LOL Sober

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 the other day where the topic was this sentence:

Working the program—especially the daily inventory of Step Ten—helps us make our way through the funhouse of personal responsibility.

I immediately gravitated toward the last five words: the funhouse of personal responsibility.

First of all, funhouses kind of suck, don’t they? Every carnival I have ever gone to, I immediately regret burning tickets on going into one.

But think about a funhouse for a second, specifically the section that always has the wild mirrors. Now imagine you put something or somebody in there who you are upset with—for the sake of this example, let’s use the biggest a*****e from your job, Biff.

So you’re looking at 25 versions of Biff. One is real. The others are bigger or smaller or fatter or uglier or sillier than the real one. You’re surrounded by 25 Biffs, only one of which is the real one. You can probably see where this is going.

It reminded me how hard the truth is to know, and to digest, and to have good perspective on. The truth is in that funhouse of our brain, where we inflate it and then deflate it and then reinflate it and then, hopefully, eventually find what the actual truth is.

When I get into a significant disagreement with someone, I walk right into a funhouse inside my brain. I usually immediately decide the other person sucks… then I cool down and take a look at my role in the disagreement and decide maybe I was the one who sucks… then I settle on both of us sucking… then I ultimately land on trying to figure out the most productive way to resolve the disagreement. That often involves me saying, “Hey, sorry about earlier, I definitely overreacted. What if we did this idea as a solution?” Then I pitch a compromise of some sort.

To give a specific example, I had a disagreement with my wife about a financial situation a few months ago. Romance and finance stuff can be extremely toxic—every difference of opinion can sometimes feel like it is covered in barbed wire. I make mountains of molehills about the other person, and I make my mountains into molehills.

I ended up leaving the house to go to the gym, and I was hot with anger. I called one program person and found myself spewing out the whole argument, but I had polished up the story a little and I told it from my perspective. A few minutes in, I realized I wasn’t harmlessly venting—I was justifying and rationalizing the very best version that my funhouse mirror was spitting out.

I worked out, which helped burn off some of the frustration, and then I talked to a second recovery friend. That was also beneficial because I found myself not launching into my whole court case of why I was innocent and my spouse was guilty. That’s what the funhouse mirrors often do—they set up right and wrong, and I always end up becoming the hero of my own story, which means there has to be a villain.

By the time I got home, I’d say 90 percent of my frustration was gone. I’d burned off some of it on the treadmill, for sure, but I also benefited greatly from talking to two sober friends and getting a little closer to the right reflection from within those funhouse mirrors. I ended up spending a little time thinking about what that right reflection looks like, and came to a few conclusions.

One is that I was too hot under the collar; I can’t talk in a healthy way or process your words in a healthy way if I am boiling hot.

Secondly, the funhouse mirror often takes a real problem that is six inches tall, and it shows me the same problem at Shaquille O’Neal’s size… much, much bigger and daunting than it actually is.

Thirdly, I was able to think about how we might move forward, and that’s what we did.

I would love to end this by saying, “Well, I learned I am never going into a figurative funhouse mirror room in my head ever again!” But that’s probably unrealistic. I think the starting point would just be to have that visual in my head on a regular basis, that my brain in a funhouse and that I always walk into the funhouse… but I’ve hated funhouses my whole life, so let’s get the hell out as soon as possible and start looking for the exit.

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

Two drunks are sharing a bottle, sitting on the beach looking up into the darkened sky. "Hav'ya ever seen a more beautiful sunset?" says the first.

"Yer drunk," says the second. "That's the sunrise!"

So the first answers, "Yer drunk. Tha's the sunset!" and they argue:

"SunRISE!"

"SunSET!"

"SunRISE!"

"SunSET!"

. . . until a third drunk staggers up, sits beside them, and begins to share their bottle.

"'Scuse me," says the first drunk to the new drinker. "Izzat the sunrise or the sunset?"

"Why ya askin' me?" says the new drunk. "I'm not from around here."

