“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.”