We´ve talked before in these pages about tough, no-nonsense sponsors, but never one quite as tough and no-nonsense as the one who pushed and shoved Theresa M. into sobriety.

The story begins on the Kona Coast of the Big Island in Hawaii in 1970 or ´71. Theresa was in such an alcoholic fog she´s not sure which year it was. One or the other, she was admitted to Kona Hospital several times with convulsions and hallucinations. "I was dying, that´s what it was. They didn´t know what to do with me. When I was discharged, they´d say ´Save her room. She´ll be back.´ they didn´t expect me to come out of the DTs.

"I was not just shaking outside. The whole thing was happening inside, and they couldn´t seem to bring me back. The last time that happened, I came out of it to find a psychiatrist sitting there holding my hand and telling me I had just about died. So out of fear I quit, cold turkey,. It was absolute fear that made me not drink.

"What was left was nothing-I stayed dry, not sober-but I was empty. I´d lost a big part of me and there was nothing to replace the booze. I didn´t drink for eight months, but then out of my insanity came the thought, ´If I drink vanilla extract, nobody will know. My husband will think I taste sweet when he kisses me.

"There were only three stores on that side of the island, and I bought ´em all out. Emma, who owned one of the stores, would call A.A. when she saw me coming. ´I´m hiding the vanilla,´ she said. ´Vanilla´s for baking, not for drinking.´ So I drank lemon extract instead. And from there it was back to vodka."

Enter Harriet T., whose story was told here in March 2001.

"Harriet lived on Kona too, and my family called her. Today, 32 years later, she´s the greatest thing in the world to me. Back then, I hated her. When she came to the house that first day, she found my last pint in the lining of my bag. After that, she just watched me, and when I´d head out the door, she stopped me. There were five women in Kona in the program, and they all helped keep an eye on me."

Angus L., who participated in this interview, interjected that A.A. has changed since then. "Now, we say only when a person quits, do we come on a 12 Step call." "I don´t agree," said Theresa firmly. "You go when they need help. For example, I worked with a woman who came to meetings drunk, and she´s four years sober now."

But back to our story. Harriet, tough as she was, told Theresa´s family she would not make it without more help. With their backing, she called Honolulu and arranged for Theresa to sign into Hina Mauka, a do-it-yourself treatment center put together by "some sober A.A. drunks" who had found space on the grounds of a state mental institution and wangled free food from the hospital.

"Harriet and her friend Anne L. from Seattle got on the plane and took seats on either side of me. Anne was soft and warm, but Harriet scared the hell out of me. She was like a bull moose. Up at 30,000 feet, I decided I was leaving. It took both those women to hold me down."

When the plane got to Honolulu, Theresa was whisked off to a locked ward at the hospital next to Hina Mauka, where Harriet signed her in and made sure she got medication for the DTs. Several woman members of A.A. came to visit in the days she was in the hospital. Still in utter misery, she went to see a priest and finally said, through her tears, "I am an alcoholic. I was crying so hard he didn´t know what to do with me, but that´s where it started. That´s where I got honest. That was surrender. But what was I going to do? The family didn´t want me. What was I going to do? Where was I going to go?

She was released to Hina Mauka, and that´s when real sobriety began to set in. "There were wonderful people there. This guy said ´You´re gonna make it´ and hugged me. I cried for weeks, but this time with relief. We had meetings every day, strictly Big Book and Twelve Steps [and Twelve Traditions], nothing fancy. We paid $5 a week to stay there."

Harriet came over from Kona for a visit, "and I still didn´t like her. She´d come over for a big A.A. convention, and took me with her. It was too much for me. I got one of those spells of ´I´m outa here´ and went off to find a drink. That damn woman followed me. She knew exactly what I was up to. I wanted to hit her. We still talk about it. She was the best sponsor I could have had.

"While I was there, my husband, who worked for the FAA, was transferred to Milwaukee. He came to pick me up, but I wouldn´t go. If I´d left, I would not have made it. I was safe in that house, and I was beginning to feel healthier; I just wanted to stay there forever."

