LOL Sober

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What is humility?

That’s a deep question, isn’t it? There probably is no official answer, and I bet everybody has their own definition of what humility means for them.

The dictionary definition says humility is being humble, and having a modest opinion of one’s importance. That sounds about right. But a modest opinion of one’s importance is certainly up for interpretation. If you’re the CEO of a billion-dollar corporation and issue directives that hundreds of people rush to do every day, I bet it’s hard to have a modest opinion of oneself.

I bring all of this up because I read some recovery literature recently where we ended up dissecting humility for an hour, and I had an unexpected takeaway myself—that for me, there is a direct relationship between humility and humor.

Think about it for a second. Humble people can laugh at themselves, and can usually laugh at the world when shitty stuff happens. In sobriety, we often hear, “Don’t take yourself too damn serious,” and it’s interesting when you apply that to humility.

Let me give you a few real-world examples of how I think this plays out. Imagine for a second you are in a busy parking lot and can’t find a space. Finally, you see someone pulling out so you sit nearby and wait for the person to pull out. Just when the spot is open, someone darts in and takes the spot.

This is very aggravating, isn’t it? I definitely would have an urge to scream at the a*****e. But humble people chuckle a bit, call the guy an a*****e under their breath and find another spot. No yelling. No arrests for disorderly conduct. You let the a*****e go about their day as the a*****e that they are.

Another example: You get to the office and somebody makes a joke about how your outfit doesn’t match. Multiple people look over and laugh. You want to launch the person into the sun, or make fun of them for something they might have done.

A humble person turns it into a joke and says something like, “I thought it was mismatch Monday!”

I realize how hard that is to do, and I am at about a 90 percent fail rate on that myself, because it stings. If you have any ego whatsoever, it’s embarrassing for somebody to pick on you for your appearance, and it makes you want to lash out. That’s pride and ego being pretty thin-skinned. I always think about how one of the agreements in the book The Four Agreements is about how you should never take anything personal. Nothing. Think about your life where your ego is at the exact right size, and you know who you are and what you stand for, so when somebody says you have a shitty car or an ugly house, you don’t care. It’s their opinion and they can have it, because you know the truth.

It also means you don’t need anybody’s validation to feel good about who you are. That’s a beautiful thing. That’s humility to me. And in private—not to their face—it never hurts my humility to find the humor in people who are that aggressive about weighing in on other peoples’ lives, because that is a pretty crappy way to go through life. I don’t want to live like that, that’s for sure.

One final thing about humor and humility… how many times does something bother you today, but then you find it hilarious a week later? That happens so much to me. I’ll whine and moan and groan and be pissed about something, then a week later I am telling it as a funny story. It’s because my humility is back in the right spot, where I am humble enough to laugh about tripping in front of 10 people at the grocery store, or that snippy email a coworker sent. So I always challenge myself to think, if I am going to laugh about this a week from now, why not just be humble and laugh about it now?

This newsletter is a place of joy and laughter about the deadly serious business of sobriety. So, as I will often do, let me close with a joke:

OLDIE BUT GOODIE: "Since I have three speakers tonight," said the leader at an open meeting, "I'm not going to spend time qualifying myself. I think you can assume I'm an alcoholic, because damned if I've ever heard of anybody getting up here by mistake!"

(Credit: Grapevine, January 2009)

Please spread the word to a sober friend! Find me on Substack… or Twitter… or Facebook… or Instagram… or YouTube. And introducing my web site, LOLsober.com.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nelsonh.substack.com/subscribe

If you want to subscribe to LOL Sober, hit the purple button below. I’m mostly publishing free pieces right now, but paid subscribers do have access to monthly premium pieces—such as THIS comedy special about my 10 favorite addiction/sobriety jokes!

A friend shared something the other day that he found to be an epiphany, and I ended up feeling the same way. I’ll throw it your way and you let me know if it is profound to you.

He shared that at a 12-step meeting once, a guy asked everybody in the room to raise their hand if they liked to help others. Almost everybody raised their hand.

Then the same dude asked, “Raise your hand if you like to ask for help.” Almost nobody raised their hand.

That totally makes sense, right? Most of us sober people, even those of us with quite a bit of recovery time under our belts, prefer to do nice things for others than ask for nice things from others. I actually have no issue with that—I’d always rather err on the side of doing more for others than I ask for myself.

