• Treatment is crucial, yet funds slow to a trickle
• A family's love changes one woman's life
• Alternative program employs practicality
• Kittery leads way in prevention by giving youths a place to go
• 'Low-risk drinking' can prevent a small problem from getting out of hand
• 1997 deaths related to alcohol
• Team of reporters, editors, photographer produced series
• Series summary: Maine pays dearly as families are ruined by alcohol abuse

They don't show up as often in the statistics, but their problems are believed to be growing.

Women are rapidly narrowing the gender gap in alcohol use, and the elderly, who often drink in secret, are starting to learn there's no shame in asking for help.

In 1996, only 1.2 percent of people in Maine's alcohol treatment programs were 65 or older. One of the reasons that fewer resources go toward this age group is that they command the least public attention; they don't get into bar fights, and they don't drink and drive as often as young males.

But, like people of any other age, senior citizens can develop serious drinking problems, even after a lifetime of social drinking. Often, it's after retirement or the death of a spouse that the problem escalates.

Howsie Stewart, a volunteer at Mercy Hospital's Recovery Center, sometimes goes out to nursing homes and extended-living facilities to talk to their staffs about their clients' hidden alcohol problems.

At once place Stewart visited, the housekeeping staff said they often found empty liquor bottles in the morning trash. They made their discovery known, she said, ''but no one quite knew what to do about it.''

At another, a woman was paying a taxi driver to keep her supplied with booze.

It's often difficult for the elderly to admit to a drinking problem. Raised in a generation that equated alcoholism with being a bad person, they are often ''completely embarrassed'' at being so out of control, Stewart says.

When they come into treatment, they have little understanding of alcoholism as a disease. They feel ashamed, and angry at the family members or physician who forced them to get help.

And when they go home, they sometimes can't make it to AA meetings or other follow-up care because they have no transportation.

Substance abuse programs are only now starting to address the problems of elderly alcoholics. At The Recovery Center there are now separate counseling groups and separate AA meetings for the elderly, so they won't feel so out-of-place among 25-year-old cocaine addicts.

And the center has recruited older people in recovery to come in and spend time one-on-one with people seeking help so that they won't feel so alone.

it.''Mommy didn't think I knew but I did.

''After drinking or taking drugs, she'd act weird. Sometimes she wouldn't get up.

''Sometimes, she wouldn't come home.''

Those heartbreaking words come from a coloring book created by Maine kids whose moms have had drinking problems. One page shows a little girl in pigtails standing on a stool at the sink, pouring her mother's booze down the drain.

The coloring book, which uses the exact words of kids, was produced by Crossroads for Women in Windham. It illustrates the pain and confusion that children suffer when they witness their parents' daily struggle with alcoholism.

Once there were fewer women in alcohol treatment because there were fewer women with alcohol problems. Although that gender gap is now closing fast, ''we're still not getting the numbers in treatment that we would really like to see,'' says Phyllis Kamin, director of The Women's Project in Portland.

The Maine Office of Substance Abuse recently completed a survey of women who have received services from one of the state's four substance-abuse projects for women. They asked them about the barriers they face in getting substance-abuse treatment.

The women said their main barriers were financial problems, followed by lack of child care, low self-esteem, transportation and having no hope.

The agencies that help alcoholic women in Maine recently formed a Women's Addiction Service Provider Council to try to come up with ways to coordinate services and make them more effective.

Children are one the biggest motivators for women to get help, especially if there is domestic violence in the family. Yet it is often only when they get into treatment that many women realize the damage their drinking has done to their offspring.

At Crossroads for Women in Windham, kids can come and stay while their moms get treatment. When they arrive, they write a letter to their mothers telling them what their eyes have seen and their ears have heard.

''It's amazing what they know,'' says Kim Johnson, facility's director. ''They talk about things like, 'Mom, you fall asleep in the afternoon and we have to get dinner.' It wakes you up to how much you have hurt yourself and your family.''

Mothers who enroll at Crossroads stay longer than other clients, partly because they have to learn how to be a parent all over again.

''It's the mom's responsibility, especially for little kids, to redevelop trust and strengthen that bond,'' Johnson says. ''So we work with the mom and child together, and work with mom on how to be a good, sober mother.''