Unbottled
After 38 years of sobriety and 5 years of podcasting, I finally had the good sense to put the two together. Unbottled is where we crack open all things sobriety—without the shame, the whispering, or the “I’m fine” face we all perfected in the 90s.
This is a space for honest conversations, practical tools, laugh-so-you-don’t-cry stories, and the kind of truth that only comes after decades of doing the work and living to tell about it. Whether you’re sober-curious, long-time sober, or somewhere in the messy middle, we’re going to talk about the habits, people, boundaries, victories, and ridiculous moments that shape a sober life.
Think of Unbolted as the place where we unhook the armor, loosen the bolts, and talk real sobriety—candid, witty, a little sassy, and full of hope because life gets a whole lot lighter when you stop tightening everything down and start opening up.
Unbottled
Sobriety Without Shame: Clarity, Choice, Space
The noise gets loud—on our phones, at the bar, in our heads. We kicked off Unbottled to cut through that noise and talk about sobriety the way it actually feels: messy, honest, and full of second chances. Marcy shares why she started this show, how 38 years of sobriety have shaped her life, and why she refuses to make recovery a punishment. If you’re sober curious, newly sober, or simply tired of waking up thinking “I did it again,” this conversation meets you where you are.
We explore a simple, powerful reframe: sobriety isn’t about what you stop doing; it’s about what finally gets quiet enough to hear. That quiet reveals three gifts—clarity, choice, and space. Clarity lifts the “wet wool blanket” off your mind. Choice returns agency so you can decide how to spend your time, money, and energy. Space lets you show up at parties, games, and family dinners without planning your next escape. Along the way, Marcy unpacks why periodic drinking can still be alcoholic, how AA became a life-saving tool, and why it’s not the only door. The lens widens beyond alcohol to the other loud habits—over-scrolling, overworking, sugar, shopping—and how swapping the noun keeps the principles intact.
You’ll hear personal context that grounds the show: growing up in the Valley, early blackout drinking, the first AA meeting in a small library, Friday night home group in Chicago, a year shaped by cancer and community, and the humility of never quite feeling like a “grown-up.” Most of all, you’ll get an invitation: experiment with quiet. Try dry January. Try a meeting. Try a nightly check-in. Try asking what you’d hear if you weren’t numbing. We’re building a space that honors AA and welcomes other paths, with future guests sharing different routes to recovery.
If this resonates, follow or subscribe, share it with a friend who might need it, and email Marcy at Marcy Bacchus Media at gmail.com if you have a story or a path to contribute. Let’s live unbottled—one clear, honest day at a time.
Hello, and welcome to the very first episode of Unbottled. This is where sobriety's uncorked, unfiltered, and unapologetically real. Well, welcome, welcome, welcome to my new podcast. Again, my name is Marcy Backis. This is Unbottled, a podcast where we talk about sobriety in real life without shame, secrecy, or pretending we've got it all figured out. I've been sober since January 11th, 1988. And over the years, I've learned that sobriety isn't just, excuse me, about what you that you stop drinking, it's about what you start noticing. Whether you're sober, curious, newly sober, long time sober, or just wondering why something in your life feels a little bit too loud, you're welcome here. Let's unbottle the truth and talk about what actually helps. So this is actually my very first episode of Unbottled, and I'm glad you're here. Do you have to be sober to be here? Absolutely not. Can you be thinking about is there just something that is too loud in your life that you need to quiet down? There could be many reasons why you listen to this podcast. I hope you enjoy it. I have two other podcasts as well. I have Inside Marcy's Mind, which I've had for over a year, and I have Aging Eight for Sissies, which is going on for a long time. And I enjoy doing podcasts. I am videoing this for YouTube, and we'll see how that goes. I do all my own editing, and normally I edit while I talk. And I can't do that when I am videoing. So we'll see, we'll see how this goes. I always will start out with a little hello, what's up in my life? I am getting ready for a six-week road trip to the West Coast, and I'll bring you along with me on that as I record my episodes along the way. The first three episodes you're going to get back to back to back. I'm recording them back to back to back because I want you to get a feel of what this podcast is and see if it's for you. And today's episode is Why Unbottled? Let's talk about sobriety without making it weird. I don't want it weird. My goal is to not be preachy. My goal is to not tell you what to do. There will be a lot of talk about Alcoholics Anonymous in this because that is how I got sober. It's how I stay sober. It is a huge part of my life. It's an important part of my life. We'll go through steps, we'll go through all of that. Again, if you, if sobriety isn't your thing, but you have other issues, it'll still be for you. So hang in