However, it is pretty profound that I think the results would be almost the same at any meeting you went to—100 percent of people wanting to help, 0 percent wanting to ask for help. That’s kind of bad, isn’t it? Don’t we want some balance there?

But it is hard, and I’ve been experiencing it quite a bit lately. I have had some health issues and needed assistance. I have been doing pretty well with accepting help. But going out of my way to ask for it? Oof. I’m not there yet.

What was really interesting about the whole conversation was that my friend said it crystallized for him something important to remember—that we all acknowledge the need to be of service to others, but yet don’t participate in the other half of that chain, where we provide service opportunities to others. The whole supply-demand scenario of doing nice things for others doesn’t work if there are only people giving help, not wanting any of it.

So make sure you do your part to keep the supply chain rolling!

This newsletter is a place of joy and laughter about the deadly serious business of sobriety. So, as I will often do, let me close with a joke:

HEARD AT MEETINGS

"The trouble with immediate gratification is that it isn't fast enough."

(Credit: Grapevine, January 2009, by Rick W. of New York, NY)

Please spread the word to a sober friend! Find me on Substack… or Twitter… or Facebook… or Instagram… or YouTube. And introducing my web site, LOLsober.com.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nelsonh.substack.com/subscribe

If you want to subscribe to LOL Sober, hit the purple button below. I’m mostly publishing free pieces right now, but paid subscribers do have access to monthly premium pieces—such as THIS comedy special about my 10 favorite addiction/sobriety jokes!

Of all the things I have heard in sobriety that stick with me, the one I have been thinking about the most lately is that sobriety isn’t for people who want it, and it’s not for people who need it—it’s for people who DO it.

I have found that to be so true, in sobriety and in life. You can think about something. You can talk about something. You can plan something. But what did you do?

One of the biggest things I hear at meetings sometimes is the same person saying the same thing over and over again.

“I need to get back into stepwork.”

“I need to be getting to more meetings.”

“I need to pick up the phone.”

That’s fine. I’ve said all those things. But I also developed a radar for when I’ve said it at meetings for three months in a row… that’s a very bad sign. It means I have awareness of an issue but no real desire to change it. Saying something out loud is usually helpful, but it’s not magic beans that make the solution sprout up out of the ground. You have to actually do the thing.

I think about that saying often when it comes to goals. I often cite a story from a sober friend of mine, when he mentioned to his sponsor that his self-esteem wasn’t great. His sponsor said, “Go do esteemable things.”

That’s the key to changing a behavior, in my opinion. If I want to be healthy, I have to do healthy things and not do unhealthy things. If you eat donuts for breakfast, a tiny salad for lunch and Taco Bell on the way home, guess what, you didn’t do enough healthy things. If you then spend the night wishing you had done more healthy things, and planning on how to do more healthy things tomorrow, and lamenting that you blew it that day… well, that’s not valuable action, either.

Same goes with sobriety. How many of us spent weeks, months, even years thinking hard about sobriety? But we didn’t do it. We didn’t go to rehab. Or meetings. Or get a sponsor. It was all wishes and worries and a bunch of other non-action.

This concept hit me this week because I have been slowing down a bit with my newsletter. I have a lot going on right now, so I did need to take a step back. But as I was thinking about writing this entry for the past few days, I thought, Geez, stop wanting or needing to do an LOL Sober about that topic. Do it! So here it is!

This newsletter is a place of joy and laughter about the deadly serious business of sobriety. So, as I will often do, let me close with a joke:

"I was a member of Alcoholics Oblivious."

(Credit: Grapevine, Jo B. of Anchorage, Alaska, January 2009)

Please spread the word to a sober friend! Find me on Substack… or Twitter… or Facebook… or Instagram… or YouTube. And introducing my web site, LOLsober.com.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nelsonh.substack.com/subscribe

If you want to subscribe to LOL Sober, hit the purple button below. I’m mostly publishing free pieces right now, but paid subscribers do have access to monthly premium pieces—such as THIS comedy special about my 10 favorite addiction/sobriety jokes!

We read a section from “Working With Others” recently at a meeting. If you’re not familiar with that part of the book Alcoholics Anonymous, it’s worth a read. That section of sober literature makes a compelling case that one of the biggest keys to helping yourself is to help others.

I totally agree with that idea. Is there a statement stronger than “totally agrees”? Because I would use that statement. I have to help others. Period. In fact, in a strange contradiction, the most important part of me helping myself might be in how much I try to help others. What a strange—but true—math equation that is!

