One of the intriguing questions about alcoholism is why someone decides to abandon a lifelong love and opts for sobriety instead.

Often these days, it´s because a judge leans over the bench and tells the drunk he/she is going either to Alcoholics Anonymous or to jail, and the drunk chooses what he/she thinks is the easier, softer path. Not so with many oldtimers in this program, though. Most of them had some special experience--brought on by booze, of course--that made them decide they´d reached the end of their drinking road.

John C., now 37 years sober, is a case in point. He was sitting at his favorite Renton bar at 6 a.m. one morning getting ready to down his usual half dozen "7 Highs" when he suddenly said to himself, "There´s no end to this cycle, cycle, cycle. I´m not getting any fun out of drinking. I´m sick and tired of being in this state of mind. Who´s more stupid? Me or this goddamn drink? I walked out and I´ve never had a drink since.

"I was sick, physically and mentally. I went home instead of going to work and went down in the basement to cool off. I was so sick and hot and sweaty, I leaned against the concrete wall trying to cool down. When my wife came home, she took me to the doctor, who said I couldn´t go to the hospital for alcoholism. So I was admitted for an ´acute nervous disorder.´

"I called A.A. from the hospital and three guys came to my room. All three took me to my first meeting, at Old Renton, and I´ve been attending ever since."

But the fear that he would drink remained until, two weeks sober, he was lying in bed when he noticed he wasn´t afraid anymore. The fear has never returned.

John was still clinging, barely, to a career as a contractor at the time he sobered up. It took that 6 a.m. stop at his favorite bar to get the day started, but too often, that´s where it ended too. "I´d end up sitting there ´til I got drunk, then go out to my pickup and sleep. Some style for a general contractor, eh? I´m a no-show, guys are sitting at the job getting paid. Does that make any sense? Is it any wonder why I nearly went broke?"

But he survived until the Boeing crash of 1969 (remember the billboard, "Will the last man to leave Seattle please turn off the lights?")? That year, he moved to Denver, where for the next 10 years he worked in construction and played and officiated hockey. An old hockey player from Edmonton, Alberta, John renewed his love affair with the game with a vengeance. He was playing at a professional level and officiating at the college level.

Like he had when he was drinking, John pushed his life to the limit. He was up at 4 a.m. in those Mile High winters to work and get to officiating jobs--kids´ games, college games--you name it, he was there. Seven days a week. John says that was pretty much his life in Denver. (Oddly, he doesn´t skate anymore. There are four rinks in South King County, "but I couldn´t compete with the young guys. Skating just for fun doesn´t interest me.")

He found time to attend A.A. meetings in Denver, but he was not the mover and shaker he became in the program in this area, with one exception. A.A.´s International Convention was held in Denver in 1970. It was there he became friends with two Australians who, in 1974 at the Australian convention, named him their North American sponsor to assist in advertising and promotion.

"I was walking 10 feet off the ground when I got that job," John said. "That´s one of the gratitude things you get from A.A., the opportunity for service and the recognition that comes with it."

John never put down roots in Denver. When the chance came in 1979 to take a construction foreman´s job here, he headed for the Northwest and never looked back. He stayed in construction until his retirement in 1992.

John was born in the farm village of Morinville north of Edmonton, the youngest of 14 children whose parents had immigrated from the U.S. He had his first drink when he was 12, but didn´t get into serious boozing ´til he left for Vancouver at the age of 15 to go to sea.

For the next 12 years, he sailed the world. Early on, too young to buy his own booze, there was always someone else who would get him a fifth. Strict rules to the contrary, drinking was commonplace among the crews. "We´d get a five-gallon jug of rum for $5, good rum, too, and share it out. There were absolute rules against drinking on board ship, but there was kind of a tolerance policy. The officers frowned on it, but they knew we were drinking. It was sort of ignored as long as we did our jobs."

Or as long as nobody noticed. John, an able seaman, was at the wheel of a Canadian National passenger ship once when he put the ship in deadly danger and never knew it.

"We were sailing from Bridgetown, Barbados, to Port of Spain in Trinidad. The route passes through a cut where there are severe riptides. One mistake can put you on the rocks. I was at the wheel; later, the captain told me it was the best steering he´d ever seen through that passage. I didn´t even remember being at the wheel."

John joined the Canadian army in 1950 for three years, working as a military policeman. "Here I was arresting drunks, and I was the biggest drunk of all the biggest drunks goin´. Police: they´re all like that."

After the army, John went back to sea until 1958, when he decided to give it up and move to Seattle. "I´d recently been married and had a new daughter. I wanted to stay home for a change." That´s when he got into construction work and stayed for the rest of his working life.

Sobriety didn´t come easy. Like many other sober alcoholics, John gives much of the credit to a tough sponsor. "He made me go through the steps a lot of times. I wanted to stay on Step One, but he said, ´Like hell you are. You´re gonna do all the steps, and the Traditions too.´"

Before long, he was into service work big time. Finding a need for meetings to serve swing shift workers, he was instrumental in formation of the Benson Hill group in 1967, which is still going strong. He was also in at the start of several other South County and Eastside groups.

A year or two into sobriety, he got into a rousing feud with Intergroup over his proposal for a Christmas party for children. "I damn near wrecked Intergroup," he recalled. The secretary at that time didn´t want anything to do with the idea , because, he said, it wasn´t part of A.A. "I´d read ´The Family Afterward´ (Chapter 9 of the Big Book) and a Christmas party was very relevant, so I pressed on. He didn´t want to give me $200, so I organized a boycott of Intergroup by the groups. The secretary changed his mind."

(Intergroup sponsored the Christmas party into the Eighties, when it faded away but was continued by several groups.)

More recently, John has written the history of five groups for the updated edition of "Our Stories Disclose," the history of A.A. in Washington.

John reinforces his sobriety with extensive reading, not just of A.A. literature but such books as "Not God," by Ernest Kurtz. His copy is dog-eared and spine-broken from long hours of use. He also carries around a copy of "75 Bible References on Drinking," which actually contains that many citations.

John is a grateful alcoholic. "A.A. has given me a belief in a Higher Power, has given me the ability to earn a living and to save enough money to retire comfortably. It has given me gratitude, appreciation and serenity. Where else would I find people in my life who would care enough to do that for me?"

Interviewed and written by Dick S.