(Glenda Marsh walks onstage, nervous. This is a confessional for Alcoholics Anonymous, and this is her first meeting. She is about 35, with a dress and sort of old-fashioned looking hair. She is married, and a mother of two.)

     Uh.. hello, everybody. (pause) Oh! I'm sorry. My name is Glenda Marsh and... and I'm... I'm an alcoholic. (under her breath) There, that did it. (Looks up at the audience, nervously smiling.)

     You want to know my story? Oh.. well, all right. My name is Glenda Marsh..(pause) What? Oh yeah, I already said that. Ahem. I'm thirty five years old. I uh, started drinking when I was 15, not heavily of course. With my boyfriend and sometimes my friends. We'd um, do the normal thing that teenagers would do, go out to a field or a deserted building with some vodka or some beer, and just sort of drink it. It was fun, we would laugh a lot, do kid stuff. We never had (uncomfortably) sex or did anything other than alcohol. It was recreational. But then my boyfriend dumped me. That's when I really started drinking. Every night, after school, I would hide myself in my room with my parents' alcohol, and drink it all away. It felt good. They would never know who had taken it, they thought it was the cat or something because she always acted kind of crazy, so they thought she was drunk and thought nothing of it. But it was me drinking the alcohol, afraid of my problems. I stopped drinking when I was 17 after my parents found a vodka bottle in my room. They were quite mad. 'You were such a good little girl, and now this!' My father wouldn't talk to me, my mother wouldn't look me in the eye. I didn't know I had problems then, I thought I was "experimenting." But experimenting doesn't last for twenty years.

     Sometimes I would drink just to drink, it was just something I did, like brushing my teeth. Before my parents found out, I thought it was perfectly normal, no one really confronted me about it, I looked happy to them. But after they found out, I couldn't drink anymore, and I felt gross. I was mad. Not to mention addicted.

(added confidence)

     I'm here for my husband and my kids. I'm here because they are uncomfortable with my habit. I know I drink, and it's not even to escape anymore. I just do it. It was a long lost habit, and I started again just as soon as I married and became bored sometimes. They say I'm mean when I get drunk, but I'm not really sure about any of it. My son, Robbie, has been crying a lot lately. He won't let me comfort him. He says I'm scary. I don't think I'm scary at all. And I usually only drink after they go to bed. I was a good mom, and now this! My own daughter won't even look me in the eye anymore. My husband talked to me the other night, about going to Alcoholics Anonymous. I thought maybe it would help me, so I could be a good mother and wife again. So here I am, with a whole bunch of other people, somewhat like me. I hope I can learn to stop drinking here, because I know I'm an alcoholic now. I know I'm an alcoholic because I can't stop. I don't know much about my addiction, so my family really has to start talking about this to me. God, I hope I can stop drinking. I would do anything to stop drinking. Thank you.