The thing that struck me the other night when we read “Working With Others” is that recovery literature often refers to sober people helping newly-sober people. And that’s great! But I also noticed something that the literature does NOT say, which is that you only should work with other people who have less sober time than you.

I fall into this trap a lot. I have several sponsees that I speak with on a regular basis, and I have a sponsor. When I connect with people, it’s usually somebody who’s newer to sobriety. That’s not a bad thing, in any way, shape or form.

The bad thing for me is that when I look at the totality of my sober program, I have to be very careful to avoid becoming someone who isn’t vulnerable himself. When I think about the phone calls and recovery work I have done recently, most of it is focused on others, not myself, and I do think I have slid a little bit on making sure that working with others is a two-way street. If I only talk to people with less sober time than me, am I being vulnerable myself? Or am I starting to morph into someone who’s trying to teach but not learn?

I think I do a decent job of not becoming that. But it’s easy to do. I’ve read all the literature at this point. I know the program. I have been to something like 2,500 meetings in probably 25 different states, in multiple different recovery fellowships. I don’t think I ever purposely thought to myself, “I’ve been a newcomer already. I now need to become an old-timer who reaches out his hand for people to grab but doesn’t need to grab a hand myself.” It just kinda happens, and that hit me the other night.

It’s also fitting that at that meeting, we say the set aside prayer, which is a regular topic around here for me. I love that the set aside prayer insists that we push everything we think we know, about pretty much any topic, off to the side. Ask yourself, what do I really know? Do I really fully understand sobriety? God? My kids? Science? Sports? Math?

The answer is no… but my actions often look more like someone who thinks he’s pretty damn smart. That guy thinks, I’ve been around. I’ve seen some s**t! I am a helper, not a recipient of help.

I guess the biggest thing that hit me is that if I am not working with others in both directions, I am not holding up my end of the bargain. If I only work with newcomers, that means I’m depriving other awesome sober people of the opportunity to see me be vulnerable myself, to learn from others and allow wisdom and generosity to be handed down to me, not just from me to others. It has to be a highway that runs in both directions, and lately, I’ve been more of a one-way cul-de-sac street.

This newsletter is a place of joy and laughter about the deadly serious business of sobriety. So, as I will often do, let me close with a joke:

"I always hustled money; I never had a problem with it until I came to AA. You people ruined me."

(Credit: Grapevine, January 2008, by Jan A. of Queens, NY)

Please spread the word to a sober friend! Find me on Substack… or Twitter… or Facebook… or Instagram… or YouTube. And introducing my web site, LOLsober.com.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nelsonh.substack.com/subscribe

If you want to subscribe to LOL Sober, hit the purple button below. I’m mostly publishing free pieces right now, but paid subscribers do have access to monthly premium pieces—such as THIS comedy special about my 10 favorite addiction/sobriety jokes!

A friend of mine tells a great story about a topic that I also experienced. He had about a year sober when he ran into some difficulties that pop up for newly-sober people. He found others still not trusting him entirely. He found himself having trouble navigating through conflict without 15 Natural Ice beers in him. He felt like the pink cloud had worn off. Basically, sober life was happening, and he hadn’t been able to numb out over it for awhile.

He mentioned to his sponsor that he couldn’t believe with a year sober—an entire year!—he’d be feeling like this. His sponsor promptly replied with a sober cliche, just with a personal twist. He said, “How long were you an alcoholic?”

The newly-sober guy thought about it and said, “Well, I got sober at the age of 30.”

The sponsor said, “OK, so you went into the woods for 30 years, and now you’ve been going the other way for 1 year. You see why your math about recovery might be a little off?”

They went back and forth about that for a little while, with the newly-sober guy saying stuff about how he didn’t drink alcoholically until he was 22, so technically it would have been 8 years walking in and 1 year out, which isn’t THAT much of a math problem that he’d be dealing with so much frustration right now.

That’s when his sponsor said, “Hey, listen, no matter how many years you want to count as alcoholic behavior and thought patterns, that was you RUNNING into the woods, and sobriety is you WALKING out.”

I love that story because I have found a lot of truth in it. From the moment most of us started drinking, it got more and more and more, and I certainly didn’t take my good old time. I remember my first weekends of college where I would go through one 12-pack of beer over two or three nights. Then the next weekend, I’d go through 15 beers. Then it’s be 18, and then a case. More. More. More. And quickly, quickly, quickly.