(Credit: Grapevine,August 2009, by Jay M. of Shelby, NC)

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 several meetings recently where we read from “Working with others,” the chapter of the Big Book that lays out how one alcoholic can be of service to another. That inevitably led me to think back on my early days of sponsoring people.

I had a few months sober when my sponsor said to me that I was doing really well and that he appreciated all the hard work. I’ll never forget that then he said, “You’re an old soul when it comes to recovery.”

I took that as a compliment, which is how he intended it. I understood his comment to mean that even though I only had five or six months sober, I seemed like I had been sober much longer because I had a lot of wisdom.

So I immediately said back to him, “Well, if I am an old soul, maybe I am ready to sponsor someone?”

He laughed and said, “Nah, maybe wait the full year before sponsoring anybody.”

I got a little grumpy about that because I had come to believe that I had so much to offer as a sponsor. I had learned so much, and yet I was only 31 years old, so I thought I could connect with younger alcoholics and addicts in a way that older sponsors could not.

We kept talking about it because I wouldn’t let it go, and I kept working on building a solid program of recovery. But I had learned pretty quickly that my own opinions were not worth as much as the people in my sober network. So I followed his suggestion and I didn’t raise my hand as a sponsor.

Like most people with 11 months sober, I started counting down the days until I got to one year sober. It was such an exciting accomplishment if I could get there—I couldn’t wait! Part of it was the pure happiness of achieving one year sober. But part of it was being able to sponsor people, and I really thought that I was about to become the greatest sponsor to ever set foot on earth.

Finally, my day arrived: November 10, 2009. I waited until they asked if anybody was celebrating an anniversary, and I threw up my hand. Everybody clapped, and I got a hug and a 1-year coin from the chairperson. It was awesome.

The meeting was great, and at the end, the chairperson asked if anybody who was willing to be a sponsor could raise their hand. This was the moment I had been waiting for since the summer, and I looked around the room and… didn’t raise my hand. It dawned on me in that moment that, “Oh my god, if I raise my hand to be a sponsor, someone might actually take me up on that offer, and I don’t think I am ready!”

I had a mini freakout and talked to some people afterward about it. They all got a good chuckle about it because apparently I had already mentioned becoming a sponsor to more people than I had realized. They also seemed to have had similar moments of panic about what it means to be a sponsor, and they had all worked through those. We had a good conversation about it, and the overall message was that sponsors just have to share their experience, strength and hope—we’re not coaches, we’re not gurus and we’re certainly not higher powers. I was told, “If someone’s ready, you can’t say anything wrong. If someone isn’t, you can’t say anything right.”

I started raising my hand a few weeks later, when I got up a second wave of courage about being a sponsor. It’s been about 14 years, and I have sponsored dozens of people since then. I’ve had the full range of experience over that time frame, and that advice still rings true to this day. I share my experience, strength and hope—and leave it at that.

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

"An egotist is someone who is me-deep in conversation."

(Credit: Grapevine, by Richard M. of Golden, Colorado, September 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!

I get these awesome coupons every month from my favorite pet store, and I recently missed the window to use one. It expired on Oct. 26, and I went into the pet store on Nov. 25. I knew it had expired but I thought I would give it a shot anyway.

I did set an expectation, though, that the store would honor the coupon because, you know, I’m a very valuable customer. Well, that’s not what happened.

I asked a worker at the front of the store if they would still honor the coupon, and I believe I said something like, “This coupon just expired. Any chance you guys would still take it?” I don’t think I quite meant to make it sound disingenuous, like I thought the coupon had expired 12 hours earlier. But I did kind of do that.

She took one look at the coupon and said, “Sorry, no, we can’t take that. It expired a month ago.”

I pursed my lips a bit and said, “OK, thank you,” and I started to walk away.

From behind me, I heard her keep talking. She said, “Yeah, I mean, it expired an entire month ago, not recently.” It’s in these moments when I get into trouble.

