You're listening to the Recovery Happy Hour, where we talk about life beyond the bottle and what happens

after we stop drinking.

I'm your host Tricia and my newest goal is to learn the choreography to the final scene

in Rome and Michelle's high school reunion.

Thank you for joining me.

Well here we go everyone.

This is the season finale, the final episode of season five before I take a break and

come back later in the fall.

Sometimes I put this invisible pressure on myself to make the final episode the best of the season,

because honestly it always ends up being one of the most downloaded.

What people usually do when they check out podcasts is they listen to the most recent episode first

before deciding to invest any more of their time. And when you publish an episode and then take a six-week break,

that final episode ends up being downloaded about twice as much as the other episodes.

So no pressure, right? I've been thinking about this introduction all week, you know,

wondering what I could say to have more of an impact, and I keep coming back to

pain. Pain is what brought us all here, I think.

I always joke around when I say that no one ends up in an AA meeting

because they're having a really great day,

but what I really mean by that is that pain

is what brings people through the doors of a meeting for the first time.

Or pain is what people feel when their hearts break, when they lose something that matters,

and when they're hurt. Pain is our company when we're at our lowest and that feeling

...