Sobriety, on the other hand, is a difficult stroll back out of the woods. In fact, the better way to think about it is that my drinking was me running down a paved path into the woods, and my sobriety is me going off the path, hiking through thick brush, bumping into trees, getting tick bites, stumbling into hornets’ nests… it’s not a 1-to-1 ratio.

And let me throw a quick thought out there to everybody who reads this who isn’t an alcoholic: This probably applies to you, too. Let’s say you’re 50 and you’re realizing you haven’t been the best sibling or spouse, that there is a behavior (or three) that you need to stop doing. If you change that behavior for a month, 2 months, 6 months, you might feel the same thing. “Why doesn’t my brother give me credit for this change?” you might say. Or, “I should have been listening better to my wife for the first 10 years of our relationship. But now I’ve been doing it for 3 months and she barely even acknowledged it.”

Think about that for a second: 10 years into the woods, 3 months out. You’re pretty much 100 yards from the spot you were in before!

If you think about change that way, the bumps associated with it can be much easier to digest. Because when you walk into the woods for 5 years and then walk out for 5 months, then get irritated because people aren’t noticing or thanking you, it means you set an expectation—that people will do x, y and z once they see the new you. Except, expectations are little baby resentment seeds that you’re planting. If you think because you’ve been on time for work every day for an entire week for the first time… where’s my raise?!?!… then you are going to be pissed when the raise doesn’t happen. You set an expectation, which blossomed into a giant resentment weed. That’s a tough way to go through life.

I’m writing about this today because I had some frustrations with my wife recently for bringing up some stuff that happened in 2006-07-08, when I was a full-blown drug addict and alcoholic. I immediately was thinking, “Come on now, the statute of expectations ran out on that years ago. I’ve been sober for 15-plus years now!” And that’s when it flashed into my head about the woods scenario. I was one way as a person for 31 years, then I got sober and changed dramatically … but one day at a time. When I was 32, I was much closer to the 31-year-old me than the 46-year-old me. And when I was 33, was that really all that different?

The point is, give people grace when you try to do a hard thing. It can be a hard thing for them, too. I was one person for 31 years, rushing into the woods. And now I have been army-crawling out of the woods for 15-and-a-half years (which is great!). But the rate of improvement just ain’t going to be the same as the rate of decline.

This newsletter is a place of joy and laughter about the deadly serious business of sobriety. So, as I will often do, let me close with a joke:

"If you don't get sober for your wife, your kids, or yourself, do it for your dog. Both of you will be happier for it."

(Credit: Grapevine, January 2008, by Ed L. of Wrightwood, California)

Please spread the word to a sober friend! Find me on Substack… or Twitter… or Facebook… or Instagram… or YouTube. And introducing my web site, LOLsober.com.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nelsonh.substack.com/subscribe

If you want to subscribe to LOL Sober, hit the purple button below. I’m mostly publishing free pieces right now, but paid subscribers do have access to monthly premium pieces—such as THIS comedy special about my 10 favorite addiction/sobriety jokes!

I was at a meeting recently where some people were sharing about the glorious, insidious nature of self-pity—the idea that it can be such a warm bath to lay back and think of all the crappy things we didn’t deserve but got anyway. Self-pity is one of those things that if you make eye contact with it, it will start a longgg conversation with you.

But one guy shared a great anecdote that I am still thinking about. He was talking about that period about six months into sobriety that so many of us go through—we’ve put out enough of the big fires to realize how many small fires and hard work remain, and we also have just enough experience living a life without drugs and alcohol to numb out pain to realize that it’s very difficult to be sober. Life gets lifey, as many people say!

During that period, he said he told his sponsor, “I feel like I deserve better than I am getting right now.”

And his sponsor promptly said something so basic that it is incredibly profound: “If you had actually gotten what you deserved, you’d be dead or in jail.”

Damn. As the kids say these days, “Boom, roasted.” How do you come back from something so devastating because it’s true? When I think about it, even if I had lost my house, marriage, job and other stuff, it wouldn’t have added up to the price I probably should have paid for all those bad decisions and terrible behaviors. So anything bumpy at 6 months—or 5 years or 20 years—pales in comparison to me with a toe tag on, or me in a vegetative state because I ate 50 Vicodin and 10 beers.

