"Us alcoholics are quite adaptable," says Andy A.

"I was with State Blind Services till I retired in 1991. Since then, I´ve had my own home repairs business (yes, he did home repairs while blind), and it worked pretty good for awhile. Then I changed careers to nursing assistant and wound up teaching other nursing assistants. Now I´ve changed again, to martial arts instructor."

Colette, his wife and partner, has been adaptable too. She started out "married to God" as an acolyte in a convent in St. Louis from ages 13 to 19, when she left to get counseling for her depression. "We weren´t allowed to talk to anyone about our problems," she said. She never returned, having found that the convent was the source of her depression.

Colette had done a little drinking before she went into the convent. "As a kid, I have happy memories of sloe gin fizzes and wine, but it was not a problem." She was one of seven children in a German-American family whose world revolved around alcohol.

"We didn´t know how to behave at a wedding unless everyone was really drunk, doing crazy group dances like the worm. The worm was a Missouri kind of thing. Everybody drank, everybody had blackouts. It was what you did to have a good time. If there was only wine and beer, those people were cheap. It wasn´t a real wedding."

Colette said she´d never dated before she left the convent. "When I got out, I made up for lost time. I got drunk at this spiritual retreat. I can still remember everything spinning around. I said never again, for the first of many times, but it was what everyone else was doing and I wanted to fit in."

By the time she was 21,.she was a mother, and totally at sea about what to do with her child. "I had no idea how to raise a child. I was still trying to figure out what sex was about. I wanted my child to have two parents, so I put him up for adoption and It has turned out for the best. Three years ago, he contacted me indirectly to tell me he has had a good life. That´s the miracle of A.A.

"I never had more children, but I wanted to. Then, after Andy and I had been married three years, one of his ex-wives asked us to take her six-year-old boy, so I got to raise that child with Andy. She asked us to adopt him, and we did."

Andy, before he met Colette, had gone through five marriages to lay on top of his teenage years in Sedro-Woolley, where he grew up and began drinking when he was 12. When did drinking become a problem? "It was a problem from the beginning. There were lots of troubles with the law as a result-underage driving, stealing. When the cops caught me, though, they usually just sent me home. They gave you a break in those days."

But as he got older, he did several stints in the Skagit County Jail, and once escaped from the jail in Moses Lake, where he was arrested for selling without a license. "They turned their back and I took off." Twenty years later, he went back to make a 9th Step amends. The jail couldn´t find the paperwork so he was home free.

His first of six marriages to three women occurred when he was 19."Three drunk and three sober." There were also four children along the way, all adults now. "Most of my marriages were chaotic," Andy said. "I still have the battle wounds from some of them, scars and lumps. We used clubs, boots, whatever was handy. Once, I held a gun to my wife´s head. All that violence is behind me now. You know what? That ex-wife is still my friend."

All the time this was going on, Andy´s diabetes and heavy drinking were causing increasing blindness. "I could see normally until 1978. My diabetes was uncontrolled, and I ignored the side effects. The blindness came on gradually, till now I can only see shadows and silhouettes. I kept drinking, going to doctors in between while my eyes kept deteriorating."

Legally blind, he kept driving and drinking until he ran someone off the road. That was his backdoor epiphany. It scared him enough that he´d almost injured someone that he finally quit drinking on May 11, 1984.

"I called someone I knew in A.A. to ask him what I should do next. He took me to a meeting that same night, and for some time I met with him every day. I haven´t had a drink since."

But he kept on driving until his sponsor´s wife, who was in Al Anon, haselled him enough that he gave it up. "Now, it´s Colette, sponsees and buses that get me around."

Andy moved to Seattle to get better blind services. In fact, he soon went to work for the Washington State Department of Services for the Blind in 1986, where he stayed until starting his own home repair business in 1991. "It worked out pretty good for awhile," Andy said. From there, he segued into becoming a nursing home assistant and then became a teacher of nursing home assistants.

Now, he and Colette have their own martial arts instruction business in Anacortes. "We got involved to build our shy son´s self-confidence, and all three of us are now black belts. Our specialty is Soo Bahk Do, Korean. It´s what Chuck Norris [martial arts action star] got his master´s in. Chuck is in our family tree of instructors."

Getting back to Colette´s life pre-Andy, Colette, still in St. Louis, married for the first time. Her husband wanted to live in the Northwest. so they moved here in 1979 and she continued her heavy partying. The marriage ended in divorce after nine years.

Colette went to work selling health plans and trying various relationships. Her dream was a log cabin and a horse farm, to the point that she and her then-partner bought a horse. "The horse lasted six years, and the relationship six months," Colette said.

Like Andy, Colette backed into sobriety. On a consolation cruise to the Caribbean, she met a crewman named Jose and fell madly in love. "He was 10 years younger than I and in good shape. I was huge. He hadn´t had a drink for seven years. When I got back to Seattle, I told everybody I was getting clarity in my life so that I could spend the rest of my life with Jose."

That required both sobriety and weight Loss. Colette, now a petite 120 pounds, weighed 225 at that time. On May 4, 1988, she quit drinking, went into outpatient treatment, attended an A.A. meeting every day at 6:30 a.m., continued to work selling health plans, and studied Spanish at lunch. There was no sudden burst of light. She simply thought she could get clarity in her life if she quit drinking.

Colette also began a spinoff Overeaters Anonymous program called he Greysheet, based on the original O.A. food plan. Greysheet is no longer in the O.A. rule book, but there are rebel groups which still swear by it. Through this program, using the 12 Steps, she lost 125 pounds and has kept them off for nearly two decades.

Her new found beauty didn´t help her romance with Jose, however. He "drifted away" and she fell into another long distance affair with a man from Boston she met at a sober Club Med. "He was in Boston, I was here. We saw each other every six weeks or so, and I had time to figure out life on my own."

Andy, who plunged into service as soon as he found sobriety, was GSR at the Empire Way meeting when Colette showed up there. She and Andy became friends and after eight months, she "cancelled" her Boston friend. She and Andy began dating in 1990. They were married May 11, 1991.

"We figured that was a good month. We both got sober that month," Colette said. In line with her diet and Andy´s diabetes, there was no wedding cake because of the sugar content.

"I weigh every meal to the ounce. No sugar. Sugar´s a drug. No potatoes, no rice, no pasta. I eat fruit, veggies, soy for protein. I´ve been doing this for 19 years. I like it, kind of like A.A."

Seattle A.A. lost two far-reaching volunteers when the couple moved to Anacortes to start their martial arts business in 2005. Here in Seattle, Andy was chairman of the Cooperation with the Professional Community committee and chairman of the Intergroup Board. He´s taken meetings into many of the jails and prisons in this area. Currently, he and Colette team up at the Skagit County jail and Pioneer Center North, a drug and alcohol treatment facility.

Colette served as district secretary, GSR, DSM and on the District 41 ASL committee. "Right now, I´m secretary of my home group in Anacortes."

"I love small town life," Colette said. "And I love married life. It´s a great institution for Andy and me. We share our happiness, our ups and downs together. After 17 years, we still love each other. It ´s a miracle to be able to spend my life with my best friend."

Interviewed and written by Dick S.