Anne used to wake up feeling ill. She would often get sick, hardly eat her lunch and try to ignore her shaking hands.

“Drinking daily became a thing,” she said. “As time went on, it became what I had to do. It wasn’t fun anymore.”

Anne decided to meet with a peer coach at Face It TOGETHER, even though she wasn't totally sold on sobriety yet.

Talking with Kattie, who shared her own “nitty gritty” stories, was a big help to Anne at the time.

“She sees the core, where everything is coming from. Kattie has been such an inspiration to me, because she’s proof you can turn your life around. It’s not over. It’s never over,” she said.

In those early days, Anne remembers needing a lot of reassurance.

“‘I’m going to be OK, right? I’m going to get another job, right? I’m going to turn this around, right?’ I needed someone to believe in me, and Kattie certainly did,” she said.

Anne compares some of those conversations to the movie “Bridesmaids.”

“There’s a scene where Melissa McCarthy’s character says, ‘I’m life, Annie. I’m trying to get you to fight for your shitty life.’ That was basically Kattie to me,” she said, laughing. “She saw that person in there fighting, and now my life isn’t shitty anymore.”

In sobriety, Anne has gotten to know who she truly is. She’s empathetic. She loves to cook and play games. She can have fun without going to a bar. It turns out Kattie was right: she rarely spends time at the bars she used to be at daily.

“Mornings have become almost sacred. They no longer include any type of retching, but instead coffee, prayer, reflection and daily New York Times puzzles,” she said. "I like the person I’m becoming. That’s something I don’t know if I’ve ever been able to say in my life.”

You can read more of Anne's story here.