I own it, I did that, not proud, but that was me, and when I face it, I take back a little dignity, not looking for excuses, I just want to be free from power. Weakness had on me. 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 Gene McCarthy, recovery author, blogger, and podcast host. I've been chronicling my adventures in life after alcohol since my first day of sobriety over nine years ago in my blog Unpickled and in books like the Unpickled Holiday Survival Guide,

which I encourage you to get a copy of this book at this time of year, and my poetry collection,

The Ember Ever There. So I tell my stories there and I hold space for your stories here.

And today I'm holding space for Julie Der Derrinsky, who joins me to share her

story and talk about recovery after spending some time in gray area drinking. Julie, welcome to

the bubble hour. Thanks for being here. Thanks for having me, Gene. It's so nice to be here.

Now, we've been corresponding for a while. So, you have

how much time of alcohol-free living at this point? Oh, gosh, since May of 2018. So I guess we're

coming up on two and a half years. Oh, and how does it feel? Is it feeling pretty good?

It feels great. It does. Yeah, it's a good life,

isn't it? It sure is. Well, I'm going to turn it over to you now, Julie. So tell us about yourself

and tell us your story. Okay. Thank you, Jean. So as Jean said, my name is Julie. I'm in my mid-40s and I live in Massachusetts right outside of Boston.

I was born and raised in the area and now I live in a beautiful bucolic town with my husband and my two kiddos who are four and six right now.

I myself am the youngest of four kids and I grew up in a two-parent

household, in a middle-class town. And as I just mentioned, I broke up with my love affair

with wine in May of 2018. From a really, really young age, probably as far back as I can remember,

so maybe I was five-ish. I was a really sensitive kid.

I recall being, you know, in the backseat of my mom's car with my mom and my older brother in the

car. And my brother asked the question, what part of your body can feel the most pain? And, you know,

it was an innocuous question. And I said, without skipping a beat, duh, your feelings. And they

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