The ravages of alcohol run long and deep in this family. The turnaround started in 1973, when Betty H. decided to join Alcoholics Anonymous.

Betty had borne seven children before she made up her mind that it was time for a change. Miraculously, none of the kids suffered fetal alcohol syndrome or other health disasters, but they all inherited the mysterious tendencies which make people alcoholic. Consequently, four of the seven, Betty says, are alcoholic, and three are in recovery.

Two of them saved the life of their brother, Dan, who joined his mother for this High and Dry interview. Dan, now in his middle forties, was a hard-partying kid who began drinking about the same time his mother sobered up. Betty's sobriety date is Oct. 1, 1973. By the time he was 22, his life was a total disaster. He joined the Fellowship in 1981, but it never really took hold. Because of his mother, he knew all about the Big Book, and loved to play the expert in meetings by citing passages.

But humility wasn't part of his program, and in 1984 he went out again for one wild, nearly fatal night. After five hours of non-stop drinking, he decided life wasn't worth much. He tried to kill himself by hammering his head on the sidewalk. Somehow, though, he managed to call one of his brothers and beg for help. By that time, his sister and two brothers were sober alcoholics. They got him into the psych ward at Harborview Hospital. That was May 5, 1984, his last day with the booze.

Betty, who was listening as Dan told this story, interjected to say "I do not believe he would have sobered up without his brother and sister. A.A. has changed our lives."

The family was living in Ballard when Dan at 13 started experimenting with alcohol and drugs. "I was a stoner in those days, but I managed somehow to graduate from Ballard High School." But he moved out on his own when his mother and father told him, "play by the rules or hit the road." From that time on, it was 11 years of hell raising, replete with two DWIs and various drug arrests. In the summers, he fished commercially in Alaska, participating fully in the "Work hard, play hard" culture that characterizes that industry.

Wrecking cars became something of a specialty. "I'd say at least eight wrecks," Dan recalled, though the total is somewhat hazy. "And I really liked playing with guns," of which he had an arsenal.

"I did some crazy stuff with guns, firing out the window of my apartment. One time, I threatened to shoot a guy who'd stolen my stereo. It worked, too. He brought it back. Then there was a free-loading friend who I thought owed me some entertainment for all he'd chiseled off of me. I fired my .32 at his feet and told him to dance, Old West style. He ran out the door."

What made him change direction in his life?

"I was a miserable alcoholic," Dan said. There was speed in the morning so that he could get to work, with weekends devoted to heavy boozing and shooting cocaine. "It was a hellish life of boozing and hangovers. Mom was in the program, and my older brother joined a year before I did. I saw him change. That gave me a sliver of an idea. Mom had sent me the 12 Steps. That was one of the main factors.

"One morning, I was chugging down a beer and it seemed like my soul was being sucked into that bottle." So he started going to meetings every day, and stayed sober for three years before his one-night disaster. "But I was arrogant about sobriety," Dan recalled. "I knew what page to look up in the Big Book, but I never got over my fear of loneliness, and those things compromised my sobriety."

Today, he still goes to two or three meetings a week, including a Big Book study at his home in Mukilteo. Married and divorced twice, he's raising his two children and since 1988 has worked at Boeing in Everett.

His mother started life in Devil's Lake, North Dakota, the product of an alcoholic father and a strict and controlling mother. As Betty tells it, her mother was an 18-year-old with a year of college who came to teach the eight grades of a one-room country school. She was a city girl who didn't know how to bank the stove against those Arctic North Dakota winters, and ended up burning the one-room schoolhouse down.

A nearby family offered to make a room available in their home for the eight grades. It was the home of her future husband, who was already well into his alcoholism. One thing led to another, and they were married. Eleven years later, Betty's mother, fed up with her husband's drinking, gathered up her daughter and moved to Bremerton. He followed and found a job, Betty thinks, in the wartime shipyards. Her memories of her father are vague, but of her mother, vivid.

"Mom said I was just like Dad, gregarious and fun-loving. I looked like him and acted like him. She reinforced my love for a drinking, out-of-control lifestyle.''

Betty was a product of Catholic schools, and that teaching kept her away from booze until she was 17. By this time, she'd moved to Seattle. Betty and some of her friends were in a motel with an "older man." He was 25. When the other girls left, "he threw me on the bed and raped me. I started drinking not long after." That was 1947.

"I only recently connected the two events. I'd been brainwashed by my Catholic upbringing, so I figured that I'm spoiled goods now. I can do whatever I want. The rapist dumped me for another gal, and then I really started drinking. I got to know downtown Seattle pretty good. But I stayed involved with the church, so I'd be okay for awhile. Then I'd be back on the bottle. I had several jobs. I lost the best one, as a bank messenger, for not showing up often enough.

She met her first husband about this time. "He could charm the birds out of the trees. We partied together till I got pregnant and had to stay home once the kid was born. Once, when we were being evicted, he jumped out the window and left me to deal with the problem. Another time, he came home drunk and strangled me to the point I said goodbye to life. 'Here I am, God.'"

She left him after that, got pregnant with someone else, and fled to San Francisco. "The guy who got me pregnant reappeared, gave me $20 to find us a place to live, and that's the last I ever saw of him."

Destitute, Betty went to the Salvation Army for help, but didn't get any except a referral to the welfare system. She was ineligible for California-funded assistance because she hadn't been in the state that long, but liberal Washington came through. The welfare system flew her and her 2 1/2 year old daughter back to Seattle, where she moved in with her aunt and had the baby, a girl.

"I had to choose which child to keep," Betty said. "I adopted the baby out in Seattle." This grim episode has a happy ending, though. In 1979, her daughter was able to find her through newly relaxed adoption records. Betty discovered that they were both named Elizabeth and had much in common.

Betty and her second husband were married in 1953. The marriage lasted 50 years, until his death two years ago. "The program helped, Honey," Betty said. The couple produced five children. Her husband, a career soldier, also had a drinking problem. All the kids were born while she was drinking heavily, but Betty says that "I was a reasonably good mother."

What got her into A.A. was a desire to stop drinking-her husband's. Betty first joined Overeaters Anonymous (she lost 100 pounds!). "We got an awful lot of A.A. there," she said. "We used the same 12 Steps. I started going to A.A., to get my husband sober. I stayed 'cause I found out who I was, a drunk who never drank except to get drunk."

Since that last drink on Oct. 1, 1973, Betty has thrown herself wholeheartedly into service work. Her specialty is carrying the message to younger women. She speaks often at meetings, and is active in both A.A. and O.A. retreats. Before retiring with her husband to Marysville 11 years ago, she drove a Seattle school bus for 10 years. "I was good at it too," she exclaimed.

Finally, what does A.A. mean to these folks?

Dan: "It means my salvation. It's given me a second chance in life. I was granted grace, for sure."

Betty: It's my life. I prefer being in the program than anywhere else. I still come down to meetings in Seattle. Did I mention I sobered up at old Fremont? My relation with Jesus Christ is stronger than ever before. I'm not a Catholic anymore, but I've learned to live the principles I learned in Catholic school. Today, I can say this program has given me something I'm good at. Today, I am of some use in this world."

Interviewed and written by Dick S.