I agree it could be worded more clearly. Yet for everyone who has lived with this it is clear. Like with depression people always assume its the grand things that hold the sadness, or the madness. It leads people who haven't experienced it to say 'Just do something fun'.
Your example of raging alcoholism is a good example. You would say 'just avoid your parents when they are drunk', which is good advice, but emotionally abusive people are very adept at making amends and smoothing stuff out when they have recovered. They will be super sweet and attentive but -which is the brutal part- always switch to full drama mode when you least expect it. So you learn to pick up minute cues you can use to shield yourself from incoming emotional blows, but sometimes they still manage to surprise you when you've got your guard down.
That's why you can never feel safe around them, there might be a hair trigger going off any moment that you didn't know existed. And whilst you can easily advice people in a realtionship like that to just stay clear of those people, it most likely happens when you are a child and simply unable to just distance yourself. But even grown people still fall into the spiral of just wanting their parents to be proud of them even though they should rationally know it will never happen.
The text is very clear for those who have experienced that. It's very hard to fathom for those who haven't, and those are blessed for it.
Emotionally abusive parents is what is described, you become very sensitive to nonverbal clues of your parent(s).
It's not exaggerating, you really get to live around their personal tripwires. And then assume everybody else has those, which makes it hard to trust people.
Most vodka is grain based