LOL Sober

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I was listening to a podcast the other day where a guy was complaining that he had overdone it drinking the night before. And at the end, he said, “Man, the freaking Liquid I.V. didn’t even help me this time!”

I had to look up what he was talking about, and it turns out that in recent years, a product named Liquid I.V. has come along that promises to help you hydrate during dehydrating events, such as excessive drinking. It is a powder that you mix into water that supposedly helps avoid a hangover. I don’t think the company produced it specifically for drunks, but drunks seem to have drafted it into their drinking plans.

I was dying laughing thinking about if I had had Liquid I.V. during my drinking days because I know I would have needed a lab coat and beakers and test tubes for all the experimentation I would have done with it. I was Stephen Hawking trying to find that perfect blend of substance abuse that I could have participated in. I’d have been in these dive bars, or in my basement, shooting down vodka and pills, then stirring powder into water to try to offset all the substances I put into my body. As if hydration was the biggest issue I had to contend with.

I used to do this with different foods, too. I had a theory that if I ate pieces of bread throughout a night of drinking, it would absorb the alcohol and I could drink more. Then, when that was a laughable failure, I remember I adopted a new hypothesis that if I mixed in bread plus a bunch of Diet Coke, I would have a perfect balance of bread and caffeine to power me through overdoing it for the night.

But guess what? If you drink 10 beers and take 15 painkillers and an Ambien, you can mainline Diet Mountain Dew directly into your veins and you won’t be able to balance out the amount of drugs and alcohol I would consume.

It’s just yet another reminder of two things for me. One, the ridiculousness of where my active addiction used to go, and where it would go again if I ever picked up again. And secondly, it reminds me that I went to any lengths to get drunk and now I need to go to any lengths to not drink. It’s something that trips me up all the time. Lately I have been struggling a bit to have a higher power present in my life. If I’m struggling to connect with a higher power, I can’t just say I prayed last week and nothing happened. I didn’t drink something once and then wait a month; I was in my lab coat experimenting, mixing pills and liquor, liquor before beer, all sorts of things.

If I had the same hustle aimed at connecting with a higher power, I’d be praying multiple times a day. I’d be trying out some churches. I’d be reading spiritual literature. I’d be hanging out with people who have strong connections with a higher power. And hell, maybe I would be looking around for God-flavored Liquid I.V. to mix in my water.

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:

Two drunks are talking.

First drunk: “You want to go for a walk?”

Second drunk: “Isn’t it windy?”

First drunk: “No, it’s Thursday.”

Second drunk: “Me too. Let’s get a beer.”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, January 2003, Buck R. from Silver Spring, 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

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 went to the dermatologist the other day for the first time in many years. I had a little inky-looking spot on my arm, and my doctor wanted a dermatologist to take a look. So I went earlier this week, and I had my 8-year-old with me.

We went into the room and the doctor came in and looked at the spot. It was about the size of one small ink dot. He said, “It looks benign. But what do you say we just take it off?”

I said sure, let’s do it. I’m a big, tough guy who’s had the ends of his feet amputated, for God’s sake. I can handle a little nick on the arm, right? (Quick aside: If you’re new to this newsletter, I’m not making a joke about my feet. I got really sick in college with bacterial meningitis and ended up having all 10 toes—the ends of both feet—amputated 15 years ago. I’ve had probably five surgical procedures on my feet and a few others over the years, too.)

So the nurse came in and she started to numb my arm. I didn’t feel nervous at all. No fast breathing. No sweaty palms. It didn’t seem like my heart rate went up as far as I could tell. Nothing. No big deal. When she said she was done numbing it, I didn’t even know she had done it. I looked down and saw the needle going in and out, and I felt fine.

Then I didn’t.

I felt this wave rush up through my body and into my head. It was not the pleasurable kind. I did not feel a warm haze, like many of us describe when we talk about our early days of drinking. It was terrible. I felt a total loss of control.

And then… the. Lights. Went. Out.

I woke up and there was an entirely different set of people in the room. I had been sitting down, so I didn’t hit the ground or anything. But I completely went night-night, with my eyes open, apparently, and my 8-year-old had a look on her face like, “What in the hell did I just see?”

I was laying in more sweat than a marathon runner would generate. Just a disgusting pool of water. They were giving me water and a granola bar like I was a toddler in a onesie waiting for his little snacky in the afternoon.

