A Southern Belle old timer, Ruth was treated by Dr. Silkworth at Towns Hospital in New York where Bill Wilson got sober.
She took her first drink after 28 years old. She thinks sitting out in the woods drinking with another person is "social drinking".
She lived and worked in Brooklyn, NY during Prohibition, spent time in Speak Easy's but never drank there - probably because she did not want to spend the money.
She met and married an alcoholic who was not drinking but her father warned her about him. He started drinking again after the marriage. She eventually left him.
"I said all the things to him that my next husband said to me."
She married a professional man and settled in Lynchburg, VA. She felt it was too small and dull a town for her. She took her first drink and her lifestyle changed. She drank for 10 years.
Her psychiatrist told her she was a perfectionist.
"How can I be a perfectionist when everybody around me is so mediocre?"
She heard about AA on a train and ordered her Big Book from AA at Box 459. She thought it would be great for a friend of her husband and drank for four more years finishing up drinking salty cooking sherry - three to four gallons a week.
She relates her treatment by Dr. Silkworth before returning to Lynchburg and the all male AA there.
"I found out later they were all male chauvinist pigs."