there, wait just a minute, and we are gonna get this episode started. All right, we're back. We're back again. One of the things with Unbottled is I don't want it to sound pre-cheap. I don't have all the answers. I don't know. All I know is what on January 11th, which I am doing this podcast on December 30th. So in 11, 12, 13 days, God willing, and the creeks don't rise, as they used to say, I will have 38 years of sobriety. And wham, that is unbelievable. I can remember the day I walked in. I can remember my first meeting. As we go along, I'll share my story. I'm not gonna bore you with all of it. But I remember looking at quote unquote old timers, thinking, wow, and now here I am. I sit at a meeting on Friday nights. Friday night is my standing meeting. It is my home group here in Chicago. And I can't believe it. So, first, a little bit about me. Let's just check in with who I am. If you haven't listened to my other podcasts, and this is my first podcast that you're listening to, and this one is unbottled. Who am I? My name is Marcy Backis. I grew up in the San Fernando Valley. Yes, I am a Valley girl. I grew up on Woodland Hills, went to elementary, junior high, and high school, all the same people. My bestie is still my bestie. My bestie is Lynn, and we've been besties since elementary school. She will be on a cruise with me during this six-week sojourn of mine. Both of us just have survived breast cancer. That was my year. This year was breast cancer driven. And I'm happy to say I'm still sober and I'm cancer free as I can be at the moment. So those are all good things. I am married to Craig Backis. I have two children. I've been married for 35 years. I have a 33-year-old and a soon-to-be 31-year-old. My oldest, Kyle, is transgender masculine. Kyle was born as a girl and has always felt that that was a wrong decision on God's part. So I named Kyle Kyle as a girl, and Kyle has kept the name as a male. So that is Kyle. Kyle lives in Torrance, California, works for the Torrance School District, and works with children. And I have a son, Alec, who lives in Denver. He is all things outdoor. He works his job as outdoor. He also works with children. And so kind of interesting the path that both of them have taken. I see them as much as I can. I will see Kyle again when I get to California. Alec has come and spent some time with me while I was going through cancer treatment this year. Yeah, that's my family. That's who I am. I am the youngest of four. My siblings are eight, ten, and twelve years older than me. I tell you that because that'll come into play into some of these things that we talk about. Your place in the family, who you are, and what you are, but I am the youngest. I will never grow up. I look around and I think, how do people feel like grown-ups? I don't. I'm turning 65 on January 18th, spending my birthday in Las Vegas at a girlfriend's house. And six of my girlfriends and my sister are coming in to spend it with me, and we are going to see the Wizard of Oz in the sphere. So that is me. That is my life. You know a little bit about me. I never feel like a grown-up. I don't think I ever will feel like a grown-up. And you know what? I've learned to deal with that. And it's fine. It doesn't mean I'm not a grown-up. It just means I don't know if I'll ever feel one. So again, I've been sober since January 11th, 1988, which means this year I hit 38 years. And I don't get a trophy. I checked. There are no trophies involved, but I will get my coin. And because I will not be here in Chicago, I'm gonna have to wait till I get back and get it at my regular meeting, get my 38-year coin. I say 38 years, and in doing this podcast, I'm getting a little faklimped. You know, it's it's an amazing thing. I think about when I was out and drinking and ugh. Which means I've tried every wrong way to do this and lived. I tried over and over and over and over and over again to stop drinking on my own terms and could never do it until I walked through the doors of Alcoholics Anonymous. And again, I've told you this podcast is not only about AA, but it will come up a lot. But I think if you hang in there, you can learn a lot as well. This because this podcast is not only for alcoholics, this is for the curious, the tired, the overdoing it crowd. Okay, so let's talk about what sobriety really is. Okay, so what is it? Sobriety is not a punishment. I know I think I think for a lot of people, when they get into a program or AA or are told that they have a problem and that sobriety is probably what they need, they think of it as a punishment. Oh my gosh, go my whole life without drinking. Not drinking. How am I gonna watch a game? How am I gonna eat pizza? How am I gonna go out? What do I do at parties? Like, there's a whole lot that goes into that thought process, right? Sobriety. Never drink again. Really? Who does that? Well, a lot of people, number one, but it's not a punishment. So that's one of the first things that has to get cleared up. But that is a really hard mindset to get into because it sure feels like one at first. How am I gonna have any fun? What am I gonna do? Now, when I got sober in the 80s, there weren't a lot of young people in AA. We kind of blazed the trail for young people in the program and what sobriety looks like at a young age. We weren't coming in