For one, I already had rationalized that my expired coupon should probably be taken. Secondly, I do not handle anything that I perceive to be dunking on me. Is what she said actually dunking on me? Nah. She probably didn’t need to say it twice, but I would hardly say she was trying to throw it in my face.

My immediate reaction was to think about turning around and saying, “It didn’t expire a month ago, it expired 29 days ago, which is not a month, unless you’re counting February, a*****e!”

Luckily I have been working on just not saying or doing anything as much as possible. Just pause. In situations like these, there is no reason to fire back, or try to set the record straight, or decide that she’s not going to get away with thinking she’s better than me. If I ended up feeling like there was some reason for recourse later, I could do that.

But in this case, the pause will hopefully be a very long pause—I just let it go. I could tell it had more to do with me than her. I often let the rest of the world dictate how I feel about myself, and that’s on me. If I tie my self-worth to other people, I’m going to be in trouble.

At the pet store, I took a deep breath, smiled at the absurdity of my internal reaction, and I went about my business. When I got the register, I saw it was my new friend who would be helping me. She looked at me and I could tell she recognized me from earlier, and the only thing I could think was, “God, please don’t let her bring up the expired coupon again.” I can handle two remarks about it. I wasn’t sure about a third.

We stared at each other for a second and she started to open her mouth and I thought, Oh no, we are actually going to start arguing about a 29-day old coupon. But instead, she said, “I hope you found everything ok,” and I said, “I did.” I paid and left the store, and I felt like I just won the Super Bowl. Small victories are still victories, right?

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 self-made man--and I worshipped my creator."

(Credit: AA Grapevine, September 2009, by Anonymous, Oceanside, 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!

Happy Thanksgiving! Of all the things to be thankful for today, make sure you take a moment to be grateful for your sobriety. I have some thoughts on navigating the holidays but I will share those in a few weeks.

Today, I wanted to talk about Twitter, or X, or whatever we’re calling it these days. Twitter can be a very interesting place to hang out and discuss sobriety. About 90 percent of the tweets I see are helpful or inspiring or somehow beneficial—even seeing some random person hold up a 20-year coin and say today is their anniversary can be a nice little reinforcement of the recovery lifestyle that I have chosen.

But there is about 10 percent that is behavior that you would never see at a 12-step meeting. That 10 percent is mostly people proclaiming what works and what doesn’t, and that can be a little much. I also cringe a little because I don’t post anything like that because I think it paints an unfair picture of 12-step recovery. I don’t want to come off like a know-it-all a*****e who preaches that there are mandatory things about sobriety that everybody must do—as most recovery literature says, come if you want, leave if you want, take our suggestions if you want, or don’t. Your choice.

I saw a tweet the other day from a sober person that I wanted to bring up. The tweet said something along the lines of, “If you’re trying to get sober and you haven’t replaced your friends, then you are in for a rude awakening.”

There’s a lot to unpack there, and I will just say right up front, I disagree with this tweet pretty vigorously. I bring it up here, though, because the idea of hanging out with the same people, at the same places, doing the same things, is something that comes up a lot in recovery and there is some merit to reconsidering your lifestyle once you try to change your life. That was certainly the case for me.

I had a few specific thoughts about the text of that tweet.

First of all, I mostly drank alone, so I don’t know how qualified I am to get into the nuances of stepping away from a friend group that always meets at the bar every Friday and Saturday night. I did that early on in my drinking days but then became a solo drinker because I couldn’t find anybody who drank like me. I gotta say, I think most of the recovery people I know are similar—our drinking was so extreme and secretive that we end up in the basement, by ourself, not on group golf outings.

Secondly, if you are someone who has hardcore drinking buddies and you want to stop hardcore drinking, well… that tweet probably does apply to you. I have never heard of someone who keeps going to the bar with friends and just orders a Diet Coke to watch NFL games all day every Sunday. If I were your sponsor and you asked me if that is a good idea, I would say it doesn’t seem like the best option.

