First it was alcohol. Then it was men. And Joan G. is bending toward a third, a harmless one this time. She's an all-out sports fan studying lineups and box scores and strategy.

Her earlier addictions were anything but harmless. She had a short but disastrous bout with alcoholism and an abusive relationship before she found Alcoholics Anonymous on Feb. 15, 1974. Before and after that, she acquired and divorced three children and three husbands.

"That's the end of it," she said. "I've found I don't do well with marriage. I do much better as a friend." But on second thought, she said she thinks now she'd pick much more wisely. "I almost married an A.A. member three years after the breakup of her third marriage, "but God was working. We didn't do it. We're still friends, though. We exchange birthday cards."

Unlike most of the people in this series of articles, Joan came to her alcoholism late and found the solution early. As a teenager growing up in Magnolia, she liked to neck with the boys from Queen Anne High School under the railroad bridge, but that's as far as it went. No drinking, no smoking. She came from a strict Presbyterian family with no booze in its history.

"I had a sheltered life," Joan said. "Church, Sunday School, the church choir and Christian Endeavor. I taught Bob Houbregs to dance in those days," she said proudly. Houbregs, like Joan a product of Queen Anne High School, is one of only two consensus All American basketball players ever produced by the University of Washington.

Foreshadowing her later activism in A.A., Joan did volunteer work at Children's Hospital and the Girls. And she loved all sports, then and now.

At 17, she married her childhood sweetheart, a marriage that lasted 12 years and produced two sons. She spent part of that time as a military wife. Her husband, a National Guardsman, was called to active duty during the Korean War. There was no drinking problem, "but I started working nights at the post office. He had to do the housework. We never saw each other." After their divorce, Joan said, he started drinking heavily, but sobered up through a program at Ballard Hospital. "It's so good to see him sober. We're good friends."

Her second marriage was to a Japanese-American who, Joan said, was badly damaged emotionally by his confinement in a wartime relocation center. They had a daughter, but were divorced in one year. He is now deceased.

"I never drank or did anything except go out with boys 'til I was 30," Joan said. "I was a late bloomer. I didn't smoke or drink. But then I met an alcoholic, although I didn't know it at the time. Everything we did involved alcohol. I was a sitting duck, but I thought I was a high falutin' type of drunk. Nothing but McNaughton's. No beer for me."

Then came her toughest relationship. She met a man at a Parents Without Partners dance. ("The cops called it 'Kids Without Parents.") We became really close. We never married, but we lived together. It was a terrible situation. He had three children and I had my two-year-old daughter. He asked me to quit work and be a mom to his kids, They were good kids, but I couldn't handle them and the drinking too. It was very sad in a lot of ways. I'd promise to take 'em to the beach and then pass out on the couch. The oldest daughter would take them for walks to get them away from me.

"[My partner] and I were fighting all the time. I think I called the Crisis Clinic every day. Then one day, I grabbed my daughter and a pint of McNaughton's and headed for a motel in downtown Renton. When I woke up in a blackout, I said I was going home to tell him what I thought of him. The car went backward instead of forward and I crashed into the motel.

"When I got it into forward gear, I managed to make it home, but I knocked over the neighbor's mailbox. The next day, I had no memory of what I had done. It was horrible.

"I was a blackout drinker from the very beginning. My drinking only lasted three or four years, but I made the most of it. There was another time I heard about later when I was thrown out of a banquet that I thought was boring."

Shortly after the motel incident, Joan ended her relationship. She saw an ad in the personal column of the Renton newspaper that offered a list of names to call "if you have an alcohol problem." Many of the Renton oldtimers were on the list, including the late and famous Mary B. "I wanted to talk to a lady, and she was near where I lived. It was a miracle I picked her. She became my sponsor and my dear friend."

That was June 3, 1971. Mary took her to her first meeting that night, which happened to be her beloved parents' wedding anniversary. "That was very meaningful to me," Joan said.

"I was so frightened that first time," Joan said. "I thought I was losing my mind. It was my thought that these people would take care of me and teach me how to drink like a lady. And there would be lots of men there too. That was one of my targets. When I got home, I was so impressed with the way they talked. It was like they'd all been to Toastmasters."

"I played with the program for a year. I wasn't drinking, but I wasn't serious either. I never got off the first step-'We admitted we were powerless over alcohol...' I remember what the Table Mate said, that for an alcoholic, there is only one choice, total abstinence or a life filled with problems. But I wasn't convinced 'til 1974, when I was at a VFW dance with my new husband. I wondered what it would be like to drink with him, so we drank and danced. The next day, I drank and drank. It was like I had never quit, except it was much worse

"I sat in the apartment and finally said to myself, 'Joan, you can do other things, but you can't drink. You're an alcoholic. It was like I gave up and decided I could never drink like a lady." She's not sure of the exact date she finally quit, but she picked Feb. 15, 1974. "Valentine's Day would have been corny."

Against everyone's advice, Joan had married for a third time, a marriage that lasted from 1973 to 1975. "When I filed for divorce, he went into treatment the next day. He died with 21 years of sobriety. We remained good friends all those years. My daughter and I took care of him in his final illness. That's the wonder of this program, that we learn to forgive people, even him in spite of all the mean things he said about me in meetings."

"Mary B. was a great help to me. She was really tough about going to meetings. I still go to two a week after 32 years, thanks to Mary."

Joan inherited many of Mary's "babies," as she called the women she sponsored. She's active with eight of them, and "there's more who don't call me." She's big in other service work too. One of her most rewarding jobs was as Public Information chair for Intergroup, where she organized alcohol education programs in the area's high schools. "You could hear a pin drop in those meetings," she said. She has also been GSR, alternate DCM and district secretary and treasurer. Once, she spoke at an A.A program in Reno. Every week, she answers the phones at Intergroup on Tuesday mornings. "I've enjoyed all my service work," she said. "It makes you feel more like a part of things, and that's a blessing."

After retiring from the post office, Joan launched a new career as a dependency counselor for several agencies in South King County. More recently, that has expanded to teaching shoplifters how to stop being shoplifters. "Shoplifting is considered an addiction too, you know."

So A.A. has meant a whole new life for Joan. "Not my whole life, but a whole new life. A.A. means love and caring, learning to reach out. I never wanted to tell anyone the bad things. Now I know you have to share the bad with the good. I'm at peace and at rest.

"Thank God for A.A."

Interviewed and written by Dick S.