drunks” in their San Francisco Bay Area working-class suburb.

After the Great Depression struck in 1929, he had to quit college and give up dreams of a pro baseball career to work full-time in a slaughterhouse and later a brewery. Even though he married and moved into a nice picket-fence house to raise a family, his growing sense of failings contributed to heavy drinking.

And, as Somers has clearly detailed in “Keeping Secrets,” her father became overwhelmed by an alcohol addiction--nightly drunken rages and furniture-smashing fits, terrifying tirades against the mother and four children, followed by numbing, stumbling stupors.

The whole family became stunned and frightened into what Somers called “the code of silence of families like ours.” “We didn’t talk about it at home,” Somers told the Charter Hospital gathering, amid murmurs of recognition from many in the audience. “We tried to keep it a secret outside the home, although practically everyone in town knew about his drunken outbursts. His disease took over all our lives, and we felt completely helpless.”

Eventually, Somers said, her older sister and brother and younger brother succumbed to alcoholism--”the terrible generational cycle of this kind of disease.” Experts have estimated that children of alcoholics are two to four times more likely to develop alcoholism than children from nonalcoholic families, she said.

While she herself was spared a drinking problem, Somers said she became nevertheless a deeply troubled, “messed up” young woman. She went through a teen-age pregnancy and brief marriage, then increasing spending sprees and a long string of bounced checks.

“I couldn’t understand why I felt so disconnected and lost,” Somers told the audience. “I was used to living on edge, from (financial) crises that I had created myself. I felt like my father had always shouted at me--a loser, a big zero.”

Her turning point came totally unexpected when she was still in her 20s. Her young son, Bruce, critically injured after being struck by a car, got well but still suffered from nightmare replays of the incident. Somers took him to therapy sessions at a low-cost community counseling center.

“After awhile, our therapist said Bruce was OK and he didn’t have to come in anymore. But then she looked straight at me and said, ‘But you come back. You have the worst case of low self-esteem I’ve ever seen!”’

A few years later, her father, finally made aware of his condition and disastrous effects on his family, agreed to enter a treatment facility. “He’s been sober ever since--15 years,” Somers said of her father, who is now 79, adding that her three siblings have also undergone successful therapy. “We’re one of the fortunate ones--we realize that.”

And when Somers asked her father for permission to come out with the long-hidden story of their family’s afflictions, he told her with characteristic bluntless: “I don’t give a (expletive) that everybody knows I was a drunk. I just care what they think about you.”