LOL Sober

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There was a two-and-a-half-minute clip from The Drew Barrymore Show that went viral last week. I’m sure everybody on here watches EVERY SINGLE EPISODE of The Drew Barrymore Show at least once, as I do. But I’ll explain it anyway. The whole clip is at the bottom of the newsletter, so you can watch for yourself.

It was Drew with her guests, Melanie Lynskey and Jason Ritter. Melanie Lynskey and Jason Ritter are married, and are both successful actors who have been in the game for 10-plus years now. Lynskey’s star has never been higher than right now—she’s in Yellowjackets and had a run in The Last of Us, too. I highly recommend both of those shows, especially The Last of Us. It’s one of my 10 favorite shows of the past year.

In the beginning of the clip, Ritter is talking about the start of his relationship with Lynskey. He mentions that he had alcoholism issues, and Drew Barrymore raises her hand. She has discussed her addiction issues in the past.

Ritter then gets a little emotional because he says that he thought Lynskey was terrific in the early days of their dating, but he said he didn’t feel like he deserved her. He says he thought she deserved someone better.

Lynskey starts tearing up and says he did so much work on himself, and that she is so proud of him. She puts her hand on his knee, and it’s pretty touching.

Drew jumps in at some point as the crowd cheers, and she says she hasn’t had a drink in almost four years… but that she doesn’t work a program and uses some other things. Felt like maybe she meant weed, but who knows?

The last 15 seconds of the clip, Drew says that she hasn’t been in a relationship since she stopped drinking. She says she’s looking forward to the day when she is ready for that, and someone is ready for her.

I had a few thoughts as I watched it.

First, why is this such a big deal? Why were people saying this was so refreshing to hear? Then I realized that I am so used to hearing people say incredibly vulnerable things in meetings that I am immune to getting startled about it most of the time. This is what we do.

Secondly, I did feel it when he said he wasn’t deserving of her love. I was married already at the time, and I definitely felt that about my wife. Couldn’t she do better? But I also just felt undeserving of all love, of all compliments, of all praise. I knew the truth about me, which is that I was full of s**t and full of shitty behaviors. Deep down, I thought I deserved nothing but misery.

Thirdly, when Lynskey grabs her husband’s hand and starts tearing up a bit, it looked like real love on display. And real love often has some scars—not literally, of course; nobody needs to be roughing each other up. There are figurative bumps and crashes and dumpster fires within the best relationships when addiction is involved, but that often can lead to an intensity of love that is quite deep and beautiful. I certainly feel that in my own marriage.

Last but not least, I’m not quite sure how to unpack the contrast of Drew’s sobriety and what Jason Ritter is describing. I saw some 12-step people jump right in and start saying, “See? Work a program like Jason Ritter and you will find love, Drew.” And listen, I am a big 12-step supporter. That’s my first recommendation when people say they might have a problem and are looking for solutions.

But it’s not my only recommendation. I know people that have followed other paths and either minimized their alcohol use or found recovery another way. That stuff isn’t right for me, so I always suggest trying a 12-step program first. I had a moment listening to Drew Barrymore in that clip where I thought to myself, “Oh, I hope she gets to a meeting again some time!” But to each their own.

The other important thing about contrasting their sobriety is that it’s a silly exercise, anyway. I have no idea who these people are, for real, and what their programs are like and how happy they are. They’re professional actors who get paid to manipulate human emotions playing nonexistent people on TV and film, so how could anybody possibly evaluate them in a three-minute clip?

Where I ultimately landed was that I loved the message I saw in that exchange. It warmed my heart a little. And I decided to focus on the Jason Ritter side of things, because he and Melanie Lynskey seem very happy together after what was probably a bumpy journey. So, good for them.

Now Melanie Lynskey can go off in peace to shoot Yellowjackets, which is a brilliant Showtime show about a high school girls soccer team that is involved in a plane crash where they end up killing and eating each other in the woods… good times!

