I own it, a distant, not proud that was me, and when I face it, a little dignity, not

looking for excuse me, I just want to be free from power, weakness head on feet, free, free, free, free, free.

Hi, everyone, and welcome to the bubble hour where real people tell real stories of addiction and recovery.

I'm your host, Jean McCarthy.

I write the blog on Pickled, which chronicles my life after alcohol for the past six and a half years.

And I tell my story there. And then I invite you to share your stories

here and I get a lot of feedback from you and one thing a lot of you have been saying is that

you would love to hear from someone who's earlier on in their recovery and the universe works

in funny ways because not long after I got a couple of those requests, I got a beautiful email

from a listener named Jessica, who is just past the three-month mark and was willing to

come on and share her story.

And Jessica was really nervous that she's too early in recovery to have anything meaningful to say or that her story is boring or a thousand different silly things that she's worried about.

But I think it's like one of the best times to hear someone's story because that's really in the heart of some of the hardest, most important, you know, baseline work that we do.

And so I'm really excited to be able to talk to Jessica at this stage in her early recovery.

So Jessica joins us from Colorado.

Hello, Jessica.

Hi, Jean. Thanks so much.

Well, thank you. I know that this is not an easy thing to do and you're in a really vulnerable time. And so your willingness to share just means so much to me right now because I know I know it's hard. And I also know you have a great big heart and you know that you're helping people.

So thank you for your willingness to be here.

Yeah, thank you.

I am so afraid and wanted to cancel multiple times.

But I really kept thinking about how I really kept trying to find that person that had my story,

...