Thirdly, if you do have drinking buddies that you want to keep in your life, I think you just have to be honest with them that you’ve decided to change your life, which means no more boozing. If somebody gets upset with you about that, my guess is that it says a lot about how they think of your wellbeing.

Fourthly, I disagree with the binary choice from that tweet, that you either have the old friends or you don’t. I had plenty of people from my rowdier days that I remained close with, but I was upfront that the way our friendship had to happen going forward was a little different. So I do think there is a middle ground, where you reassess friendships and you figure out new boundaries for your old friends. For example, if you went to the bar every Saturday to watch UFC fights and drink together, then maybe you don’t go to the bar any more every week but you offer once a month to have a few friends come to your house and watch the fights instead. In that example, I definitely would say right up front that it’s a no drinking or drugging event.

Last but not least, I found that getting sober added new friends without subtracting old ones. There’s no law that if you have five good friends, you can’t add 10 more. So in my situation, I kept my friend group but sprinkled in a bunch of sober men, and I thought it worked out quite well. The tweet seems to imply that you have a set number of friends, and they all should be sober people. I found that adding sober people to the mix balanced out my friendship circle very well.

Overall, I understand the sentiment of that tweet, that you have to re-examine every aspect of your life once you make the sobriety choice. But I’m not sure there should be any hard and fast rules about canceling friendships from the past. If you have toxic friends who think you don’t have a problem and you should just meet them at the strip club, yes, I get how that could be debilitating for someone trying to get sober. But for the most part, I don’t see any reason why you can’t reshape old friendships and build new ones.

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:

A woman brought her son to an AA meeting. Later, as they were leaving, the mother complained about the hard seats, how long people had talked and how the chair didn't follow guidelines. Finally the little boy said, "Mommy, I thought it was pretty good for a dollar!"

(Credit: Grapevine, September 2009, by Chris K. of Lexington, KY)

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 saw a hilarious meme the other day on one of my favorite Instagram feeds, Sarcastic AA memes. Look it up—it’s well worth your time.

This one says “This God stuff is okay but I need a solution that is instant and temporary.”

That one made me laugh because it is very, very true for me. I just wrapped up a hectic fall where I had three kids in two different schools, and those kids were on five different sports team and in one children’s theater production. I spent every day from about 2-8 pm driving around to the same places, over and over again, feeling like an unpaid Uber driver. I of course whined and moaned and groaned about it, and said I felt run ragged from all the driving and frustrated by the lack of appreciation from the kids I was driving. I can’t tell you how many times I sighed at about 4:15 because I had just sat in traffic for 15 minutes, then in a parking lot waiting for another 10 minutes, only to be greeted by a grumpy teenager who bottled up their teenager-ness all day and then threw it in my face.

Poor me, right?

Then the activities pretty much all ended for the fall, and suddenly my evenings involved very little driving in the evenings. I found myself with lots of extra time to meditate and read sober literature… just kidding, I didn’t do any of that. I played on my phone, watched YouTube videos of people getting hit in the groin and devoted plenty of time to sporting events on TV, some of which I didn’t even care about. I remember watching horse racing at 11 pm one night on some obscure channel. I didn’t know any of the horses or the stakes of the race or anything—it was just mindlessness. Then I wondered why I wasn’t feeling great.

The answer is that instead of filling up my soul with the stuff it needs, I often times go with junk food. My phone is the most frequent thing I reach for to find a higher power that is instant and temporary, as the meme mentions, and boy do I do that. I got an alert this week that I had used my phone almost nine hours per day over the past seven days, and I immediately thought it must be an error. And it kind of is: A lot of my phone time is listening to podcasts while I work out or go for a walk… but a lot of it is also screwing around trying to get some dopamine hits from nonsense.

So on one hand, it’s a good reminder that the solution to all my problems isn’t on my phone, and it’s not on my TV. But I also want to try to be forgiving, too. I’m wired to look for temporary and instant as a solution, then catch myself and remember that my spirituality is the key to finding happiness, but then that is temporary and instant, and then I catch myself again… arghhhhh. I guess the lesson is, everything is temporary and instant?