"I stayed in Hina Mauka for three months, ´til I felt ready to join the family in Wisconsin. At first, my husband was understanding, but he wanted his parties. Four and a half years into my sobriety, we separated and were divorced a year later. By then, he´d taken an early medical retirement and we´d moved to a gorgeous home on a ranch west of Port Angelus. But he drank and I wanted to stay sober. We were not happy."

There was one great moment in that period, though. On her fourth A.A. birthday, Sept. 18, 1975, Harriet arrived for a surprise visit. The women had not seen each other since those first sober days in Hawaii. Harriet by then was living in Seattle.

After separating, Theresa joined other Olympic Peninsula A.A.s to establish Halcyon, a halfway house in Quilcene. "The hard work that took saved my butt," Theresa recalled. She began commuting three days a week from Quilcene to Seattle University to get a counselor´s credential, "and the day I graduated, the car broke down."

Theresa went to work for Residence XII, the women´s holistic treatment center, now in Kirkland, and helped start their outpatient center. After Residence XII, she worked for another outpatient program while going back to Seattle U. for her bachelor´s degree in social work. By this time, word had gotten around that she knew what she was doing, and she was lured back to the Big Island to start an alcohol and drug program for teenage kids.

"Mostly, we dealt with drugs ´cause that´s the problem. These were native Hawaiian kids, but they liked me because I´d lived there before. I stayed a long time before coming back to S.U. for my degree, which I got 18 months ago. Now I´m going back as a social worker, and God, do they need help. Meth, what they call ´ice,´ is a huge problem for native people, though I don´t want to single them out. It´s hitting Caucasians too. I want to be involved because I´m good at it."

All this is a long way from the young girl who grew up in a Polish-American family of 12 children in Stevens Point, Wisconsin. Married at 19 after "I was kicked out of the convent. They didn´t think I fit there," she and her husband lived in Fairbanks, Alaska for nine years and produced four children there. From there, his job with the FAA took them all over the Pacific. A fifth child was born on Wake Island before they moved to Hawaii.

It was during a stay on Guam that she discovered she was dependent on booze. "I had such fears-when I drank, the fears, the sadness, the anxiety left. I was raising the kids and controlling it pretty well, though, ´til we got to Kona. By then, I was putting down a fifth of vodka a day." And here the story comes full circle: hospitalization, heavy duty sponsoring by Harriet T., recovery in Honolulu.

In the course of the interview, Angus and Theresa fell into a philosophical discussion about recovery from alcohol and drugs. Both agreed that nearly everyone who comes to A.A. these days is dually addicted. How do we deal with that reality? Send them to Narcotics Anonymous?

"No," said Theresa, "we can´t do that anymore."

Angus: "Anybody under 45 has a drug problem." Theresa: "We can´t say they can´t come to our meetings."

Angus: "When we talk about total honesty, we have to talk about drugs and we have to listen. I had nothing but disdain for people using drugs until I got shingles, and I was hooked on Percodan within a week."

Theresa: "We need to be more educated about drugs. I´m still learning, but I know Ice kills your brain, the most poisonous drug we have today. You and I know how powerful alcohol is, but you can work with alcoholics. Drug addicts are another story."

Angus: "Yes. In Detox, you never know what they´re taking. Very manipulative.

Theresa: "Drugs: you can´t separate ´em."

Angus: "You´re acting like God when you try to.."

Theresa: "Hey, we´d better save lives wherever we find ´em or there aren´t going to be any."

So what does Theresa advise for new people in A.A.? "Stay sober. Honesty and sobriety, and the Higher Power. The doctors and the nurses had no answers for me. The answer had to come from the Higher Power. I used to think Harriet was hard core. Well, she is, but she has taught me through the years that tough love is the way to go. I say it like it is."

Interviewed by Angus L. and Dick S. Written by Dick S.