Twenty-three years of boozing, drugs and general out-of-control behavior and you´re only 31 years old. That´s a track record not many of us can match, but this story has a happy ending.

Laurie L. found A.A. and sobriety on March 13, 1992. She wouldn´t call it an ending, really, but a beginning of a new life in which she threw herself wholeheartedly into "this simple program." Like so many members of this fellowship, her arrival here is little short of a miracle. As a matter of fact, she considers it just that: a miracle. It was such a simple thing, really, that finally turned her toward sobriety. She´d been white-knuckling it for two months when she decided she needed a hot toddy for her cold.

She bought a bottle of brandy, forgot about the toddy and drank most of it raw before hiding the residue in her dad´s apartment. Foggy though she was, the thought went through her head that "something is really wrong. I never hid my booze before." That hazy awareness was her first miracle.

The next morning, a loving aunt who had watched out for her over the years called to ask how she was doing. "Okay," said Laurie, with no memory that she had called her aunt the night before pleading for help. Her aunt told her all she could do for her was to help her call A.A. "I said I´d tried it before and it didn´t work." But it was "finding bottom time." She picked up the phone. "The gentleman at the other end put me at ease immediately. He listened patiently to my crying ´til I finally said I´d try another meeting that night. One of the best things he told me was ´to look for the similarities and not the differences.´

"We found a smoking meeting, and I went that same night, March 13, 1992, with my aunt. That phone call was the miracle. I don´t remember a lot about that night, but I did hear ´Don´t drink tonight, go to a meeting tomorrow night and don´t drink. Read the Big Book and get a sponsor.´ After the meeting, a young man gave me a 24-hour coin. That felt great."

Three meetings later, she got her first sponsor, and "it has been totally simple since then."

A.A. has sustained Laurie through some heavy going since that night. Her mother died in July after a terminal illness that extended over a year. Her mother suffered a crippling stroke when Laurie was four years old, but still managed to raise three sons and a daughter while learning to cook and clean, run a household and drive a car left handed. A year ago, she suffered a second stroke which left her totally disabled until her death.

Although she was only four when her mother suffered her first stroke, Laurie sees her life as "the pre-stroke years and the post-stroke years." It was a tragedy which affected everyone, and led to the breakup of what Laurie calls a "Beaver Cleaver family." "It was a perfect marriage. There were three sons, and then me, in 1961. I was the daughter my parents had always longed for. They designed and built our home in Kenmore and my dad had a booming business in TV repair. Everything was perfect. Mom had bridge parties where the ladies were all dressed up. Shopping trips were another big deal. The story is Mom bought new shirts instead of washing them.

"Then Mom had her stroke. Dad told me to be the lady of the house. There was a lot of arguing, and pretty soon my parents got divorced. There was a big custody battle before we moved to San Jose to be near Mom´s sister. During all this craziness, when I was six, I tried cigarettes for the first time. By the time I was eight, I was hooked, and I didn´t quit ´til four months ago.

"San Jose was a whole different lifestyle. We were in an apartment full of single moms. I had free rein. By the time I was 11, I was dropping LSD, doing booze and smoking marijuana. One mother bought us a gallon of Gallo and told us kids to drink it in the apartment so she´d know what we were up to. We lived on child support, welfare and Big Macs. I didn´t even have sox that matched."

The California life didn´t last long. Her father put the family up in a house in Belfair before they moved again, this time to Ballard. Laurie, in the eighth grade by this time, enrolled in James Monroe Junior High [now the Salmon Bay Alternative School], and promptly got in with the wrong crowd. "I was skipping school, lying, boozing," she said matter-of-factly. She was also pulling out her hair and eyebrows, and when that came to the school´s attention, she was sent to the school counselor. "She became my angel of mercy," Laurie said. "She wanted to meet my whole family. They all came, and I got to say everything that was wrong with them. They´re still mad at me for that, but it sustained me for the next 20 years."

Her next educational stop was Ballard High School, where she lasted a week before moving to Eastsound on Orcas Island to live with her father again. "I really liked it. There were only 30 kids in my class. Weekends were for partying. We did psychedelic stuff and music, and I joined sports teams to get off the island. We called it Orcatraz." Somewhere along here, her brother saved her from committing suicide with some tough love. Drunk and crying, she called him for help. "You´re not anyone special," he told her. "He wasn´t very sympathetic, but he stopped me from killing myself."

Back in Seattle to live with her mother, she lasted one day at Lincoln High School before getting her GED and enrolling at North Seattle Community College. All of 16 years old by this time, Laurie decided to go to California and become a rock star instead of going to school. Before long, she was back here, still pursuing her rock star dream. Instead, she wound up as a waitress in upscale restaurants, but did manage to make a recording that got some air play in the 1980s. By now, though, her highest aspiration was to be a bartender, but she never made the cut.

It was party time all the time, living off her tips as the booze and drugs escalated. "I had many boyfriends during those years-many, many boyfriends. I was trading favors for drugs." When she was 18, she had a daughter and tried her best to play the mother role. "She was healthy, wonderful and beautiful. Her dad didn´t want to be a dad, and that was okay by me. He did help raise her, though, and she went to live with him for awhile when she was six. Things had gotten ugly in my life. My daughter lovingly calls this period ´The Meltdown.´" But years later, when Laurie joined A.A., her daughter went with her for several months in a supporting role.

Laurie made her first run at the program when a longtime customer in her restaurant suddenly began ordering coffee. Curious, she asked him why, and he invited her to go to a meeting with him. She did, and when it was her turn to speak, she stood up and announced that she was an alcoholic. After the meeting, she joined several women for coffee and drank a bottle of wine. Five years later, she was heavier and heavier into the booze, and was doing crack at the same time. There were two trips to Harborview-"Hotel Harborview"-and finally in desperation moving back in with her dad.

"I ran into my old coke dealer. He told me he´d gotten clean and sober in A.A. I told him I was doing it on my own, getting healthy on apple juice. I decided to keep a journal ´cause I was still going to be a rock star, and my life might make a good story, you know?"

Two months of white knuckling, the bottle of brandy and she finally landed in A.A. to stay. "I started 90 meetings in 90 days. I was meeting all these wonderful people. Pretty soon, I was making coffee. Then I had a chance to go into treatment, but all I could picture was people shuffling around in slippers eating chocolates. Fortunately, I was able to get into outpatient treatment instead.."

Laurie committed herself as strongly to A.A. as she had to self-destruction. She even tried to quit smoking, but that was a decade away. Her first sponsor, Kate H., took her to Intergroup while she answered phones there. She didn´t have enough time in for that duty, but Angus L., the office manager, kept her busy with odd jobs. As soon as she could, she joined the phone crew at Intergroup. "That´s been part of my service ever since. I´ll never give it up. That´s where God wants me, Dick."

She worked on the call forwarding system and was secretary of her group within six months. From there, she became GSR, alternate DSM and then DSM for District 17.

What about the drugs? "Well, before I got sober, It was drugs, sex, and rock and roll. When I got sober, I gave up the drugs and rock and roll. I might have gone to a couple of N.A. meetings, but it was mostly A.A. I don´t personally object if someone talks about his drug problem, but I focus on alcohol. Our traditions are there for a reason [Tradition Five: "Each group has but one primary purpose-to carry it message to the alcoholic who still suffers."]"

She hasn´t given up her singing. She´s found a good studio in London to make her recordings, and is going again in September. "I´ve been to some great A.A. meetings there too."

It took awhile, but life is good.

Interviewed and written by Dick S.