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:

Alcohol and calculus don't mix: Never drink and derive.

(Credit: Grapevine, September 2009, 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 at a meeting recently where a guy said, “I need to put down the blamethrower.” I laughed out loud—quite loud, actually. I was completely caught off guard by the cleverness of that phrase, and I even sighed a little bit wishing I had come up with it.

It’s a great word, isn’t it? Because when I play the blame game, I don’t gently assign blame. I don’t use a blame-letter or a blame-fax machine—I use a blameTHROWER. I start torching people, usually in my head but occasionally to somebody’s face. And guess what flamethrowers tend to leave in their wake? A lot of damage and a lot of things that got burned down.

I spent the next 24 hours trying to track how often I would assign blame on someone, and it was more than I thought. There actually weren’t a lot of giant things that caused terrible heartache and that I tried to blame on others. But there were so many little things that I immediately tried to pawn off on being somebody else’s fault.

As I tracked those instances, I noticed a boomerang effect in almost every example. My wife raised her voice at my 9-year-old for some shitty behavior, and a half-hour later, my 9-year-old raised her voice at me. I immediately got irritated with my 9-year-old, which resulted in me blaming my wife for teaching her to raise her voice. Did the two things have anything to do with each other? Maybe. Maybe not. Even if they did connect somehow, was it worth coming up with a blame theory? Definitely not. I did catch myself trying to look everywhere but in the mirror.

Since I heard that phrase, I also thought about how assigning blame for things might not even be a horrible thing sometimes… but it’s horrible to do it as a blameTHROWER. That phrase evokes the idea that you don’t just hold someone accountable, you burn them down entirely. Assigning blame might be healthy in some situations, but there’s almost no instance where I need a blamethrower. That’s going after somebody to an extreme.

I also spent the past few days thinking about the concept of never blaming anyone for anything. It doesn’t quite work 100 percent of the time, because you do need to occasionally hold someone’s feet to the fire—in a healthy way, of course. But when I was thinking about trying to not blame people or the world for things, I found myself letting go of mild transgressions much quicker. I found myself not making connections between a small mis-step from one of my kids and all the catastrophic thoughts that usually accompany assigning blame to them—I usually think, “She yelled at me, and it’s only going to get worse, and I need to fix this or I am going to have 50 years of hell in my future where she yells at me all the time and she also yells at her own kids, too.”

What I ultimately found is that the less I tried to lock in a blame strategy, the more I was able to move on. And I gotta say, I haven’t yet had an example where I looked back and thought, “I wish I had fired up my blamethrower more than I did.”

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:

When the doctor finished applying the bandage to a minor injury to my eye, she asked if I would be driving myself home.

I responded, "Yes," to which she admonished me to be very careful since I had only one eye to use. "Doc," I said, "I've had plenty of experience driving with one eye open and one eye closed."

(Credit: Grapevine, October 2009, Jim O. of Waller, Texas)

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!

On Nov. 10, I celebrated 15 years of sobriety. Hooray for me! I still can’t believe it: For several years, I couldn’t make it till noon every day without some kind of substance to change my mood. Then I went to rehab and haven’t done a single drug or drink for about 5,500 consecutive days. That’s ridiculous.

I had a few random thoughts I wanted to pass along about what I have come to believe during those 15 years.

SOBER LIVING VS. SOBER LIFESTYLE

I tried sobriety as a thing where I went to meetings three times a week, talked to my sponsor a few times a week, and that was it. My life was fine. I’m not sure I really was growing much during that time. But life was okay. My marriage was good. I got promoted at work. I was a decent dad.

