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I gazed at this woman, with two boys and an adoring husband, with her own real estate business and her razor-sharp mind, sitting docilely at her kitchen table. It was like watching Pollyanna utter a string of obscenities, so at odds was Alicia’s past to her present.

Staying clean during her pregnancy fueled the illusion that she was not an addict; she could stop at will, after all. Luke continued his affair with cocaine, however. A month after she gave birth to their son, Alicia began using cocaine and painkillers, careful to stay away from her true nemesis, alcohol. During this period, Alicia ran a women’s clothing store that routinely ranked in the top ten of the four-hundred-store chain. Her external life revealed no fissures. Then she became pregnant with her second son.

“And that was where I started to get to my bottom,” she said, “because in that pregnancy I couldn’t stay clean. I had crossed the line. And I knew I was really sick.”

The spiral downward continued after her second child was born, as Alicia nursed her infant and tried to care for her toddler. She could barely breathe for the chaos in her life and in her head. She and Luke would spend most of their take-home pay on drugs, calibrating their highs and lows with a mix of uppers, cocaine, and alcohol. She had lost her job, she was stuck at home with crying babies, and she began to plot her suicide.

“And I felt completely... completely broken. I got angry. How could this happen? That’s when I said, ‘Where are my angels?’ ”

In retrospect, Alicia draws a straight line from that desperate moment to a sublime one that occurred a few days later.

One Friday night in May 1996, Alicia and Luke were buying groceries at Costco.

“It was payday, and he had already spent all the money on drugs.We had loaded the bag and we were in line and he told me,‘You know, we can’t pay for these.’ And I looked at him. And we had to leave the whole basket of groceries there. We came home and I remember the dishes were piled up in the sink. I just remember laying my head on the side of the sink and feeling the coldness of the sink right on my forehead.”

She paused, envisioning the moment.

“And then all of a sudden something literally went through my back and my inside. This alignment took place inside. And it started down low, like in my stomach and in the lower back, and it was just like my spine was being straightened out. It’s like when a cat gets scruffed by its mama on the back of the neck and they get kind of lifted up. And all of a sudden, I knew I was just done. That was it. I took the kids to my mom’s, and came back, and told Luke I was going to get clean and sober, and he had to go. And I was in rehab a couple of weeks later.”

“What would you say it was?” I asked. “I mean, was it a force from the outside? Was it God?”

“It was an energy,” Alicia replied.“I guess people who call that kind of energy ‘God’ would say it was God. I call it ‘soul.’ I think my soul got righted at that moment. And everything changed.”

Alicia has been clean of all addictive substances since that moment a decade earlier. Luke returned, sober, nine months later, and has remained clean as well. She never went to college but has not suffered for the lack. The real estate business she started made a profit the first year. Her rambunctious sons became national competitors in karate, their trophies displayed on practically every inch of flat space in the house. Raised a Roman Catholic, Alicia forged her own sort of spirituality for years before settling, most recently, on Sufi mysticism.

The one constant in her changing world is Alcoholics Anonymous. This movement has rescued millions of lost souls from the gutter and mended families that have been torn asunder for years. It is built on admitting one’s brokenness, surrendering to a Higher Power, and experiencing a “spiritual awakening.” In a society that demands double-blind studies and scientific explanations, AA remains stubbornly mystical.