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:

TRUE STORY:

Recently, an older AA member went to see her physician. As part of a medical procedure, she needed to have her blood drawn. Having a difficult time finding a vein, the nurse asked, "When was your last drink?" The AA promptly replied, "Thirty-four years ago." Smiling, her daughter said, "Mom, she meant, 'When was your last glass of water?"

(Courtesy: AA Grapevine, by Sally N., Garden City, South Carolina)

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!

Right after I got sober, my life began to get better almost immediately. I couldn’t even believe it. My family was great, I felt great and I was having professional success. I’d begun to repay what was massive financial debt. Everything had turned around in a big way. Sounds great, right?

Well, because of all that positive stuff, I started to wonder, “Hmm, was drinking and drugging really that bad? I mean, I’m cleaning up the mess. Maybe when the mess is all the way gone, I wonder if I could go back to drinking. Maybe I actually didn’t have that bad of a drinking problem.”

Luckily, I had some sober people in my life at that point who explained that once you’re a pickle, you can’t be a cucumber again. It was over. That mess that was getting cleaned up? If I picked up again, it would be back, and it would be worse than ever… and that’s if I didn’t die, which was a possibility every day from about 2005-08. I used drugs and alcohol like there was no tomorrow… and that meant, there might not be a tomorrow.

So that sank in. Thank God that it did, because it doesn’t for everybody. I’ve met many people whose addict brains tell them the same story that mine did, that maybe things weren’t as ugly as they were. Or, I’ve also had the thought many times that now that I have a program, and spirituality, and am active in my kids’ lives, and so many other things—maybe I can be a normal drinker again since I have grown so much.

What a crock of s**t. I know it’s ridiculous, and yet that seed gets planted sometimes. A few years ago, I was working with a guy whose life had turned around since he started on a recovery path. But when we got into the middle of stepwork, he pulled back. He told me he wasn’t ever sure he was an alcoholic, that he didn’t quite drink like other people in the rooms had. It was probably true. He’d been one of those people who would have a terrible month with booze and then stop drinking… but smoke weed for six weeks straight. Then he’d feel like that was becoming a problem and he’d mess around with pills for awhile. He would just shuffle the deck on substances but the issue was the same—he had to numb out somehow. I get that; I had a similar addiction history where I cycled on and off things in a way where I could probably convince myself I never truly had one specific issue.

But he eventually decided that sobriety wasn’t for him. He acknowledged that his life had changed for the better since he’d gotten sober, that his work life and personal life had dramatically improved. But he just wasn’t sure recovery was for him. I tried pushing back once—I always try one time, but usually no more than that, because I have found that sobriety isn’t something you can really convince someone to try if they don’t want to.

One thing I told him that I had heard once in a similar situation was, “If the solution works, maybe you have the problem.” Here he was, explaining to me how recovery had been working in his life. So why walk away from that, even if you have doubts about the magnitude of the problem? What about the magnitude of the solution?

He nodded his head and said he understood what I was saying… but he did end up walking away. I never saw him again.

I thought about that a lot recently, because I noticed myself going to a lot of meetings. Like, once a day, almost every day, and I had a few days where I went to two meetings. Earlier this week, I went to a meeting on Sunday, then two meetings on Monday and two meetings on Tuesday. Five meetings in three days? That’s pretty intense! I’m not sure I ever did that when I had 10 days or 2 months sober.

But I felt great. I felt like I had quite a few tricky situations in my life, and I thought I was navigating them really well. So, as the old saying goes, if the solution works, why worry about the problem?

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 used to pray as if I was using 911. Now I find prayer is best used as 411."

(Credit: AA Grapevine, April 2005, by Mandra)

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!

When I got sober in 2008, there were a few commonly-held positives about drugs and alcohol.

One was that a glass of wine or a beer or two every day might actually have some health benefits.

Another was that alcohol and drugs can take the edge off at night and help you sleep.