But for the past five years or so, I have done sobriety as a lifestyle. Which means I devote a tremendous amount of time, thought and effort to recovery every single day. No days off. I get to 5 meetings a week, sometimes 6 or 7. I talk to 1-2 alcoholics every single day. I am the treasurer for one meeting. I sponsor multiple people. I meditate for 20 minutes every day. For the first time ever, I have begun riding with other sober people to meetings, which is an extra half hour or so before and after meetings. And I go out of my way to spend chunks of time with sober people outside of recovery, too. Movies, parties, book clubs, you name it, I try to do it.

So I now have spent about half of my sobriety time treating recovery like eating my vegetables… and half of my time treating it like the main course. The main course is better.

PROGRESS ISN’T ALWAYS EASY TO SEE

I had a guy give me a hard time recently because I didn’t remember his sobriety date. And honestly, I probably should have remembered it—when he said it, I flashed back and remembered how awesome it was!

At first, I was a little bummed out and chalked it up to getting older and more forgetful. Maybe there’s some of that.

But I think what I ended up realizing is that for the most part, I stay the f— out of peoples’ lives more than I ever have before. Sometimes that means stuff goes in one ear and out the other. But I think it’s coming from a place of minding my own business and not getting inappropriately invested in peoples’ lives. I’m someone who has struggled with that in the past, stockpiling information and being a busybody in other peoples’ lives. I gotta say… it’s pretty nice doing things this way. I’m sure I’ll probably catch some crap once in a while for being forgetful. But nine times out of 10, I am just going to be glad that I am not meddling in other peoples’ business.

DUMBER IS BETTER

I knew a guy many years ago who made it onto Jeopardy, and I couldn’t believe it. I just remember thinking, “Wait, is he brilliant and I had no idea?” He ended up doing very well on the show, and it turns out that yes, he is pretty brilliant.

When I talked to him in subsequent years, I realized that he is just very, very quiet. He doesn’t ever puff out his chest and act like he has all the answers… even though he apparently has all the answers?

It’s a good reminder that I don’t need to always open my mouth. I don’t have to prove how smart I am, or how sober I am, or how experienced I am in the game of life. When I do the most basic things possible—eat well, sleep well, treat people well, do sober work every day—and stop overthinking the world, I am so much happier and can just stay in my freaking lane.

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:

NOT THAT KIND OF BAR

For the past three years, I've volunteered a few nights a week at our Alano Club, serving sodas and snacks behind the counter. I have met scores of AAs and their children, who often hide out with me while their parents attend meetings.

I was in the foyer of a movie theater when a boy, about 13, broke away from a group of friends and came over to say hi. He was the son of a member at the club. When he returned to his friends, I overheard one ask: "Who was the old guy you were talking to?"

"Oh, he's cool," the young man replied. "He's the bartender where my dad goes for his AA."

(Credit: Grapevine, October 2005, by Brian A. of Petaluma, 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!

Somebody called me a go-getter the other day, and it was intended as a compliment and I interpreted it as a compliment. Honestly, it is a compliment—a go-getter hustles and makes things happen and is relentless. Those are all positive things, right?

Well, yes and no. The longer I have been sober, the more I have tried to take a harder look at my go-getterness.

First of all, I have found that I tend to be a go-getter about things that I really care about, and the opposite of a go-getter on the stuff that I don’t care about. Which means I aim my will in self-centered directions, and I pick and choose when to be relentless—I usually only pick the ones I want to be relentless about. For example, last year I had a very busy Saturday once and only had a small window of time to pick between two things: I needed to mail out my taxes on a Saturday but I also really, really wanted to watch a sporting event. It obviously was much more important to handle my taxes, but guess who went to a friend’s house to watch sports instead?

Secondly, I’ve noticed in others that their go-getter instincts can drift into disastrous territory. I say that I noticed it in others because I often don’t truly understand some of my bad behaviors until somebody else does them and I see how it feels. The thing I have noticed about go-getters—including myself—is that they suck at the idea of being responsible for the effort, not the outcome. When I am in go-getter mode, I am trying to get a certain result, usually the best result for me, and sometimes the answer isn’t what I want. For example, in the past, I have wanted to be promoted at work, so I busted my ass and brought it up with my bosses. My recovery program would preach a principle of doing all that you can and then let go of the result. But when I am full-blown go-getter, I keep going and going and going. And in my experience in the professional ranks, you can get so nagging about promotions that bosses go the other way and think it is a sign of somebody who should NOT be promoted, and I can’t disagree with that logic.