They felt like it was because I hadn’t eaten anything that morning. I like that answer better than the alternative, which is that I am a dopey old weak dude fainting over a 10-second medical procedure. But that’s just ego and insecurity stuff.

What really lingers to me is an unfortunate reminder about what the end of my drinking and drugging days. I would experiment with things, push the boundaries of what I could consume and then there would sometimes be a moment where what was done was done, and my head would start to spin and I would lay down and I would know that whatever was going to happen was already happening. I had no control over whether I was going to black out, pass out, wake up, not wake up, nothing. I remember feeling extreme fear in those moments, and yet I would do it again the next day.

Eventually I didn’t want to live like that any more. And that dermatology appointment reminded me that my active addiction doesn’t involve warm and fuzzy numbing; it involves basically overdosing with substances that might or might not kill me, paralyze me, cause me to end up in a coma.

So when I woke up at the dermatologist’s office, I went through the whole “my kindergartner seems light-headed” process. I drank some cold water and ate the granola bar like a good little boy, and I improved right away. They put an ice pack on my neck to help my booboo heal up, and within five minutes I was okay. My daughter politely asked if she could wait outside, and somebody walked her out. I think she was genuinely traumatized by it a bit, which is the most unfunny moment in an otherwise hilarious incident. She seemed okay as the day went on, but if at all possible, I won’t be exposing her to anything like that again.

And I don’t want to expose myself to that, either. It’s such a good reminder about how that voice in your head that whispers, “Hey, maybe a couple of drinks wouldn’t be so bad. Just take the edge off.” I don’t take the edge off, and I want to avoid that feeling of total loss of body control as much as humanly possible. So just for today, I will not be drinking or drugging… and I think I might abstain from minor surgery for a bit, too.

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:

At 2 a.m., Mike finally vacated the stool he’d been gracing all day and went outside. Leaning against the wall, he contemplated going to a club for a few more, thought better of it, and decided to go home. Spotting a car with a sign on the roof, he hailed it and fell inside. “Take me to Mount Washington,” he mumbled.

“I know a short cut,” replied the driver, who proceeded to the nearest police station, where Mike was booked for public intoxication. Looking up, the desk officer remarked, “Did he give you any trouble?”

“Not at all,” said the cop who’d delivered him. “He opened the door and climbed right in.”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, December 2002, Ken P. from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania)

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 the topic was how important it is to remember your last drunk. Not your last drink; your last drunk. For me, they’re the same. For some people, though, they drink a little while after their lowest point, then find recovery.

One of the things that I shared about was how I always thought you had to have a Hollywood ending to your drinking. In movies and TV, you need a clear, concise turning point moment, and screenwriters often go with a terrible arrest, a car accident, an intervention, a trip to prison, somebody dying, a liver cancer diagnosis… something very easy to wrap your head around as a pivot point. I get why they do that—it’s very easy to convey a need to change by having one huge event, then the change begins.

In reality, that wasn’t my experience. My bottom was alone, in my basement, sad and wasted for the 1000th day in a row, telling myself I can’t go on like this any more. Then doing it again. I think that sort of bottom is more common than the fiery car crash.

That reminded me how in my last year or so of active addiction, I got a BlackBerry from my employer. So now I could check my email at any time, at home or on the train or wherever I went, 24 hours a day. I know it’s hard to remember the days when you left work and ACTUALLY LEFT WORK. But I swear, that’s what people used to do.

Once I had my handy dandy BlackBerry, I can’t tell you how many times I rolled out of bed hung over, groaning about another miserable night of beer, painkillers and Ambien, and then I would check my email and see a note that I had sent myself in the middle of the night.

The emails were the heartbreaking, drunken ramblings of someone with no hope and lots of desperation. I’d often tell myself, “You can’t do that again. You tripped and almost fell on one of the cats, and you could have killed it. You threw up five times, and you’re mixing sleeping bills with beer in a way where you might not wake up.”

Then I would do it again the next night.

There was something about reading about the suffering I was doing, sent from myself, that made it extra gut-wrenching. And then to make matters worse, I almost always stared at the emails and then deleted them and did exactly what they were pleading with me not to do. So it felt like twice the failure every single day. Oof.

