Jokes aside, the thing about alcoholism is that it's hard for some people to have sympathy because, while it is a disease, it is one of the relatively few diseases that is self-inflicted. Like, you might be genetically predisposed towards alcoholism, but you're never going to wake up with alcoholism, in the same way that you could wake up with, say, a tumor, or Graves' disease. Even accounting for hereditary and environmental factors, alcoholism is still something that you pretty much have to make happen to yourself, which impacts many peoples' (myself included) ability to have empathy.