I own it, I did that, 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 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 your host, Gene McCarthy.

I write the blog Unpickled, where I've been telling my story of life after alcohol since my first day of sobriety almost eight years ago now, back in 2011.

So I tell my story there, and I invite you to share your

stories here. And today we have a number of guests who shared their stories with me at a

retreat earlier, late last year, I guess it was. I've been holding on to their recordings for a few

months now waiting for the right time to share them with you.

So two episodes ago, you heard some of these recordings on the episode of Voices from Early Recovery.

And now we have more voices in Recovery.

And we have eight women who share their stories from later on into recovery.

And I'm really excited to share them with you now. Before I do that,

let me tell you, warn you a little bit that sometimes I was standing too close to an elevator,

so you'll hear some bings and bongs in the background. Sometimes the women are a little bit

soft-spoken. You may have to adjust your volume up and down as you're listening. So please

be patient

with that. Also, you've noticed that this episode is coming a little bit late. I have had a crazy

week the last week. I've been doing some fun stuff. If you want to see what that is, you can go to my

Instagram page, which is Gene McCarthy writesRights, and see what I've

been up to there. And also, I've blogged a bit about it on Unpickled as well, because I had one of my first

really kind of startling cravings that I've had in a long time. And I thought it was important

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