Luckily, I got sober and I got a freaking iPhone. No more BlackBerry. No more terrible emails. If they ever do make a movie about my life, I’m going to ask that my bottom be captured by me walking to a dumpster and lighting my BlackBerry on fire before heaving it into the dumpster, and I’ll look to the heavens and vow to never ever ever drink or do drugs again as the BlackBerry burns in the background. How’s THAT for a Hollywood ending?

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: “A meeting is like an orgy. When it’s over, you feel better, but you’re not sure who to thank.”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, December 2002, Roger D. from League City, 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!

At a meeting the other night, we read Bill W’s story from the Big Book. At one point, he mentions that one of his worries about quitting drinking was that he would lose his creativity.

That always connected with me, and other people always mention it connecting with them, too. I like to think I am a creative person, and as a writer, I need to have a steady stream of ideas. When I was in active addiction, I really did believe that it loosened me up and let the creative floodgates open up.

The problem is, I never could drink one or two or even three drinks and have the creative juices flow. I’d drink 15 beers and take a bunch of pills, and the only juices flowing came from me barfing into a toilet.

One of the scariest things that convinced me I needed to go to rehab is that I started to black out a lot toward the end of my drinking and drugging in 2008. For 10 years, I was a very heavy drinker who somehow managed to stop just an inch short of having many blackouts. But over the final six months, I was forgetting entire evenings.

Which brings me to a very funny story in the fall of 2008.

At that time, I had just gotten a Blackberry—yep, remember those?—and could now check emails and send emails even after I left the office. Well, one morning after a blackout, I woke up and found an email I had sent to myself. It said one word: “smilk.”

I remember thinking, “What the hell is smilk? What does this email mean?”

I thought about it for an hour or two, but I couldn’t retrieve the information from my own brain. Eventually I shrugged my shoulders and moved on for the day. But it was so weird to have had a thought, typed it into an email six hours earlier, and now have no recollection or understanding of it.

So the next day, I of course started popping pills around lunch time, then put together my usual cocktail later that night of beer and Ambien. I again blacked out, and I again emailed myself. And the email solved the smilk mystery.

The followup email was from the night before, from during another blackout, and it explained what smilk was. I had apparently decided that people love Smores, and they also love milk. What if we combined them into Smores-flavored milk?

SMILK!

Listen, most of my creativity from drunken stupors was dangerous and dumb and impulsive. It involved drinking more than I should, trying new concoctions of drugs with my alcohol that could have killed me, driving when I shouldn’t, and 1,000 other absolutely embarrassing ideas.

But I am going to stand up for smilk till the day I die. I swear people would buy it… well, they’d buy it once. I think it would be pretty disgusting, in reality, but I bet we’d sell $1 billion worth of it before people realized it was grotesque!

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 beginner was asked what had been his favorite drink. "Brother," he said, “I didn't have any favorite drink. I'd drink anything that was too thin to chew!"

(Credit: AA Grapevine, February 1949)

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 had a few doctor’s appointments recently, and at each one, I was given a series of things I was supposed to do afterward. And each time… I did what they said. If that sounds ho hum and obvious, well, I guess it should be. But following doctor’s orders? Obeying rules? Driving the speed limit? Listening to feedback? Hahahahahaha.

As a proud alcoholic and drug addict, I have always been someone who is told not to do something… and I immediately do it. Tell me I need to do something, forget about it, I’m not doing it, nobody tells me what to do. My wife once told me that she asked me to specifically not do something knowing that I would push back and do it, which is what she actually wanted. Reverse psychology appears to work on a stubborn alcoholic such as myself!

I still feel the urge many days to break some rules and do some s**t I shouldn’t be doing. But boy, it’s more often a whole new world of being open-minded in my life now, and I am so grateful for that. Those recent visits to the doctor that I described earlier are a good example of that.

It popped up recently when I got Invisalign for my teeth. My doctor said I should wear the plastic trays 22 hours a day, and that’s what I did. And over the course of two years, I did it every single day. When I went in for followup appointments, my doctor always shook his head and seemed surprised. He was almost baffled by the success of his own treatment plan. I asked him about that, and he said that I wouldn’t believe the number of people who come in wanting to get their teeth fixed, pay thousands of dollars out of pocket for Invisalign, then don’t wear the plastic trays. Then they are stunned when their teeth are exactly the same as when they started the process.