And a big one for me personally was the idea that getting tipsy or loaded was a big boost to my creativity. I found myself nodding along a few months ago when musician Harry Styles credited mushrooms for inspiring him to write his most recent album, which was a giant hit. He’s the millionth artist in human history to point toward some sort of alcohol or drugs as a jumpstarter for creativity. That always made sense to me.

Well, it turns out that all three of those might be total b******t. Or at least it’s unclear whether they help, hurt or have no effect.

For the first one, recent studies have shown that it’s pretty dubious whether all the early headlines about a drink or two might boost health. To be fair, it also appears to be unclear whether it necessarily hurts health. It’s just safe to say that if I ever clung to the idea that my health is being hurt by not drinking, well, that’s probably not true.

For the second one, it’s become pretty obvious that alcohol and drugs as a sleep aid is actually the exact opposite of the truth. The stuff I have been reading indicates that drinking may help you get to sleep easier and faster, but the sleep is not good sleep and that over the long haul, it’s damaging to your overall health.

And last but not least, I really did hold the belief that I would lose some creativity if I didn’t have drugs and alcohol in my system. I didn’t entirely find that to be the case since I got sober. But I still subscribed to the idea that some of history’s great artists probably made beautiful paintings and books and songs with the aid of being drunk or high.

Well, last week I stumbled upon a study that concludes pretty firmly that that is not the case. Researchers found that even though artists tend to believe this is true—Harry Styles, for one—it probably is a myth.

What was especially interesting to me is that that same study found a few things that are more beneficial to creativity than drugs and alcohol. They cited meditation, exposure to culture and working out as better aids… which is pretty wild, because those are several things that sobriety encourages you to explore as you try to replace the void of alcohol and drugs.

Huh, who’d have figured?

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:

FISHING FOR A LITTLE SYMPATHY, an AA member, quoting from the Bible, said, "I'm just a laborer in the vineyard." In proper Al-Anon fashion, his wife retorted, "You're an alcoholic, what are you doing in a vineyard?"

(Credit: AA Grapevine, April 2005, by John M. of Toronto, Ontario)

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!

When I first got sober, my life completely turned around almost instantly. I still had tons and tons of work to do in order to actually get better as a human. But almost from Day One without drugs and alcohol, I made a big jump forward—especially at work.

I started showing up on time. I started leaving at the end of the day, not at lunch. I started following through on things I was assigned. I started acting like an adult in the office. (Well, as much as I am actually capable of being an adult.)

A few months into sobriety, I got a promotion, and I really took a victory lap with people in my sober network. I wasn’t bragging about it. I was thanking them, because it felt like “we” had gotten the promotion. Everybody was very happy for me, and I was happy for me. It feels very validating when the world notices the work you’ve done, and that’s how it felt.

Then, about three months later, I got a good job offer from another company, and I told my bosses. In order to match that offer, my company would have to promote me again. And they did! So I got two promotions in about six months. When I called my sponsor and told him the great news, he said, “Congratulations… this too shall pass.”

I was pissed. What an a*****e, right? How dare he rain on my parade? I got all huffy on the phone and we hung up still not seeing eye to eye on how he’d reacted. But I called him back and asked him what he meant. He carefully explained to me that “This too shall pass” isn’t just a phrase that applies to bad things in life, that all things, good, bad and everything in between, shall pass.

I didn’t like that answer so I argued with him for a bit longer. But he eventually said something to me that still bounces around in my head a lot. He said, “You can’t get promoted every day, dude. You have to work hard to establish a recovery program that can stand up against good news and bad news.”

I think about that a lot because I have been sober since 2008, and most of my bad stretches of recovery have been when things are really good. I know, I know, that sounds completely nonsensical. But it’s true, and I’ve seen it happen with others, too. You get promoted at work. You get married. You get two new cars. The kids are doing great. Your liver test results are great. You haven’t s**t your pants or puked in an office trash can in a year or two. You’re crushing it!