I left that meeting really thinking about whether I need to even be using the word deserve. What do I deserve? I live a a good life now, with bumps in the road that have mostly been manageable, and I feel grateful every morning to be alive. What else could you ask for? Do I deserve more money? Fame? Kinder teenaged kids? Nah, I don’t DESERVE them. Would I like them? Yes. Yes, I would. But I got more than what I deserved, and it doesn’t involve a toe tag.

This newsletter is a place of joy and laughter about the deadly serious business of sobriety. So, as I will often do, let me close with a joke:

OLDIE BUT GOODIE: The lush sat drinking at his kitchen table, complaining to his wife that his bartender didn't understand him.

(Credit: Grapevine, January 2008, by Anonymous)

Please spread the word to a sober friend! Find me on Substack… or Twitter… or Facebook… or Instagram… or YouTube. And introducing my web site, LOLsober.com.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nelsonh.substack.com/subscribe

If you want to subscribe to LOL Sober, hit the purple button below. I’m mostly publishing free pieces right now, but paid subscribers do have access to monthly premium pieces—such as THIS comedy special about my 10 favorite addiction/sobriety jokes!

I was thinking recently about some of my internal dialogue when I meet somebody coming back from a relapse. It’s not great sometimes. I really wish I had undercover footage of me in 2011, when I had about three years of good sobriety and then decided to stop going to meetings.

We had moved from New York to Connecticut, and it was a busy time. So I took a little breather from getting to meetings and connecting with local sober people. It was all the traps that sober people fall into sometimes.

“I’d learned a lot already, so what would I hear at a meeting that is new?”

“I’m so busy. I don’t have time.”

“I’m coaching my kid’s team in the evening, and I have to get the kids to school in the morning, so I’m tied up when there are meetings.”

B******t. All b******t.

I bring it up because a funny incident with a raccoon happened to me just as I was thinking about how I need to make sure I always stay empathetic toward people who don’t stick their sober landing the first time.

My wife made chicken and potatoes one night early last week, and she threw the trash bag into our can in the back. Big mistake. The chicken guts and potato peels basically cooked in 90 degree heat for a few days, and sure enough, she grabbed me one day at about 3 pm and said our trash can was moving.

When I went out, the temperature was about 88 degrees and extremely humid. I could hear whatever creature was trapped jumping and clawing and then jumping and clawing again. Over and over again. I could tell it was bigger than a squirrel and definitely not as big as, say, a bear. Something in between. But big enough to have a stick in my hand just in case.

I finally popped the lid open just enough to peek in, and there sat a raccoon. He started hissing at me and making a racket. I threw the lid open and got back from it. But then I saw that he wasn’t going to be able to jump or climb high enough to get out, even with the lid open.

So I put the lid back down and wheeled the can into my yard. Then I swung the lid open and got back. It took the poor guy about 10 seconds to finally wobble out, and he eventually did. He was moving slow and making loud noises, something like a screech. I was struck by the fact that this nocturnal animal didn’t even have the gas tank to run away after being freed from potential death. He just kind of slinked into the trees near my house.

I took a picture of the woozy little guy just as he popped his head out of the can. I swear I could feel a little gratitude from him, because it sure seemed like absolute panic in the blistering heat for hours and hours before I opened that lid. I couldn’t help but feel in my soul how active addiction does a similar thing: It traps us in a garbage can of s**t that makes us feel better for awhile. Then the fun runs out, and you start to try to get out. There are stops and starts, and then the panic hits you—I can’t get out of this thing alone. But how do I get help? I’m scared of what help looks like, and also of the pain that will happen once the truth is out.

The funny thing about the raccoon was how slow he took the help when it arrived. After suffering all day, when the lid flew open magically, he took his good old time taking the help that plopped down in his life out of nowhere.

OK, I’ll stop. I can’t tell if this whole thing might be either absolutely brilliant or complete nonsense. Be sure to tell me in the comments!

This newsletter is a place of joy and laughter about the deadly serious business of sobriety. So, as I will often do, let me close with a joke:

TONY AND JOE, NEIGHBORS, both get DUIs around the same time and are court-ordered to AA meetings. Joe stops going as soon as he gets his last paper signed, but Tony admits defeat and sticks around. A few months later, they run into each other in a store. After some small talk, Joe asks, "Where are you headed?"

Tony says, "To an AA meeting."

Joe says, "Really? How long do you have to go for?"

Tony replies, "Probably for the rest of my life."

