Elaine S., 56, is getting ready to celebrate another anniversary. In one month, it will be 24 years of sobriety. “My addiction was to alcohol. I drank for 17 years of my life, starting out about 14 or 15 years old… a lot of curiosity with my friends. It was a wonderful relationship right from the get go…. It progressed until I finally hit bottom 17 years later. Hitting … bottom was not living with my kids anymore.”
“The first part of my drinking… I had a lot of fun. It was a great time. Then it became something more. I used it more often…. My life wasn’t working. I was 18 or 19… I was trying to go to college, but I didn’t have discipline…jobs weren’t working.”
“I came from this wonderful family of 7 kids – I was number 6. My family was spiritual. They brought their problems to God. My parents lived their religion; they didn’t preach their religion…. My father taught catechism; I taught catechism….”
“My acting out was a result of my drinking. I was a follower and I followed my friends who were drinking…. When I drank, … the feeling of a follower fell away… I like became a star. It helped me to fit in. Alcohol removed my inhibitions… I could dance… talk to boys, do all of that stuff. I don’t know what I had for social skills, but I don’t think it was much…” 
“My father always told me I had the best, happiest childhood of the 7 kids…. That changed when I was 13 or 14. It could have been adolescence or alcoholism kicking in…. I was extremely self-conscious; I wasn’t pretty enough; I wasn’t smart enough; I wasn’t this, I wasn’t that, I wasn’t enough… when I drank, I felt like I was enough and more, so I chased that…. Alcohol fixed it. It took all the uncomfortability away, all the feeling that I didn’t belong in my own skin.”
“I did have a wonderful childhood. I was a starter… I became self-conscious, not good enough, and a follower to feel OK. I was afraid of drugs. I always had this fear that I was going to go crazy and never come back. I had anxiety as a kid, which is pretty much gone now…. I had migraines before I drank. Drinking took all that away… I drank because it made me feel good… It cut me loose.”
“My parents didn’t use drugs or drink to excess… they lived a clean life. My brothers and sisters drank a lot and they were a lot older than me, and that was the only place I saw it…. My mother’s father was alcoholic… a couple of brothers who I think are alcoholics, and perhaps two sisters who are alcoholics….”
“My husband was an alcoholic, he is sober now too…. I was wilder than he was…. We knew each other for three months. It was one of those marriages, love at first sip…. I had high aspirations to be a good mother and wife…. I had four children… at the end of our marriage, we had knock down drag out fights… under the use of alcohol….”
“He gave me an ultimatum: you either go and get help or we are going to tell your family that you are an alcoholic…. I agreed to go to treatment…. I thought the whole world was my fault…. I went to AA and was terrified. I thought it was going to be a group of old guys with bottles in their pocket saying ‘we repent’. I went to a meeting in the next town over, and I liked it. I was surprised. I was filled with shame and self-loathing and I liked it from the first meeting… I wasn’t as bad as them. I didn’t have to do what they suggested. I still had two… clean houses and four kids that were clean; I was a member of the PTA; we had a car, a truck, and a pool… so I thought I wasn’t that bad… In thirty days I drank again. That’s when I left the house.” 
“I needed alcohol more than I needed anything. My sponsor wanted me to go to a meeting everyday; I had 200 reasons not to—my kids needed a bath every night. They were between 2 and 10…. I couldn’t stop drinking. I couldn’t drink safely there, so I left. The plan was to get the kids later. Drinking took away the demons at 4 am.”
“At the end, I was blacking out on about a half can of beer…. I drank beer, about 8-10 beers, about 4 out of 7 nights. On Saturday, or any day I could get away with it, I drank beer all day…. I smoked pot for a while, when I was in high school and my first semester in college, but I became paranoid toward the end, so I quit… I never bought any; I only smoked it if it was around. Beer was worth paying for.”
“I thought with alcohol… I could predict and control that… whereas with one pill you might never come back… I didn’t like feeling out of control…. it came from that fear of insanity.”
“I tried to quit on my own, but it didn’t work. I lasted for two weeks. I was at my parents’ house… and I wanted to drink… I got the compulsion to drink… I always thought I had the power and could choose when and where to drink. This was the first time I experienced powerlessness. It was like my body got into the car without my permission and went to the packy… I cried all the way there… I had to have it. I brought it home – all I had money for was a six-pack – I put it in the refrigerator and tried not to drink it, but it won like it always won. I popped one at the refrigerator door, drank it; I popped another, and part of another one. Then, I poured the others down the drain. Then I had a vision… I saw my entire life going down this tube… I saw my parents go down there… I saw my parents, my husband, my children, and I saw me. I went to AA the next day and I have been going ever since.”
“I have been a substance abuse counselor…. for 21 years…. about 11, 12, or 13 of that in corrections….”
“I still go to AA – 2-3 meetings a week. I love AA – the people, the way it reminds of who I am, and who I am not. It gives me just about everything that I have…. I have three children who are in the program…”