I also had a shoulder injury recently, and I had to go to physical therapy. I think this is probably my 10th time in physical therapy for various injuries and surgeries over the years, and this is the first time I have ever been given a plan and actually done the plan.

Shocking news: It worked. I went from thinking I might have a torn rotator cuff, to getting it checked out and finding it’s not a torn rotator cuff, to getting a PT specialist to work me out and set me up for home workouts, to doing the workouts and having a remarkable one-month recovery. My shoulder isn’t quite 100 percent, but it’s close. Every time I go in for PT, the guy can’t believe the progress that we’ve made. He said most people go to PT just to say they did, that they don’t want to do any of the crap he suggests, and so it’s nice to see somebody actually get on the healing path and follow it.

It’s a good reminder about as awesome as recovery is, it can only take you so far on some things. I need to do the spiritual work to make myself as honest, open-minded and willing in all walks of life, then rely on my higher power for some stuff, and experts on the other stuff. Recovery can help you get in the right mindset, but if you need your teeth to be fixed or to win a court case, you gotta take all that honesty, open-mindedness and willingness to a dentist or a lawyer.

Above all else, I’m so happy to be even 10 percent less stubborn. Life is so much easier when you don’t try to fight everything, even the little stuff. Going forward, if somebody tells me to do something, I’m always just going to do it, no questions asked.

Okay, that’s ridiculous and never going to happen. But I’ll try!

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:

Son: "Pop, what's an alcoholic?"

Father: "A man who tries to pull himself out of trouble with a corkscrew."

(Credit: AA Grapevine, February 1947)

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!

At a meeting the other night, we read The Doctor’s Opinion from the Big Book. If you’re unfamiliar, give it a read some time. I hadn’t read it in awhile because I tend to yawn during it. Before you yell at me for that kind of blasphemy, let me explain myself.

It was written by Dr. William Silkworth at the very beginning of 12-step recovery about 80 years ago. It defines what alcoholism is and what alcoholism treatment looks like, and it is very hopeful and optimistic about what 12-step treatment could mean for a person and for a community.

I always need to remember that, and I don’t. I go into churches where the rent has been paid for quite some time, where recovery people way before me treated the church with respect and maturity so that it could exist for me now. I also usually sit down in a chair that someone set up for me, along with a recovery book that people who came before me paid for, so that I could sit and read during a meeting years down the road.

I can’t stress enough how crucial Silkworth’s opinion seems to have been. I have a friend who is almost 90 years old and has been sober for 50-plus years, and he always says, “You younger people have no idea how different it was back then to say you were an alcoholic.” He’s talking about saying it in 1963 or so, after 12-step recovery had been around for 20-some years and had some members with two decades of recovery. Imagine what Bill and Bob were dealing with 20 years before THAT, with no track record whatsoever. That’s why the credibility portion of Dr. Silkworth’s opinion is so critical. The recovery community really needed someone with serious standing to stand up and vouch for the program, and also to emphasize that there is a medical component to this. Even today, I’ve come across people who chalk up addiction to that person being a bad person, making immoral choices. Dr. Silkworth’s writings do a nice job of outlining the disease portion of this.

So why do I occasionally yawn about it? Part of it is that I have read it at least 50 times now, so I know it quite well. And part of it is that I already reap the benefits of it. Have you ever read about the people who stood up for clean drinking water in elementary schools? Or the benefits of indoor plumbing? Probably not, because it seems so obvious and accepted now. Dr. Silkworth’s writings helped to change public perception of alcoholism, and over the course of many decades, that perception became an incredible gift.

When I got sober in 2008, there were laws protecting employees who needed treatment for drugs and alcohol. There were thousands of churches and other facilities that opened their doors to drug addicts and alcoholics because they came to believe that recovery was possible. And on a very human level, public perception has changed so much that when I say I am an alcoholic, people don’t recoil and lock their front door.

I’ll close with a funny related story. I recently was on the playground picking up my second-grader from school, and a dad that I casually knew started talking to me. He said something like, “We should get together some time and watch football and drink beer.” I gently said I was in for the football part, but I don’t drink and I try to avoid situations where there was a lot of boozing because I am in recovery.

He thought about it for a second and said, “Oh wow, that is so cool. Good for you. I know a few other people in recovery, and they’re all awesome people. I don’t have a drinking problem, but I sometimes wish I could be in recovery. It seems like such a cool club!”

