and two self-employed parents. She took up piano lessons at age 3, and music became her refuge. At 18, she won Miss Teen Missouri, though she had no prior pageant experience. The pageant opened Winchester’s world to public speaking and led her to change her major at the University of Missouri from music to communication. “The role included a lot of volunteer community work and encouraging young women to be the best they could be,” she says. “I often traveled back and forth to Kansas City during my freshman year at Mizzou because of Miss Teen Missouri. My grades weren’t a problem, but I struggled getting used to college emotionally.” In a sociology class her junior year, the Chi Omega sorority member met her future husband, John Milla, a left guard on the MU football team. They were engaged by Winchester’s final college semester and married in September 1984. After giving birth to their first child, Brandon, in 1986, she left her corporate job at Maritz, an incentive company in St. Louis, and began doing interior design part time, a career that brought her much fulfillment. “My parents joked that growing up, I rearranged the furniture in my bedroom every day,” she says. “By the time I moved out, the furniture had no legs. I was embracing my creative side that I got from both of my self-employed parents.” Winchester built her business by word of mouth and added two children to her family: Taylore in 1989 and Kathryn in 1996. When her oldest children were in middle school, she began drinking a seemingly innocent glass of chardonnay in the evenings. Prior to that, she used to partake in a few drinks on occasional nights out with friends but had no problem moderating her intake. Winchester’s one nightly glass, however, soon multiplied by three. Her husband, parents and sister confronted her about her increasing dependence on alcohol, but she remained in denial. “My girlfriends would say, ‘Well, you don’t even drink that much with us,’ but they didn’t realize that I had been drinking before I even left to meet them,” Winchester says. The more Winchester drank, the more energy it took for her to keep the addiction a secret and appear to be a highfunctioning person. “The nature of the disease is progressive,” she says. “It begins to take more drinks to get that original ‘ahh’ feeling; then it becomes nearly impossible to recapture that initial thrill.”
On Sept. 11, 2001, Winchester found herself pouring a drink in the morning. “Before then, I’d watch the clock every day for it to hit 4 p.m.,” she recalls. “I had convinced myself that it was OK to drink a glass at the time.” Her addiction continued to spiral. “When you’re addicted, you don’t have proper perspective,” she says. “I don’t remember a lot of things, and that’s the ugly side of the disease. You know that choosing alcohol is at the sacrifice of your family and business.” Winchester hit her breaking point during the 2002 holiday season. Feeling lonely and unhappy exacerbated her drinking. Although she now jokes that almost no one gets sober in December (most wait until after consuming New Years Eve bubbly), Winchester had her last alcoholic drink on Dec. 18, 2002. That day, her husband approached her and said he’d go with her to get help. “Honestly, I felt so relieved,” Winchester says. “It was like I was waiting for someone to say: ‘Take my hand. I know what you’re doing. It’s OK. Let’s go get help.’” Winchester entered an outpatient program at St. John’s Mercy Health Care in St. Louis, but a week of treatment wasn’t enough. “For the average person, it can take years of addiction to get to the point of rock bottom,” she says. “A week isn’t going to change that.” Winchester enrolled in a residential treatment center in California for three months. The rigorous program required attendance at Alcoholics Anonymous meetings each morning at 6 and forced Winchester to face the problems she had been trying to escape. Although she didn’t look like most of the rehab patients, Winchester quickly realized they were more alike than different. “Here was I, this suburban St. Louis soccer mom, and 90 percent of the people there had tattoos covering 80 percent of their bodies,” she says. “But the bond that grew among us was so great because of our sickness. I felt very at home in that environment. There is no cookie cutter face of addiction. It’s me. It’s the biker dude with tattoos.”
Getting past the shame Without alcohol in her system, Winchester could think more clearly. The rehabilitation center’s staffers advised her not to make any major life decisions within the first year of sobriety. But Winchester believed she had to do otherwise. In 2003, she got a divorce and moved into an apartment.
“When you’re addicted, you don’t have proper perspective. I don’t remember a lot of things, and that’s the ugly side of the disease. You know that choosing alcohol is at the sacrifice of your family and business.” — Karla Winchester Although she and her ex-husband shared joint custody, their children remained in the family home with their father to ensure they lived in the most stable environment possible. “I was scared to death,” Winchester remembers. “I wanted my children with me horribly, but it was selfish enough for me to have been so into my addiction. I needed to put my children’s needs and best interests first.” During her first year of sobriety, she focused her time on going to AA meetings to stay sober, obtaining employment and rebuilding an independent life after being married for nearly 20 years. Without health insurance, Winchester realized she needed a more stable job than her part-time interior decorating business, so she became director of recruitment for ITT Technical Institute in St. Louis. “I mourned the fact that interior design had been so much a part of my identity,” she says. “I just knew I was not able to do it at the time.” Winchester tried to be easy on herself, taking it one day at a time. Although many of her family members, friends and interior design clients offered support, she felt alienated and shunned by others. She often reminded herself of the adage: “Enemies don’t deserve an explanation. Friends don’t need one.” But overcoming the shame, particularly the shame associated with not having her children with her on a daily basis, was tough. “I believe in our society there’s an unspoken assumption that children should stay with their mother,” she says. “My choice was the most selfless, loving thing I could do, but it was also the most painful.” columbiahomemagazine.com | 47