That’s when I tend to dial back my program. It didn’t happen when bad stuff popped up in my life. It’s the moments when I truly believe I had it all figured out that I tend to put on the cruise control, and it never goes well.

I’m in a good patch right now, and I have been getting to more meetings than ever. It’s not so much that I am chasing a recovery high. It’s more that I am trying to be ready when the good patch calms down a bit. Because this too shall pass.

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 swerving car was stopped by the police. The officer walked up to the driver's side and found a laughing and—obviously—inebriated woman. Shining a flashlight into her glassy eyes, he orders her out of the car.

"Get out?" laughed the woman. "Officer, I can't even open the door."

(Credit: AA Grapevine, April 2005, 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!

My 8-year-old read me part of story the other day about the way Abraham Lincoln dealt with anger, and it made me laugh because it sounded an awful lot like some of the Fourth Step work I have done over the years.

She read a passage about how Lincoln would get angry, then write meticulous letters to the person outlining his anger. He called them “hot letters.” He would be brutally honest in the letters, even calling the person names. He’d lay out any mistakes that were made, and the way they should be remedied. He’d talk about his feelings, including his sheer anger.

And then… he would throw the letters away.

He made one of his generals write a hot letter once, and it took the dude two days to write it. At the end, he read it to Lincoln, and Lincoln asked him if he felt better. The guy said yes, and then Lincoln told him to junk the letter. The general was pissed that he spent two days with an old-school pen and paper, laying out his fury, and now he was just going to junk it? Lincoln explained that it’s often a good idea to take your time, plot out why you’re angry, consider solutions and then set all of it aside. His point was that by writing out your resentments, you can take some of the steam out of them. Hence, the “hot letter” name.

That sure is reminiscent of some of the resentment work I have done over the years. I’ve had some Fourth Steps that are bitter and petty and absolutely not how I wanted to be living my life. But the great news is two-fold.

First, I do my Fourth Steps with a sober friend, not the person I want to be launched into the sun. And secondly, I always feel better when I lay out my anger.

That begs the followup question: Why? Why would writing out my version of a hot letter work so effectively?

I don’t really have the answer. All I can say is, as hard as it is to believe, the difference between thinking things, versus writing them down, is enormous to me. There’s something very real when you look down and you see it on paper. That goes for stepwork, goals, even a list of items to get at the grocery store. Writing something down somehow seems to manifest its reality on a regular basis in my life.

The other thing about writing out everything—your feelings. your anger, the vengeance that you are seeking—is that you are physically looking at recipe for a life that you cannot lead and that you probably do not want to lead. I’m usually looking down at either flat-out rage, or extreme anger. I’m not sure I’ve ever had a situation in sobriety where I actually wanted to be in a state of rage to sort it out.

I’ve done Fourth Steps where I am still angry at the end and still need to approach someone and rectify an issue. But I’ve always blown out a large percentage of the steam within me, so I can have a much better, much more effective conversation now that I ditched the rage. That’s usually a game-changer. When I then try to work through something with that other person, it usually begins and ends in a much better place.

So I gotta tip my hat to Abraham Lincoln. I really appreciate your hot letter philosophy!

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 police officer pulls over a man who's been weaving in and out of traffic lanes. He goes up to the driver's window an says, "Sir, I need you to blow into this breathalyzer."

The man says, "I'm sorry, officer. I can't do that. I'm asthmatic. If I do that, I'll have a really bad asthma attack."

"Okay, fine," the officer answers. "Then come down to the station to give a blood sample."

"Oh, no. I can't do that either" the man answers. "You see, I'm a hemophiliac. If I do that, I'll bleed to death."

"Well, we'll need a urine sample from you."

"I'm so sorry, officer, I also can't do that. I am a diabetic. If I do that, I'll get really low blood sugar and the results will be off."

"Fine, then. I need you to come out here and walk this white line."

"Oh, I can't do that, officer."

"And why not?"

"Because I'm drunk."

(Credit: AA Grapevine, by Donald S., October 2005)

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!

