Pat M. of Kent, a leading light of the Renton Group, is a case in point. Pat struggled for years to find sobriety, and finally was desperate enough to call Alcoholics Anonymous.

That was on Oct. 12, 1971. It resulted in a 12 Step call by Mary B. "I´d been on a drunk for five days, trying to control my anxiety. All I wanted to do was to die. Finally, I couldn´t take it anymore, so I made that call. They told me someone would call, and it was Mary B. I was very excited to think someone would actually come over to see me. This woman seemed to care about my problem.

"She told me later she didn´t know who she was calling on. I lived with my mother at the time, and were were both drunk. I had a coffee mug full of booze to ease the visit, and I reeked of the stuff. But I remember Mary telling me she had 19 years of sobriety (editor´s note: Mary, who was featured in this series in December 2001, now has more than a half-century of sobriety.) That was a phenomenon beyond my comprehension, 19 years without a drink!

"Mary called me the next morning and asked how I was feeling. The answer was I had a terrible hangover. Mary wasn´t impressed. She told me not to drink, and promised to call me later. Her caring just boggled my mind. Who could care about a drunk like me?

"She called again and said she was going to take me to a meeting. I didn´t have any idea what she was talking about, but at that point I was willing to do anything. And I figured that anyone who could stay sober for 19 years must know what she´s talking about. So we went to the Empire Way group, my first meeting. I told Mary I couldn´t be with all those people, but she promised to stay with me.

"Everyone introduced themselves and said they were alcoholics. I thought to myself, ´Oh, oh, I´d better say I´m an alcoholic or they won´t let me stay,´ and so I did, at my very first meeting. I hadn´t known I was an alcoholic. I thought I was a drunk. But that night, I said the words, admitted openly that I was an alcoholic. I burst into tears, but that was the beginning of sobriety for me."

A few days later, Pat´s mother followed her into sobriety. It was another Renton oldtimer, Sam G., who gave her the push she needed. Sam, who was featured in this series in October 2001, told her she needed to stop drinking if she wanted to get on the program. She did, and Pat says she had 19 years of sobriety when she died in 1989.

What a combination play: Pat to Mary to Pat´s mother to Sam, and four sober people.

Pat soon became a regular at the Old Renton meeting, but also sought out other meetings so that she could go every night. "At first, it was a tremendous shock to me to admit I was an alcoholic," Pat said, but it got easier as time went on. Mary became her sponsor, and stayed in close touch with her as Pat moved around the country, first to Alaska and later to Wisconsin before coming back to Seattle.

"I´ve always been very involved in the program wherever I was," Pat said. "12 Step work, coffee maker, General Service representative. I was invited to chair the Renton meeting in my second month of sobriety. I was terrified, but thrilled that they trusted me. Everyone would clap to encourage me."

With her new-found sobriety, Pat decided to go back to school to finish a college career that had dissolved in a pool of alcohol in previous years. After earning a bachelor´s degree at Western Washington U, she moved to Anchorage to work as a counselor. "I loved it there. I started a women´s group, I made coffee, I served as meeting secretary and as GSR. For two years, I was editor of the statewide newsletter of Alcoholics Anonymous. Little Al in Seattle (the late Al Wilson, manager of the AA office here for many years) gave me much of my material, wonderful material."

Pat married in Alaska and moved with her husband to Colorado and then to La Cross, Wisconsin. She stayed there for 11 years, until she was downsized out of her job at a hospital. "I loved it there, but God was telling me to be with my family again, so I moved back here in 1994." Pat was born in Saskatchewan, where her father played professional hockey. The family moved around the country playing for various teams, the last of which was the old Seattle Seahawks. Pat grew up in Greenlake and graduated from Lincoln High School. Shortly afterward, she started drinking even though she hated the taste. "I liked the effect, though. I wanted to be part of the group, and everybody else was drinking. At first, it made me feel like the person I wanted to be."

Pat spent two years at Washington State University, "learning to drink and going out with boys My father didn´t trust me to control my drinking, so he had me transfer to Seattle University. They weren´t impressed with my credentials there.--I hadn´t done much studying at WSU-so they told me to go to night school to get better prepared. I went for two semesters, ´til the booze took over, and that was the end of my education for many years.

"I worked at a lot of jobs after that, but finally decided to move to San Francisco. My parents were driving me crazy."

That move worked for her for awhile. She got into broadcasting, writing commercials and doing production work. That environment produced all sorts of freeloads-banquets, plays, sports events, and lots of liquor. She stayed in the Bay Area for 15 years, with periodic trips home to Seattle. The drinking got worse, but she only lost one job because of it. She was hiding in a stall in the women´s rest room when an ungentlemanly window washer peered through the window and saw her slugging down the vodka. That afternoon, she was fired.

There was lots of man trouble too. Her first husband once threw a knife at her. She left him after three nightmarish months. Another broke into her apartment and cut up all her clothes. A third stalked her for a year, and threatened to tell her boss that she was a drunk

"As if they didn´t know. When I quit that job, they gave me a gallon of vodka as a farewell gift."

Speaking of vodka, that was Pat´s drink of choice. For years, she carried a peroxide bottle in her purse,. filled with vodka. She had it with her when she underwent surgery shortly before she joined AA. Her doctor had told her she couldn´t drink for three months before the operation, and she managed not to ´til the night before she went into the hospital, when she and her mother tied on a good one.

After the surgery, the doctor questioned her about her drinking because she wasn´t recuperating from the operation. Pat assured him she had been dry those three months. "I didn´t think one day counted," she recalled. When she got home, she found she couldn´t hold food down and told her mother a little wine would settle her stomach. The inevitable result: "I was drunk again, on whatever was available. That lasted five horrible days, and it was my last drunk." It was then that she called AA.

Looking back on 31 years of sobriety, Pat is still overwhelmed with the sense of peace that sobriety has given her. "I think clearly. I have sober relationships. I have a freedom I never knew when I was drinking. I continue to grow and learn.

"This is a spiritual program. To me, it´s a cleansing of the body and the mind, and finding health in daily life. We have a choice: to see doom day by day or to be excited about life. I am grateful to this program every day. It has given me so much so freely that to give back is my way of saying thanks."

Written by Dick S.