Thirteen of them ran together; nine died and four got sober. Richard turned back twice walking to his first meeting. John was homeless at 15, by choice.

At 16 he worked restaurant shifts on ecstasy. Later ketamine ate into the savings funding his move to LA. What stopped him was his mother saying: go to AA.

She sang half-finished songs into her phone at her lowest, then cut them in a studio sober. A promise she made her grandfather before he died is why she stayed.

Handed a Big Book at 25, she carried it through every move and drank on for years. She signed up for the LSAT only because a girlfriend laughed at the idea.

He came home from school at twelve to find neighbors bidding on the family furniture. Four high schools and a Navy hitch later, drinking had the wheel.

After four decades he still calls his clients’ sponsors to ask which step they are on. Getting sober, he says, only clears the deck - the undercurrents run on.

He smuggled vodka into festivals and lifted bottles in a denim jacket in July. The friend he met at twelve told him to sell the car, then drove him to rehab.

He ran a treatment center while hiding his own addiction. A public DUI ended the image. Doug T. on what recovery asked of him afterwards.

His brother stood up in court in a suit and tie and the judge tore up the plea deal. Billy G. went home instead of prison, and got clean six months later.

A torn shoulder at 14 put his first painkillers in his hand. Tanner S. on waking slumped at the wheel a block from home, and why sober beats the stage.

At 13 he started hiding how he managed his diabetes. Mark M. on the years of secrecy, cocaine and whiskey that followed, and what finally broke it open.

Fifth-grade DARE told him one beer would wreck his life overnight. When it did not, Louis E. stopped believing any of it, and by 23 he was in a squad car.

He woke strapped to a hospital gurney, walked home and poured another. What finally reached Adam R. was his father driving four hours to knock on his door.

His brother’s illness kept their parents at the hospital, so at 12 Ben O. was home alone and done listening. By 17 he had tried heroin and left school.

A week after one ER visit, Eddie W. drank a bottle of bourbon in an hour and woke up in intensive care. The attorney on four milligrams of Xanax a day.

No DUI, no arrest, no one staging an intervention. Teresa S. drank for thirty years, lost a marriage and then her mornings, and got sober at 48 anyway.

She taped cardboard over the windows so she would not know what day it was. Natalie T. got sober at 31 on a friend’s couch, after four years of sober houses.

Her phone had been shut off for months. Sitting under an Indiana bridge with one shoe and no plan, it rang, and the voice offered Heidi P. a plane ticket.

At 17 he told his father not to pay the tuition, because the school and the drinking could not coexist. Shai I. on the blackout in LA that ended it all.

In 1988 she sat in the stands while the Olympic team lined up poolside without her. That night Carrie B. drank to stop feeling, and kept at it for 30 years.