Blacks have to be tough to stay sober in a white world.

Just ask Ken and Deborah J. of Kent, who say that white and black relations need to change in the South County. The African-American couple moved to Kent 8 ½ years ago when they bought a house there. That was a big deal for both of them, coming as they did from a long history of alcohol and drug abuse and eight years of sobriety in Seattle.

For their first eight years, they had been fixtures at the 23rd and Cherry Fellowship in Seattle. They´d had their troubles there, but not about race. That Fellowship was founded to meet the needs of the city´s blacks who felt uncomfortable and/or unwelcome elsewhere.

But the new house in Kent meant a long commute to Seattle, so they decided to get involved locally. "That was a cultural shock for me," Deborah recalled. "Not for me," said her husband. "I kept goin´ to 23rd and Cherry, but I was cuttin´ down on meetings ´cause I was trippin´ on the house, trippin´ on the kids (they have four between them). I decided to do a little research, and found a meeting just three blocks from my house. Well, Lord have mercy! It almost reminded me of Bellevue-´My dog died, so I got drunk.´ I couldn´t go to meetings like that. I found that people didn´t have the knowledge or ability to approach me. The only ones that were accepting me were people with time in the program.

"Finally, I said to myself, ´I have to go to any lengths to stay sober,´ so he settled into the Kent environment. "It´s not just AA, it´s a societal problem," Ken said. "People haven´t had any experience with blacks."

Deborah says, "I´ve been around this program for a long time. When I sit down, I feel I´ve earned my spot. People need to have their arms open. Yes, I´m talking about race, but I´m also talking about AA as a whole. As a culture, AA is standoffish. There´s good talk around the tables, but after the meeting there´s no follow-through." Her husband echoed her comment. "People in AA are afraid to come to my house or invite me over."

The same thing is true in his neighborhood. "When we moved in , the neighbors couldn´t understand what a black man was doing there. It was like I was a rapist or murderer or something."

Later in the conversation, they lightened this grim picture. They went out to dinner with another AA couple the other night, and they´re gradually making more friends. "Yep, and I´m looking for more," said Ken. "I´ve found good people in Kent. Some of the problem is my own fears. I just have to listen harder. The message is the same, but at 23rd and Cherry it came more naturally. I have to put my hand out. When I do, somebody grabs it."

Deborah: "I don´t worry about being accepted anymore. I´m glad I have some time under my belt. I´ve stopped thinking about what others are thinking ´cause that kind of thinking will get me drunk. What I´m there for is to stay sober and to reach my potential." Deborah is currently a student at Central Washington´s Seatac campus and at Highline Community College, where she´s working for a degree in accounting and aiming down the road at a CPA license.

Thanks to the intervention of Local 751 of the Machinists Union, Ken has been a diesel mechanic for Boeing for 24 years. Boeing fired him for drinking on the job and not showing up after payday. He´d had a number of near misses with the heavy jacks he worked with, and once smashed his hand with a hammer, but miraculously was never badly hurt. The union went to bat for him and got his job back on condition he go to treatment.

He did, and entered treatment June 26, 1986. That is his sobriety date. Nine days later, Deborah entered treatment in the same place, and the rest, as they say, is history. July 4, 1986 is her sobriety date. They had known each other as children at T.C. Minor Elementary School in Seattle, but didn´t recognize each other until they started talking in the treatment program. When a romance blossomed, their counselors told them it would never work, and are amazed they are still together. Against all the odds, they have never had a slip since they entered treatment. "I´ve been sober this long only by God´s grace," Deborah said.

Deborah followed the classic alcoholic pattern. Every time she drank, she got drunk. From booze, she worked her way through marijuana and cocaine. "Drinking every day was the normal thing that people did," she recalled. "I loved cocaine." Working for the state, she had access to money which she routinely stole to support her habits. On payday, she put it back, so she was never caught. Later, when she sobered up, she was so ashamed she quit her job.

"I couldn´t pay my bills. I was raising my son by myself, and I couldn´t afford to buy an eight dollar cap and gown for his graduation from kindergarten. It got so bad me and a friend were going to blow our brains out. Another time, I was gonna kill me and my son. I was stopped only by God´s grace. I was drinking anything I could find that had alcohol, even cough syrup, but that stuff wasn´t good enough. I´d get so high on cocaine I´d take a big hit with the phone in my hand so I could call 911 if I started to pass out."