The third thing that I thought about was that being a go-getter is a muscle that I want to have but not use often. There are times in this world where you cannot take no for an answer, or you have to convince someone that yes is the right answer. I had a recent situation where my high school senior daughter had a confusing F grade on an AP course that would be her first college grade if we didn’t get some clarification on it. We were pretty sure she actually got a B and the F was a mistake. So I ended up dogging the living s**t out of a college department that handles incoming AP grades, and nobody would get back to me as the deadline for finalizing the grade approached. I would not let up. I just kept calling and emailing until someone responded, and we got it straightened out, and it was a mistake on their part. So in that situation, I was persistent but kind, and I think the principles of 12-step recovery would agree with that approach in certain situations.

The last thing is, I don’t know too many go-getters in life who I would say are really, truly happy and content. There always is a new mission, a new passion project, a new something, and when that new thing gets accomplished, they’re onto another new mission—when I am in that headspace, it very much reminds me of when I was in full-blown addict mode of trying to find that next high.

And in situations where I have chased something hard and it fizzles out, I see a lot of regret and resentment in myself. I think launching my go-getter muscle often achieves good results, but they’re often short-term results, and people don’t end up saying, “Wow, that guy is a real go-getter. Good for him.” I think they more often say to themselves, “What a pain in the ass. I’m not sure I want to deal with that again.”

People probably already say that about me, so I’d like to keep it to a minimum!

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

"Made a searching and fruitless moral inventory of ourselves."

(Credit: Grapevine, Oct. 2004, by Ames S. 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

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I was at a meeting the other day when we read the 12-step tradition that says certain fellowships ought to have no opinion on outside issues. I have to say, the longer I’ve been sober, the more grateful I am for that tradition.

When I first got sober… not so much. I really worried about this one, and most of that worry was related to not understanding that tradition correctly. In general, I was very concerned about the idea of becoming the hole in the donut, as our literature states. I thought without drugs and alcohol, I wouldn’t be at bars, and I’d be lame at weddings and work functions and birthday parties and at Super Bowl watch parties. Then I get into the rooms of recovery and I hear we can’t have opinions? What the hell?!?!

Luckily, newcomers are supposed to get a sponsor, and sponsors generally have been around the block for awhile. So when I brought up with my sponsor that I was concerned about being a robot with no opinions, he laughed and said, “It says 12-step programs shouldn’t have opinions on outside issues. It doesn’t say anything about you having an opinion.”

Holy s**t—I realized he was right, and then we talked for a bit about how nice it was that 12-step recovery programs don’t endorse political candidates or get involved in local zoning law squabbles or make campaign contributions or lobby Congress or protest against causes. He recommended I do some reading about past mistakes that some sober groups had made, and sure enough, there had been many thorny issues over the years where the pioneers of sobriety drifted from their primary purpose and it did not go well. I’m so thankful that they figured that stuff out 50-plus years ago and we can now walk into recovery rooms where the vast majority of people recognize the brilliance of that strategy.

And I don’t know of any part of recovery literature that says anything about me having opinions in my personal life. Hell, I could run for president of the United States and have all sorts of opinions. I can campaign for causes, protest for or against wars, anything.

All that said, I have found that the traditions of 12-step recovery are helpful tools for both the group and for me as an individual. I have written quite a bit on this newsletter about struggling sometimes to keep my mouth shut and getting into trouble by offering unwanted opinions.

That’s the key—how often do I offer opinions that I was asked for versus opinions that nobody asked for? The truth is, out of every 100 times I hand out an opinion these days, I would say less than 10 were asked for. So after initially not loving this tradition… maybe I could use as much of that tradition in my life as possible.