That made me double over laughing. I was thinking, OK, yes, I love recovery but it is a bunch of people who hit absolute rock bottom in life and are trying to get better. It’s not a Dungeons and Dragons group or an Oprah book club. But I just smiled and shook my head and said, “Yes, it is a pretty beautiful thing.”

Imagine telling Dr. Silkworth 80 years ago that some day, people who aren’t alcoholics would be daydreaming about going to 12-step meetings. He probably would have thought you were still drinking.

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 ....

"You know you're an alcoholic when you wrap your car around a tree and blame it on a landscaping error."

(Credit: AA Grapevine, by Anonymous, December 2006)

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 just realized that I have been going to the gym for exactly a year now. It’s the third time in my life that I have worked out for a long period of time, but it’s the first time I have done it sober.

Let me tell you how different this time is.

First of all, I want to say how beneficial it is to my sobriety. I honestly have not seen massive physical gains. I’m in better physical shape, and I am running on a treadmill almost every day after being told I probably would never run again earlier in my life.

But the impact on my sobriety has been pretty special. I haven’t seen any studies about the relationship between addiction and fitness, but the science seems pretty settled in general about the positive impact of fitness on your mental health. That has certainly been the case for me, and my mental health is centered around recovery. So I have loved the way those two things play in the sandbox together.

Secondly, I see the difference in myself this time around. The first time I ever went to the gym regularly was when I was a freshman in college. I went with my college roommate for a year and got pretty muscular… and the sole purpose was to impress girls. I had no desire to be in good shape other than to look as good on the outside as possible, for purposes of hooking up with people. As you could probably guess, the minute I got a girlfriend, my drive to go to the gym fizzled out almost overnight.

The next time I went to the gym regularly was right after I got married. That time, I again went to the gym just to try to impress my newlywed wife. I wasn’t doing it for myself; I was again trying to look as good as possible for the benefit of someone else. And again, that wasn’t enough to keep me invested.

This time, I’m going because I want to go, not because I am trying to impress anybody. That is a positive byproduct of sobriety. My time in recovery is the first time in my life where I have done a decent job of doing the right thing because it’s the right thing, not because somebody else might think more highly of me.

The third thing is related to the prior thing. When I got sober, I was told a series of suggestions about staying sober every day. Not for 10 days. Not for one year. For 24 straight hours every day, one day at a time. It was the first time in a very long time that I had a specific gameplan—go to 90 meetings in 90 days, get a sponsor, start the steps. And it was the first time I was able to stick to a gameplan, and I have seen the benefits of that.

That coincides perfectly with so many other things in my life since I got sober. Work projects, saving money, going to the gym, you name it, I am better at it than I would have ever anticipated because staying sober has been one huge example of having an important goal and doing something every day to achieve that goal. I’ve written before about how often New Year’s resolutions don’t work out for people, and I’m guessing it has a lot to do with not having any kind of program or network to support your goal. Recovery has been Exhibit A of that for me, but it has also paved the way for Exhibits B, C, D and so on. The gym is like that. I have broad goals I want to achieve, I try to do something every day to inch closer to that goal, and I don’t ever buy my b******t of skipping it. I can’t afford to skip sobriety stuff, and that drive has spilled over into my everyday life in a great way.

The last thing is that going to gym has helped me realize how much better my internal voice is. You know that voice, the one that tells you to say and do dumb s**t all the time! That voice was an absolute dumpster fire when I was an active addict. I couldn’t talk myself out of stealing, lying and overdosing.

Then I got sober, and that changed as far as drugs and alcohol went. But I still found that I didn’t have very good self control on most things. But I have found the longer I have stayed sober, the more I pause between having a thought and taking an action. I also have found that when my internal voice whispers that I should skip a meeting or ignore a phone call from another suffering addict, I have a louder voice that usually raises its voice and overwhelms that part of me. I tend to listen to the louder voice. And that voice has helped me enormously in sticking with going to the gym, which is a very easy activity to talk yourself out of! But in recovery, the voice saying I don’t need 12-step recovery is persistent, which has made the other voice get louder and more persistent, so when I deploy that voice on something like going to the gym, it’s still pretty loud and convincing. That voice has helped me get to the gym probably about 350 out of 365 days this past year. I would never be able to do that without a solid 12-step sobriety program.

