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

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

Free, free, free, free, free, free.

Hello, 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 Unpickled, where I have been telling my story of life after alcohol since my very first day of sobriety, which was over six years ago.

And let me tell you something.

Today's guest is someone who was virtually with me through that.

And by virtually with me, I mean she was one of the early cheerleaders, early strangers,

who cheered me on online.

On the day that I set up my blog, my blog was automatically linking me to Twitter, so I realized

oh, I need to make up a Twitter account.

I didn't know anything about Twitter.

And I quickly figured out that the hashtag about sobriety was hashtag xA, meaning recovering from any addiction.

And if you search hashtag xA, you'll see a lot of tweets about sobriety.

So I used that hashtag and said, I'm on my first day of sobriety.

I could use some support.

And a handful of people chimed in and got me through

those early days and encouraged me to keep writing my blog. And today's guest, Shana, is one of

those people. Now, before we talk to Shana, I want to tell you a little bit, just a little bit

of housekeeping here, which is that the bubble hour is going to be off the air

for a couple of weeks because I'm going on vacation. I'm so excited. I'm turning 50 in two weeks,

and my husband and I are going on a trip. We're going to go hiking in England for a week, and then we are going to go

...