When your life is falling apart, you can never guess how quickly it can all turn around.

Take the case of Nora M. of Lynnwood, now 33 years sober and living contentedly on her own after three failed marriages and all the vicissitudes that accompany heavy drinking. As Nora tells it:

"We were living in Marysville, me and my four kids. We were fighting, as we often did, and I went off to fix a drink. 'Way to go, Mom,' said my oldest daughter. 'That will take care of everything.'

It didn't stop her from making her drink, but it turned her in a direction that changed and saved her life. "Something happened when she said that, way deep inside me I took my drink to my room and sat down to talk to God. I told him I couldn't stand going on this way any longer, to please let me get sober or to die."

Not long after that, her job was transferred from Marysville to Lynnwood, with all the trauma and anxiety which such a move always entails. It was her lucky day. "Almost immediately, my boss asked me if I'd like to do something about my drinking problem. He didn't threaten me, just asked me. I was about to ask 'What problem?' when I realized that he was offering me the answer to my prayers. He didn't just ask me if I wanted to do something about my problem. He offered me a chance for treatment, and I jumped at it.

"Five weeks of vitamins, good food, no sugar, no caffeine. and lots of A.A. From the day I entered that program on Sept. 5, 1973, I never had another drink. Dr. Mylam [Dr Jim Mylam, treatment center director] saved my life."

She went back to her job as a transportation engineer for the Washington State Highway Department and stayed till she retired in 1990.

Of course, it wasn't all good times and roses when she became sober. For one thing, life changed for her children as well as for her. ''The two oldest , a boy and a girl, joined the Air Force shortly after I sobered up. But the younger ones and I went round and round for several years. They weren't used to a sober mom, and all of a sudden I was noticing things I'd missed before, like not going to school, or not doing their chores, or not where they were supposed to be, or using something that wasn't good for them."

"But it all worked out for everybody. They're all fine and we're all friends. My oldest girl, the one who gave me my life-changing challenge, lives in Vermont now and we visit regularly."

Nora had an unusually short career as an out-of-control drinker. It started when she divorced her alcoholic husband in 1965. "I became sole support of four children and a dog. I decided that now, it's my turn, only I won't let the booze get the best of me as it did for him.

"Well, of course, it was just a matter of time. It started out to settle my shaky nerves. I kept sedating them till it got worse and worse and I was a maintenance drinker. I don't know how Ten High stayed in business when I wasn't around any longer."

Maintaining a buzz at work involved some planning. "At first, I carried my liquor in a little vitamin bottle in my purse. Then I graduated to a cough medicine bottle and finally to a half pint brandy bottle. One time, I dropped bottle the bottle and thought that was the end, but it landed on my foot and didn't break. Somebody up there was trying to tell me something, but I wasn't ready to listen. Instead, I got a plastic half pint bottle.

"It wasn't hard to hide. We had big purses in those days. When I needed a drink, I locked myself in the women's restroom."

Like all "secret" drinkers, Nora was sure nobody at work knew what she was up to. She's not sure how her boss found out, "but I probably stunk to high heaven at times. And I did more than my share at parties after work."

Nora said it was a little embarrassing coming back to work from the treatment center, but she found everyone warm and welcoming. "Even a couple of cynics who thought I'd never make it came around later. I'm still friends with many of them."

Born and raised on a farm near Tyler, Minnesota, Nora grew up in an all-Danish community. "My folks didn't drink, my extended family didn't drink. I was quite awhile into sobriety before I found out some shady family things that explained my alcoholism to me, but I don't want to talk about that. But I do want to mention that no one in the family could understand why anyone with such a good Danish family background needed Alcoholics Anonymous. They were all glad I was sober, but why couldn't I have just quit drinking and not shamed the family? I came from a highly judgmental background.

"The reality is that my brother, my best drinking buddy, followed me into the program 15 years later, and other family members have also joined. All of us are victims of those same family secrets. But it doesn't really matter where the alcoholism came from. It's enough to know I'm an alcoholic and to know it runs in families. I just love seeing my loved ones find sobriety."

When she got out of high school, Nora made a stab at a career, but neither nursing nor teaching, the only careers open to girls in rural Minnesota, appealed to her. "If I'd become a teacher, I'd have had to kill the little bastards." So she got married instead, to an alcoholic, and produced four children of her own. Her husband was from Seattle, so the clan moved here.

When she finished treatment, Nora at first did not understand why she had to waste time going to A.A. meetings. "But I didn't want to take a chance on getting drunk again, so I went. My first home group was Lynnwood Big Book, and there were a couple of other people there from the treatment center. Everyone was so warm and welcoming, I knew I was with my own kind. It was what I'd been looking for all my life. No one cared who you were or how much money you had. There was total acceptance. I'd never seen that before."

A.A. service work soon became a big part of her life. "People I admired who were doing service work had the life I wanted, lives of peace and stability." She spent many years in the program as Intergroup representative, GSR, DCM and editor of the area newsletter. Right now, she has "the best job in the world," handing out the birthday coins at her home group, Alderwood. "I get to give them my personal congratulations and a hug when I give them the coin. And Alderwood is the best little group in the world." She goes to two or three other meetings each week also. "I need three meetings a week."

Nora was asked her views on an ongoing question in this program, that of newcomers who have both alcohol and drug problems. "It's hard for them to separate alcohol in their stories when they have both problems," Nora said. "In my mind, that doesn't matter. We do encourage that, though, by reading a statement at the beginning of each meeting to the effect that this is an A.A. meeting and should reflect the alcohol problem. But I've never heard an outcry when the stories get mixed."

Nora tried marriage twice more, but now she's contentedly single. "I married my best drinking buddy in the middle of my drinking career, but he was just as abusive as my first husband. Early in sobriety, I married again. This time, it was going to be forever, one day at a time, only it wasn't. When that marriage broke up, I had to do some deep 4th and 5th step work to see what I was doing wrong. The upshot was I gave up compulsively getting married."

Over 33 years of sobriety, Nora has never lost her sense of gratitude for what A.A. has given her. "A.A. and my Higher Power are intertwined. There's no way I can separate them, not that I'd want to. Without Alcoholics Anonymous and my Higher Power, I would not have a life."

Interviewed and written by Dick S.