So for me, the bottom line is, I won’t be entering any bodybuilding contests any time soon. But I am in better shape, physically and spiritually, and recovery has been the blueprint for 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:

A drunk walks into a library and up to the librarian's desk. He says, "I'll have a hamburger, fries, and a cola."

The librarian gives him a puzzled look, so the drunk repeats it a little louder, "I'll have a HAMBURGER, FRIES, and a COLA."

The annoyed librarian hisses, "Sir! You are in a library."

"Oh, sorry," the drunk replied, and then whispered, "I'll have a hamburger, fries, and a cola."

(Credit; AA Grapevine, December 2006, by Andy S. of Rohnert Park, 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!

The other night, I took two of my kids out to dinner at Cheesecake Factory. When we got there, I couldn’t find a regular parking spot, and I was having a tough day with my feet. So I reached down to pull out my blue accessible parking permit. (I use the term “accessible parking” instead of “handicapped parking” because I don’t love that term. It’s outdated language but I don’t think most people are aware of that yet.)

You might be wondering why I have a blue accessible parking permit. As I have discussed before, I had to have the ends of my feet amputated 20-some years ago after a freak illness. I had to use a wheelchair for six months or so as I relearned to walk without any toes. I do still have chronic pain, which is why I have a blue parking permit.

Just one problem on this night: I left my actual permit in my wife’s car. So when we pulled into a spot, I reached down and pulled out my expired permit and put that on my dash. That permit is my backup pass, and it is a cobbled-together mess. It had cracked apart in a few places, so I had to tape it back together and color in a few pieces of cardboard to fill out the length of the pass. So it is expired, and it also looks pretty fake if you spend more than 1.5 seconds staring at it.

An hour later, I came out and found a $107 parking citation on my windshield for having an expired accessible parking permit. I immediately felt my neck catch on fire from anger. What’s this guy’s freaking problem giving an amputee a parking ticket for an expired permit? Have some compassion! My blood was boiling.

I got the kids in the car, and started backing out. I realized about halfway out of my spot that I hadn’t actually even looked around to make sure there were no cars or people around—I had blinders on about this $107 injustice. I have certain things that get under my skin wayyyyyy more than they should and parking tickets and minor traffic infractions happen to qualify. I don’t know why it makes my head explode as much as it does. I just cannot handle the idea of a $3 parking fee somehow turning into $107 additional dollars for something like that. My resentment radar starts beeping really loud when that happens.

Luckily, at this stage of my recovery life, I always try to remember to pause. Just don’t do anything. Just say anything. Don’t email anybody. Just contemplate for a moment.

So I collected myself, safely backed the car out and started driving. I was still pretty revved up but I managed to take a few breaths and put the windows down. The cool air blew off some of the steam pouring out of my ears, and I was carefully able to think about the truth of the situation.

And the truth is, I was sloppy. I forgot to get my parking pass out of the other car, and I instead used a pass that was both expired and also barely alive because half of it had broken off. At the end of the day, was it the parking lot cop’s fault that an amputee had a 10-year-old permit that was basically an amputee itself? Nah. That’s on me.

I was able to get the kids home and cool down considerably. I looked at the time and realized that my white-hot rage phase had lasted about 10 seconds, my hot-under-the-collar phase had lasted maybe 3 minutes, and now I was at a place of relative calm. I am grateful for anything less than five minutes of volcanic anger! I dialed into a Zoom 12-step meeting, and heard a powerful speaker tell his story of experience, strength and hope, and all was right in the world.

Did I go on the town web site and IMMEDIATELY file an appeal? Oh, absolutely. But I did it calmly and truthfully, explaining my mistake and asking for forgiveness for this one time. Now I have to turn it over to my higher power for how this will be adjudicated.

Do I think if my appeal is declined I might hire 40 lawyers and sue the state of Connecticut for millions of dollars? Uh… we’ll see. Stay tuned. Maybe I will update you all on how it went a week from 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:

AFTER ATTENDING A FEW AA MEETINGS I realized why they use the term "barfly" to describe us. We barf and we lie.

(Credit: AA Grapevine, December 2006, by Dan H.)

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 segment on 60 Minutes this past weekend about some of the new revelations that astronomers are making about the origins of our universe. To summarize as best I can… holy freaking s**t.

