What every parent should know, and lots of us don't:

Rampant .partying.after school and on weekends. Drunk for the first time before you reach your teens. Booze supplied by boyfriends.

That's the story of Trisha C.'s early years in Renton. Even today, with 22 years of sobriety and a long resume of service to Alcoholics Anonymous, her history doesn't strike her as strange.

She was 12 when she got drunk for the first time. On Thunderbird, no less. She explained to her mother that she had the flu, and swore to herself never to drink T-bird again. She never did, but learned to love hard liquor. "Everybody was starting to drink then," Trisha said. "There was nothing unusual about it except that I got sick. It was 1965, when I was in middle school. Drinking was commonplace with the kids I ran around with. We used to party in the basement of this Indian family. Their parents didn't care.

"You know, no one's ever asked me about this before. I never thought of it as strange. I didn't know anybody who didn't drink. We'd cruise around and go to the drive-in or Cedar River Park. Someone was always bringing booze in. It was no biggie. That was our life."

Trisha is the 10th of 11 children. She says she looked 16 when she was 12, and was never carded 'til after she turned 21. Four days before she turned 14, she married for the first time, to a man who was over 21 and therefore able to supply all the liquor she needed. They honeymooned in Hawaii, where she drank five vodka and orange juice cocktails as fast as she could swallow. The consequent hangover led to her second oath of "Never again," this time swearing off vodka and orange juice.

Her husband "supplied me with my booze, but he was boring otherwise," Trisha said. "He was a homebody who didn't like to party." The marriage lasted 10 years, largely, she says, because he was away in the military, including a stretch in Vietnam during that war. She had her first child when she was 16. Two more came later. :"When he got out after 12 years of service, I had to get rid of him."

Divorced and only 24 years old, Trisha's drunken drinking progressed from monthly to every other week to weekly. Then her mother died, and with all restraint lifted, she began a career of full time drinking.

Somewhere along in here, things got really ugly. Trisha met her second husband during a wild party in Puyallup. He moved into her house with his two children. "I had the house and the furniture. He had two kids, a car and a job. We both liked to party, so now we could party together."

With her second marriage, she acquired two stepchildren too, but motherhood was not a strong point for her. Eventually, she gave up all five of the children. Today, she says the children are "in varying levels of life," and let it go at that.

The relationship degenerated into physical violence. "I tried to kill him one night in a blackout when he accused me of having an affair. I learned how to fight from my dad, so I knew how to take care of myself. I was choking him 'til somebody pulled me off." The fighting only got worse One day, she was crying over her computer at her job at the post office when the boss came by. "He told me I was a good worker when I showed up, but I had a bad habit of calling in sick a lot. Well, I did 'cause I was sick. He warned me I might lose my job if I didn't get it together. I told him I was going to leave my husband because of his drinking.

"My supervisor told me to go to Al Anon. 'What's Al Anon?' I asked him. I didn't mention that I had a problem. I wanted to get my husband to quit drinking. So we stayed together and I joined Al Anon in February 1983. I went through all my withdrawals in Al Anon, and I was not a pretty sight. In fact, I was absolutely nuts. But you know what? Nobody noticed.

"God had to do a brushup job on me. The only God I knew was a punishing God. It took me awhile to find a kinder, gentler God called the Higher Power. Gradually, I came to realize I was in the wrong program, that I belonged in A.A."

Her husband went into treatment, but sadly, he committed suicide that July.Trisha said it was the support of friends in Al Anon and A.A. that got her through this time. "All the A.A.s and Al Anons in the Puyallup Valley came to his service."

That fall, a friend of Trisha's told her to shift her focus to A.A.. She decided to take a geographical cure to California with the intent of going to her first closed A.A. meeting when she got back. Instead, she went home and got drunk while reading "Alcoholics Anonymous." Whatever she saw there didn't appeal. She hurled the book across the room and went to bed.

But it was time. The next day, Sept. 17, 1983, she was reading "Twenty Four Hours a Day," the Hazelden Publishing daily readings, and made up her mind to get sober.

"I'd like to tell you I was happy, joyous and free at that point," she said, "but no way. I was too damn young to be an alcoholic. I expected to be drinking beer when I was 70 years old, and here I was committing to sobriety at 28."

But service work attracted her immediately. Two weeks into sobriety, she attended her first Area Assembly, the first of 22 that she has logged over the past 22 years.

It wasn't an easy time, but early on she was able to say, "My name is Trisha and I'm an alcoholic." She started doing the 12 Steps, then decided to go into treatment to do her 4th and 5th steps. "They told me to suit up, show up, and put one foot in front of the other. When I didn't want to give, I was told to give a little more."

When she got out of treatment, she decided to go to every meeting in the schedule. She didn't make it, of course, but says she got to about 100 before she realized "this was really crazy."

"I was in service work from the gitgo. I was going to be the GSR when I went to my second Assembly, in Pasco, in 1984. Everyone was arguing. It was not a pretty sight. I was going to quit 'til someone told me I had to learn this stuff.

"Two years sober, I met Lou, who's now my husband. We both became active. He talked me into becoming District 23 newsletter editor, but that's as far I wanted to go 'cause I thought nobody liked me. I still had low self esteem. I only have a seventh grade education."

But Lou and others urged her to stay the course. She held a long series of jobs before becoming alternate area chair, "and now here I sit as chair of Area 72," which takes in all of Western Washington in the A.A. structure.

Trisha was hooked on drugs other than alcohol, but managed to quit them on her own with the help of the 12 Steps. She does not believe A.A. should ever lose sight of its singleness of purpose and permit discussion of other drugs in meetings ."You don't go to Jenny Craig and talk about Weight Watchers."

With her growth in sobriety, Trisha has also found spiritual growth. "The spiritual side is huge, bigger than all of us," she said. "I don't get into Hail Marys and that sort of stuff. I get up every morning and ask God to help me be the best person I can be that day, and at night, I ask myself if I would have liked to be my friend today.

"The longer I keep coming back, the more internal peace I feel. I want to get this program through my heart and down into my gut."

Interviewed and written by Dick S.