I think it's a perfect place for it. Rather than kicking it into the shadows, in private sessions where you only hear these things if you specifically get off your arse and go there, instead you encourage wider discussion, and show other people who won't or can't go to those options that they're not the only ones having these issues.

Alcoholism and the destruction of lives is a depressingly normal story. It's hardly 'dirty laundry' (another term of shaming) in the context provided - the author wasn't point-scoring off her dead husband, and you weren't forced to read the article. Relationships have ugly sides, and by exposing that, we help people better understand their own.

Also, it's an opinion piece, in a section called The Opinion Pages with the section title Opinionator, and even the domain has 'opinion' in it. An opinion journal would be pretty dull if it steered away from social taboos. People read opinion pieces to get different views on things (sometimes heatedly emotional), outside of the supposedly dispassionate journalistic norm.