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:

After completing the Fourth Step, Johnny was faced with some big chunks of truth about himself. Hoping to hang on to a few of his character defects, he visited his doctor seeking validation.

"Doctor," he cried. "I'm just not able to do all the things around the house that I used to do."

When the doctor's examination was complete, Johnny said, "Now, Doc, I can take it. Tell me in plain English what's wrong with me."

"Well, in plain English," the doctor replied, "you're just lazy."

"Okay," said Johnny. "Now give me the medical term so I can tell my wife."

(Credit: Grapevine, Nov. 2009, by Christopher K of Lexington, KY)

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!

On Oct. 31, 1999, I was in college and got very sick with something called bacterial meningitis. It’s a freak illness that can kill you in 24 hours, sometimes less. I felt sick that Halloween night, ended up in an ambulance, then an emergency helicopter and ultimately spent a week in a coma. When I woke up, I realized quickly that I was lucky to be alive, and that I would never be the same.

My hands and feet were destroyed, and my feet were especially bad. I eventually had the ends of both feet amputated. I spent six months in a wheelchair and had to relearn how to walk. I had to take a year off from college and try to get healthy again to return to school.

I pulled it off—sort of. I physically got healthy, but I never really wrestled with what it meant to my soul to be 21 years old, spend a week in a coma, almost die, and then have parts of my body cut off. That was the most traumatic thing I’d ever been through, and I tried to just whistle past it.

Guess how that turned out—not good! I got mixed up in painkillers and other medications, and I began abusing them pretty soon after I got sick. Looking back, I definitely just was an addict who liked the feeling of being high… but I also think I turned toward mood-altering substances because it soothed my aching soul.

Here’s the thing, though: It’s not like I couldn’t sleep every night because I was so haunted about the trauma of getting sick. I focused on the next thing in front of me and moved on. I don’t even consciously remember spending any time thinking about it, or being upset that it had happened to me. It happened and I moved on, or so I thought.

I was thinking about that a lot this Halloween. It’s been 24 years and I believe I have come a long way. But there are certain traumatic things that are just… they’re just in us. You can see a therapist, go to seven meetings a week, work the 12 steps, volunteer at a soup kitchen… and it’s still in there. I honestly don’t even know the magnitude of how much my default settings were affected by almost dying and then turning into an old man overnight once they started cutting body parts off. I have no idea. I don’t feel much when I think about it, to be honest. But that is the sneakiest kind of pain, isn’t it? The kind that hides in the corner.

It reminds me a little bit of when I went to see the movie Ghost in 1990. I was in seventh grade and I was dating an eighth-grader… I was a rock star with my friends for dating an older woman! We went to see Ghost and were making out the entire movie. It was freaking awesome.

Then she dumped me a few weeks later. I spent a month or two just listening to Unchained Melody over and over again because it had been in Ghost and I considered it to be our song. I cried and cried and cried. I couldn’t believe it was over—it had been such a beautiful four weeks! What we had was so special!

I am bringing this up because I never think about that relationship, the breakup, the movie, nothing… and then Unchained Melody comes on the radio. I don’t start crying but it crosses my mind that I should be sad. That that song means sadness. It’s kind of like if you eat a specific food and get food poisoning, it’s very hard to ever eat it again.

So that’s what I think about when it comes to trauma. That there are things wired down inside me so deep that I don’t know that they’re even there, or if it’s affecting me, or if I can do anything about it. I recently decided to go back to therapy, and that’s one of the reasons. I think there is a part of me that feels profound sadness at getting sick and getting fast-forwarded into being an old man in a young man’s body. Does it impact me every day? I don’t know. But I’d like to find out.

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:

It was their 20th wedding anniversary and Bob was hungover, as usual. Tired of being ignored, his wife decided to shock him into reality. She said softly, "I'm having an affair." Holding his head, Bob replied, "Are you having it catered?"

(Credit: Grapevine, by Terry B. of Albany, NY, Oct. 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