"My God!" Joe exclaims. "What judge did YOU have?"

(Credit: Grapevine, January 2008, by Bob C.)

Please spread the word to a sober friend! Find me on Substack… or Twitter… or Facebook… or Instagram… or YouTube. And introducing my web site, LOLsober.com.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nelsonh.substack.com/subscribe

If you want to subscribe to LOL Sober, hit the purple button below. I’m mostly publishing free pieces right now, but paid subscribers do have access to monthly premium pieces—such as THIS comedy special about my 10 favorite addiction/sobriety jokes!

I have a sober friend who I really respect, and he always talks about the 7-second plan. His theory is that no matter how tense or aggressive a conversation is, you always have the opportunity to pause for 7 seconds before you speak, and that when you pause 7 seconds to speak, you will respond better almost every time.

In theory, I agree with that. But does it actually work? What’s the difference between now and 7 seconds from now, especially in an argument?

It’s a huge difference, it turns out. I tried it recently because I have been finding myself about 29 percent more irritable in normal conversation. So I have been making some unnecessary snippy comments, and also doing plenty of sighing and hand motioning to indicate that I am annoyed. I was hoping to remedy that a little bit by trying the 7-second plan.

I gotta say… it worked very, very well. It is easier said than done—I found myself literally biting my tongue a few times just to not say anything right away. What I found was, even during a feisty exchange, I could always find space for the 7-second delay by saying something like, “Hmmm, let me think about that for a second.” The other person would wait patiently as I contemplated whether to respond calmly or, you know, strangle them.

After 7 seconds, I usually had a better response, even if it was only a slightly better response. The extra breath or two always brought forth a more subdued response, and even in my worst moments, I could more calmly say, “You know, I hear you, but I don’t agree.” A few times, I would add in, “Let’s both think about it a little more. I want to really sit with what you were saying.”

I’m not going to pretend 7 seconds solved all my problems, though. I found myself on several occasions—especially with my teenage daughters—still wanting to launch them into the sun after 7 seconds. But what the 7 seconds did for me was firm up the idea that I wasn’t capable of not telling them to shut the bleep up and clean their room right now, that I needed to say something like, “Hey, I’m agitated, and so are you, so maybe let’s revisit it in an hour. Go relax and do something you want to do for awhile.”

That space was huge. It also telegraphs that you are looking for serene, thoughtful solutions even if you’re not capable of them in the moment. When I told one of my kids that I felt like barking at her but wasn’t going to, she nodded her head and walked off. I could see that she appreciated that I cared enough to just do nothing, and that’s something almost everybody appreciates.

The whole thing worked very well, and nobody ever said, “Hurry up, give me your opinion right now.” That’s one of the myths of pausing in conversations, with texts, with emails… the idea that you need to respond now. Yes, we live in a world that moves faster than ever, especially with a cell phone in everybody’s pocket. But that’s a feeling more than a fact—I didn’t have any situations where pausing ended up being problematic.

And perhaps the biggest thing I realized was that in my most tense moments of trying to implement it, the biggest benefit to pausing for 7 seconds is realizing at the end of the 7 seconds that I needed to pause for 7 minutes or 7 hours or 7 days. And people were fine with that! Even when my wife asked me for input on a decision that we needed to make by the end of that day, I was able to convey to her that I cared so much about it that I wanted to contemplate it for an hour or so. People like that—they want to be heard and considered, and the 7-second plan actually went a long way toward conveying that care and attention.

The one area where I might need a little more 7-second work? Driving. I’m at .7 seconds per pause… but I’m working on it!

This newsletter is a place of joy and laughter about the deadly serious business of sobriety. So, as I will often do, let me close with a joke:

QUESTION: How many alcoholics does it take to change a light bulb?

ANSWER: We'll have to call a group conscience and get back to you on that.

(Credit: Grapevine, by Sheri B of Mililani, Hawaii, January 2008)

Please spread the word to a sober friend! Find me on Substack… or Twitter… or Facebook… or Instagram… or YouTube. And introducing my web site, LOLsober.com.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nelsonh.substack.com/subscribe

If you want to subscribe to LOL Sober, hit the purple button below. I’m mostly publishing free pieces right now, but paid subscribers do have access to monthly premium pieces—such as THIS comedy special about my 10 favorite addiction/sobriety jokes!