in our 40s, we weren't coming in in our 50s, we were coming in in our 20s. I was 27 years old. 27 years old. I did not drink long, but I drank hard. And I drink alcoholically. And in some episode, we'll talk about what that means. What is sobriety? So it's not a punishment, but it is clarity, choice, and space. I will tell you that sobriety, no matter how hard you fight it, is gonna give you clarity. If you're not drinking, if you're not abusing anything, clarity comes. Your mind lifts. I used to call it when I was drinking, there was like a wet wool blanket on my brain. And sobriety brings clarity. It also brings choice. You know, when you're drinking, using, when you're impaired in some way, you have very little choice. You kind of get pushed like with the tide. But when you're clear-headed and you're focused and you're thinking right, you have choice. And you have space. You have space to be. You can be anywhere. When you drink, there's a lot of places you can't be. There's a lot of people that don't want to be around you. Space is not free to you. You have to manipulate your space when you're drinking. What sobriety really is, you can be functional. And you can still be exhausted, I'm not gonna lie. But you can be functional, you can function within a world where you're not constantly making deals with the devil, deals with God, you're not making deals with yourself. You're not, well, if I can go till two o'clock, like there's just there's so much mind manipulation when we're drinking. So sobriety gives you freedom from that. And we do live in a culture of numbing in many ways, and when you are sober, when you're sober, you're no longer numb. You can feel, and is that always great? Absolutely not, otherwise, why would most of us drink? Most of us are just numbing things. So, you know, just remember sobriety isn't about what you stop doing, it's about what finally gets quiet enough for you to hear. Let me say that again. Sobriety isn't about what you stop doing, it's about what finally gets quiet enough. And I use that word intentionally. It's about what finally gets quiet enough for you to hear. So the quiet may come from a lot of things. It could come from anything beyond alcohol, it could come from overworking, over-scrolling, overeating, over pleasing, chocolate, diet coke, shopping, what is loud in your life? What needs to get quiet? If any of those things that I just mentioned are loud in your life and need to get quiet, this podcast is for you. If your addiction is chocolate, I'm not here to take it away. I'm here to ask why you need three bars to get through Tuesday. And maybe you need it. But this podcast and the talk and the things we're going to talk about most definitely are more than just alcohol. You could replace the word alcohol with chocolate, overeating, over-scrolling, overworking, over pleasing, any of those things. So just remember when I use the word alcohol, just put in what you might need to put in. So my sobriety in a little bit of context. This is not a full drunkalog. Okay. I did get sober in 1988. I was a rule follower. I did not start drinking really until heavily until I was 21. But the few times that alcohol was introduced to me, and I will tell you, my mother introduced alcohol to me on a New Year's Eve when I was 12, was making me screwdrivers when we were at a party. I got blackout drunk. I drank alcohol alcoholically from day one. There was only a few other times that I had drinks between then and the age of 21. And every single solitary time I drank like an alcoholic. I drank blackout. I don't know the word stop. I don't know the word slow. I don't know any of those things. That is what I did. That's how I drank. I'm sure I wasn't fun to be around all the time. I don't think I was always a nice drunk. It actually nauseates me to think about it, to be honest with you. So getting sober in 1988, there were no podcasts, no Instagram, no sober influencers. There were no cell phones, there were pagers. There were pagers and answering machines. What's an answering machine, you ask? An answering machine is something you had on your home phone that would take messages if you weren't home. And that was a big deal back then. So those were things that it was a little different. You ask why did AA work for me? Because I was ready. I went to my first meeting on January 11th, 1988, at the It's still there. It is the Motion Piction Picture Hospital out in Woodland Hills. It is a place, it's kind of a retirement home for people that work in the movie industry. You don't have not movie stars, but all the people that do all the hard work. It was a big book study, and it was in a small library, and there was probably about 15 people there. And that is where the first meeting I ever went to. Back then, we had little books that you'd get at a meeting, and it had all the meetings, and people would circle them and tell you their favorite meetings, and there was a whole different culture then. We didn't have apps to tell us where meetings are. But AA worked for me because number one, I was ready. So for me, it took hold. And in that, I found friends, I found a community, and I found people that understood me, unlike anybody in my life before. I tried multiple times, probably like you. You know, you wake up. I worked in the hair industry, just