They’re making amazing discoveries every single day about the vastness of our galaxy, and the many, many other galaxies out there. One number that made my head explode a bit was one astronomer saying that we understand about 4 percent of the universe. The other 96 percent is a total mystery. He used the terms dark energy and dark matter in a way that made me just shake my head at the unknown nature of our universe, our galaxy, our world, our country, our state, my house… everything.

I love stuff like that because it really helps me in my own life.

There are two ways you can go on something like this. The first is feeling meaningless. I know I have had phases where I feel panic about being just a tiny, little speck in the grand scheme of things. It can be very haunting to know that the world has existed for millions of years and will exist for millions of years after I am worm food, and that that world is just a tiny dot in the grand scheme of the universe. It all seems so vast, and it can be pretty easy to suddenly wonder, “What does all of this even matter?”

I choose to think of it differently, though. I choose to concentrate on how freeing it can be. One of the biggest things I wrestle with every day is not having a firm higher power. I have had long stretches of sobriety, including right now, where my higher power isn’t a clear religious figure or specific philosophy of any kind. I can’t even really describe it in words. It’s an amorphous, cobbled-together blob of trusting the universe and slogans.

What goes up, must come down.

Do the next right thing.

You’re responsible for the effort, not the outcome.

Faith without works is dead.

I don’t know. Some s**t like that. Whatever it is, it has been working for me, and the idea that the universe is bigger than even what we currently define as the universe can be a very humbling feeling. I wrestle every day with having moments where I try to bend the outcome of my life toward what I want. Without even trying, I become my own higher power, making stuff happen, pushing people to agree with me, wearing down people who disagree, all because I am trying to be powerful, not powerless.

As much as I love the phrase you hear at meetings all the time that “I’m just a bozo on the bus”… how often do I really mean that? How often do I truly accept that I should do the best I can but that I should be content with being a worker among workers, a sober person among sober people, a husband among husbands, and so on? Not very often.

So that’s why something like the 60 Minutes piece can be so helpful. It was awesome and awe-inspiring. There were so many pictures showing human beings looking as far as possible over and over again, and just discovering they had barely discovered anything at all. I loved the uncertainty that these scientists fessed up to. I am so much better off waking up every day with the idea in my head that I have no idea about most things in life, than the alternative.

So thanks, astronomers for blowing my mind in the best possible way!

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....

"A lot of times I blacked out. The rest I don't remember."

(Credit: AA Grapevine, March 2005, by Andy of Pearland, 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!

At a meeting the other night, we read A Vision for You, from the Big Book. (LINK) It’s not my favorite chapter, to be honest. But on this night, one part really stood out to me.

In that chapter, there are lengthy descriptions of what 12-step recovery looked like back then, and it was… just a couple of guys, trying to get sober. At one point, Bill W. and Dr. Bob meet with a potential third recovering drunk after a nurse says, “We have a real corker in the hospital right now. He just beat up some nurses.” So Bill and Bob go see him and try to get him started on a path to recovery.

First of all, I have conflicted feelings about what the nurse said. I love the word corker and am going to be incorporating that as much as possible into my normal life when I describe myself and other alcoholics. And I am also simultaneously horrified about the image of this drunk guy beating up nurses. Good lord.

But the biggest thing that stuck with me was the title: A Vision For You. The vision the Big Book has for me is so different than the vision these people had in the late 1930s. At my first meeting, there were chairs that someone had paid for, books that somebody ordered, church rent that someone had paid for, laminated charts with the 12 steps hanging on the walls, and people who’d been elected as trusted servants for that meeting. The original founders had no Big Book, no 12 steps and they were going to hospitals looking for people who might want to get sober.

That is a humbling thought. It’s reminder that there are millions of people who laid the groundwork for the incredible recovery options sitting right in front of my face. I don’t have to go to hospitals to look for a guy I might work the steps with. I have meetings right up the street. I don’t have to meet with churches to convince them they should let us use their basement. Somebody did that years and years ago. And I don’t have to figure out how to explain addiction and recovery to anybody on my own—I can hand them a book that does a remarkable job of that.

I don’t even need to come up with what to call myself. I am an alcoholic and an addict. But apparently I’m also a corker!

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:

THE WIFE OF AN ALCOHOLIC was quoted as saying, "There are three ways to get something done: Do it yourself, hire someone to do it, or forbid my husband to do it."

(Credit: AA Grapevine, March 2005, by Richard M., Golden, Colorado)

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