I had an interesting conversation with another alcoholic recently where he referenced The Promises, and it dawned on me that I never wanted any of them until I did. Let me explain.

I put a link into the written version of this newsletter where you can go read the whole thing. I’ll just summarize The Promises by saying that they can be found on pages 83-84 of the Big Book, and they lay out all the things that many, many alcoholics have found to come true if you work a very strong sober program. It’s stuff like peace, not regretting the past but also not shutting the door on it. It says, “We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness.”

The thing that that conversation brought up for me is that I didn’t really ever want any of that stuff. Not as a kid, not as a college student, not as a 25-year-old. Serenity? No fear of financial insecurity? That my experiences could benefit others? That I would want to avoid self-pity? No way. In fact, I think if you grabbed 25-year-old me, I would have actively said that those kinds of goals are weak and silly and too hippy-dippy.

I always thought I wanted an awesome girlfriend, a giant house, lots of professional success and accolades, money, good looks. I specifically relied upon accolades to find fulfillment; I needed you to think I was great in order for me to think it. Those were my Promises, and I ultimately got in over my head with alcohol and drugs and had to be brought to my knees to fully realize how empty those things are.

I’m not sure why I had a mini epiphany the other day when that came up. I think it has something to do with my kids getting old enough now that we talk quite a bit about what they want to be when they grow up. They always answer that they want to be a teacher and have two kids and live in Connecticut but travel a lot… the same way that I never thought about emotional intelligence or that the root of good self-esteem is doing esteemable acts, they’re not, either. They’re thinking job, geography, money, etc.

So it hit me that one of the gifts of The Promises is that they exist as a goal set that has taken precedent over fame and fortune for me. Do I always have The Promises come true every day? Definitely not. But they do always come true as the starting point for what I want to be when I grow up.

This newsletter is a place of joy and laughter about the deadly serious business of sobriety. So, as I will often do, let me close with a joke:

HEARD AT MEETINGS

"I knew I'd had a spiritual awakening when I realized I was sober and happy at the same time."

(Credit: Grapevine, February 2008, by Vance G. of Washington, DC)

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I went to a giant meeting the other night at a church where we usually have a pretty sweet side room that accommodates what is always a big crowd of 75 men.

Well, as so often happens with busy churches, there was another event going on and the church asked us to use another room. In this case, we went into the main sanctuary.

I’d never been in that part of the church, so I was taken aback. It was beautiful, and massive, with high arching ceilings and dozens of pews and pillars. I got there right before the meeting began, so I was about 20 rows back, and almost immediately I realized that I was going to hear about 25 percent of the words said at this meeting.

Everybody in front of me was seated facing forward, so I was trying to hear them speak a different direction than I was sitting. There were fans going, and the high ceilings pretty much sucked up all the words. I found myself closing my eyes and tilting my head to the side to try to catch what people were saying.

None of it worked. In a 60-minute meeting, I probably heard about 15-20 minutes worth of actual sharing. The rest was muffled, confused, drowned out by laughter or a pew creaking.

But guess what? It was great. For people that I couldn’t hear at all, I closed my eyes and sat in silence. Sometimes I’d hear laughter about what was being said, and I’d open my eyes and see heads nodding even though I had no idea what they were agreeing with.

I ended up hearing all of the prayers, the guided meditation, many of the names of people as they introduced themselves and a few shares. But I was a little blown away how even though I couldn’t hear the specific words people were saying, I felt the vibe. The vibe was loving, supportive, fun, spiritual and sober. It was awesome.

When I got in the car to go home, I turned on the radio and the AC/DC song Back in Black was on. I cranked it and started to sing, and realized I know about 10 percent of the words. That made me laugh because just like the meeting I walked out of a few minutes earlier, I didn’t need to know the entire transcript of what was being said to be able to tap into the overall vibe. For the meeting, that was serenity and sobriety. For the drive home, that was going 10 mph over the speed limit and shrieking 70s rock. I love them both!

This newsletter is a place of joy and laughter about the deadly serious business of sobriety. So, as I will often do, let me close with a joke:

"In high school I used to write my own absenteeism notes. I did this so often I realized I had quit school—one day at a time."

(Credit: Grapevine, February 2008, by Michael K. of Haverhill, Maryland)

Please spread the word to a sober friend! Find me on Substack… or Twitter… or Facebook… or Instagram… or YouTube. And introducing my web site, LOLsober.com.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nelsonh.substack.com/subscribe