Finally, a loving friend brought her to treatment and since then she´s turned her world around.

Ken did some heavy drinking in the Marine Corps between 1972 and 1974, then drifted into a chaotic marriage that produced two children and a costly cocaine habit.. Pretty soon, there was nothing left to pay the bills, and the city shut off the water supply.

One of his painful memories is of teaching his children to flush the toilet after they´d used it. Then, with the water shut off, he was stealing water from his neighbor and had to tell the kids not to flush anymore.

Eventually, the couple divorced, and with what he felt was his new freedom, Ken went all out on the party circuit. To save money, he´d hide a bottle behind his favorite night club, then cruise the bar for women before going back outside for another belt. When Boeing fired him, he took his last paycheck of $2600 and blew the whole thing. At 4 a.m., he was on the floor looking for a cocaine rock he might have dropped on the rug. "I smoked a lot of icing from cupcakes and rug lint that I thought were rocks, trying to get high," he recalled ruefully.

With sobriety, he gained custody of his two children in a bitter court battle, and Deborah went into counseling to work out her problems with her son. "We were just one big happy counseling family," she said. "We´ve had to learn how to meld three families together-hers, mine and ours," Ken said. They have one child together, now 14 and the only one still at home.

"It was no easy road to learn how to stay sober while we were raising kids and learning how to live like ordinary people," Deborah said. "Why, he didn´t even know how to rent a video. We had to learn to live all over again."

"I´m loving it," Ken said. "I mean life itself. I think back to how it was then and how it is today, and it´s just amazing. The simple things: renting movies, playing golf. Most of all, buying a house, and being able to wake in the morning and tell that person in the mirror that I love him."

Dealing with dual addiction has been an issue for both Ken and Deborah all through their sobriety. It started when Ken first got out of treatment and an oldtimer at the Big Hall told him he should only talk about his alcoholism. "Well, I´ll be damned," I said. "In the treatment center, they told us a drug is a drug is a drug. I didn´t think I was an alcoholic those first two years because it was cocaine that took me down the fastest. When the counselor told me I had to decide whether to call myself a dope fiend or an alcoholic, I decided I´d be a Base Head Alcoholic, and that´s still my M.O. today. They got pissed at me in both AA and Narcotics Anonymous, saying I wanted to be special. It´s not as bad as it used to be, but I´m still fighting it. But I´ve decided that if anybody doesn´t like it, they can kiss my ass."

Deborah echoes his view. "Wherever I go, I´m going to pronounce what I am. It´s unfortunate there´s this controversy. When we came into this program, cocaine was flooding the halls and dual addiction became common. And to tell the truth, most of the oldtimers were drug addicts too. I´m going to do what it takes to stay sober. I´m not leaving any meeting. I can´t let people, places or things interfere with my sobriety."

"I want to respect AA," Ken said. "If I know it´s a sensitive meeting, I only talk about alcohol. The bottom line is: don´t get a resentment and turn against AA. We´re here to help anybody who´s out there suffering."

23rd and Cherry was in transition when the couple became active there in the early days of their sobriety. Many newcomers like them, they said, were drug addicts as well as alcoholics, and they campaigned to include narcotics in the program. After many internal battles, Cocaine Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous meetings were added to the club´s curriculum. Ken says that today, about 80 per cent of the meetings there are AA.

Over time, the couple became leaders at 23rd and Cherry. Both served terms as chairman of the board, Deborah as the first woman chair.

It´s been a struggle, but they´ve had a lot of fun too. They attended the 1990 national AA convention here, and the 1995 convention in San Diego. Ken is a speaker at various meetings, but Deborah says he´s too long-winded.

Both expressed deep gratitude for this program.

Ken: "I was ready to give up my life before I found AA. Working the steps, taking it one day at a time, my life is totally different and good."

Deborah: "I´m glad that when I came to AA, there were people who took me under their wings till I was ready to fly."

Interviewed and written by Dick S.