so you know. I was a hairdresser in a salon on Ventura Boulevard at Encino called Syndicate. A very high-end salon. Very, I worked on some very famous, excuse me, some very famous people. But the culture was cocaine and drinking. And after work, I would go straight to a bar. And who knows how I got home. I don't know. Bad, bad, bad. But that was my culture. And I didn't stop sooner because I couldn't. And the good thing was there were a couple of people in my salon that had gotten sober through AA. So I knew where to go and I knew what to do. I knew where to go and I knew what to do. So when the time came, I was ready. I was ready. I went to that meeting, I walked through that door, and AA saved my life. But sobriety saved my soul. AA is a tool, and it's not the only door. And it's just a tool. It's not the be-all end-all answer. It's a tool to sobriety. This show, Unbottled, respects AA and other paths. Now, because AA was my path, I am hoping to get us some speakers and people that can share with us other paths. If you or somebody you know would love to be interviewed on this podcast, please email me at Marcy Bacchus. That's Marcy with a Y, Bacchus B-A-C-K-H-U-S Media, M-E-D-I-A, Marcy Bacchus Media at gmail.com. And I would love to have guests. So if you're out there and you have a story and you want to tell it and you have another path that helped you get sober, I will honor that and would love to share that with people. So we've talked about who this podcast is for, but I really want to spell it out for you. So sober curious. This is a term that's fairly new to the world. I think it came up through probably people in the industry. But sober curious is people that go certain periods of time without drinking. They're trying it out. They're seeing if they could live a life sober. And what is wrong with that? Not a doggone thing. I am not gonna pass judgment on any of this. You could go sober curious and find out it's not for you. You could also find out you don't have a problem. You could find out that sobriety is for you and you do have a problem. I will say this, and it's just because my mom was one. There are what's called a periodic alcoholic. And the reason they are the hardest to, I think they're one of the hardest to admit they have a problem because they can go, I could go six months without drinking. But when they drink, they drink alcoholically. So it's not that you have to drink every day to be an alcoholic. It's when you drink, do you drink to excess? Think about it. The newly sober, oh my gosh, if you're newly sober, welcome, welcome, welcome. I love nothing more than a newbie. I love in meetings to see somebody get a 30-day chip, a 60-day chip. Ugh, my heart and my heart leaps for people that get a year. We work so hard for that. And I know it doesn't, it isn't easy for everyone. And one and done doesn't work for everyone. So the newly sober, welcome, welcome, welcome. I hope you get something and I hope you enjoy this. People trying dry January. If you're doing dry January and you've come across my podcast, yay! Hopefully you get some tools to help you for that dry January. Your dry January may just turn into a dry February, maybe even a March. You just never know. And people tired of why do I keep doing this? Oh my God, I hated that. I hated waking up with a hangover thinking, oh crap, I did it again. All right, I'm not gonna drink today. And honestly, towards the end of my sobriety, that never worked. Never, ever, ever. Never worked. I I always drank by the end of the day. Oh, just thinking about that makes me tired and sick. So if any of those are you, then you are welcome here. And the truth is, as I've said, everybody is welcome here, no matter what is loud in your head. And when I say that, it could be alcohol is loud, it could be shopping too much is loud, it could be gambling is too loud. It can be, I never think about it, but gambling is, I know, a huge thing for people. Um, funny enough, here in Chicago, I live downtown, Chicago on a high rise, and like two blocks from me is a casino, literally on my same street. And I said to my husband, I am so glad I am not a gambling addict, because that would really suck. But then I left because there's bars, I'm surrounded by bars, and I don't think of anything, I don't even think that is a problem. And that's because the desire for drinking was lifted within my first year of sobriety. I've never desired to drink again. I feel very blessed that way. Doesn't mean things still aren't hard. It still doesn't mean that I don't have things to learn or I don't have things to teach you. If you're curious, you're in the right place. This is unbottled, and let's open things up. This is episode one. Episode two is gonna follow right behind. I'm glad you're here. I hope you stay. Life is too short. I want to thank you for spending time with me today. If something in this episode made you pause, smile, or feel a little less alone, I hope you'll carry this with you. Sobriety in whatever form you're exploring isn't about perfection. It is not about perfection. It's about awareness, compassion, and staying curious. If this podcast resonates, follow or subscribe, share it with someone who might need it, and remember you don't have to have all the answers to start living unbottled. I'll see you next time.