For the past year or so, I have been very dedicated about getting to the gym. I usually lift weights for an hour, run for 20 minutes, then I go into one of the bathrooms, change clothes and meditate for 5-10 minutes.

I love the meditating part. Meditation is something I only started doing in recovery, and it wasn’t until I was about five years into sobriety. It’s one of those things that is essential to me being sober, versus me being someone who isn’t drinking. There’s a version of my sobriety where I don’t drink any more, but I am pretty miserable and don’t do a bunch of the things like meditation that have been suggested to me as add-ons to my recovery.

These days, I do 20 minutes every single day, and those 5-10 minutes are usually my deepest meditation of the day. I’m usually very sweaty, with my heart still pounding from running, so the cool down period comes at a nice time. Then, with the meditation, it’s a nice, refreshing mental headspace to get into while you still have all that blood rushing through your body. I usually walk out of the gym feeling as serene as I will be all day.

Except, not all days.

The gym has four individual bathrooms—no big locker room. All private bathrooms. All four have showers, a sink, a toilet and a bench to change on. One has a lock that doesn’t work, so I avoid that bathroom. On the day in question, I went into a different bathroom, I peed, washed my hands and sat down on a bench and started to meditate.

I was about four minutes in, and I found myself pretty deep into the meditation when I heard a loud click and a door open. But for another second or two, I stayed in the meditative place that I had gotten to. Then I felt some air and a presence in the room, and I opened my eyes. There stood an old dude, about to whip his junk out and start peeing. He was completely oblivious that I was sitting there on the bench behind the door, two feet away.

Now, it’s important to note here that nobody has ever had any sort of good experience either getting walked in on in the bathroom, or walking in on someone else. It’s incredibly awkward, and I have no idea what either person is supposed to say in that situation other than mumbling a bunch of gibberish.

That’s pretty much what happened here.

I said, “Uh, I’m in here!” which is such a dopey and weird thing to yell. But good luck coming up with something better.

He jumped sideways and backwards and ended up turning slightly toward me. But the surprise quickly turned to boiling hot rage.

“Ahhh, I don’t know what the hell is going around here. None of the bathroom locks work!” he yelled. I remember being a little startled at how fast he went from sheepishness to flat-out anger.

I just kind of smiled and muttered, “Yeah, I know,” and the guy turned to leave. But he didn’t leave. He wanted to go off on the gym, and he started to.

“I pay $60 a month to have bathrooms with locks that don’t work? What kind of gym can’t figure out locks for their bathrooms?”

In that moment, I feel a little peace coming over me.

I said to him, “Actually, I’m not sure what happened, but I didn’t lock the door. I should have. Sorry about that. That’s on me.”

He still wasn’t done, though. It’s like he didn’t even hear me, or he didn’t want to hear me. He kept blasting off about the gym, and I just stared at him and didn’t say anything. He eventually turned and walked out the door, I locked it, and I went back to meditating.

I titled this blog post about how this is an indicator that sobriety is working for me, and that may seem goofy based on the subject matter. But I walked out of the gym laughing about four things.

One is that sobriety has helped me develop healthy life patterns such as going to the gym, and meditating every single day. I’m grateful for that.

Secondly, I never thought I’d be someone who would meditate at all, let alone consistently. So I am grateful for that, too.

Thirdly, I have recently decided to push back hard against my urge to criticize, make fun of, s**t-talk and gossip, and that dude teed me up with an opportunity to take a dumb thing that would be easy to complain about. It might have been fun to start barking along side that dude about the morons at the gym. But I get almost nothing out of that other than a little bit of instant gratification… that usually turns into remorse a little later. I have put my hand up at meetings and owned that character defect, and I have shared it with people in my recovery network hoping that the added accountability might benefit me. It did in this circumstance.

Last but not least, I’m still a little surprised—happily surprised—at how much my mind has shifted in sobriety during moments when it would be easy to yell at someone. This dude came barging into the bathroom and started to whizz while I am sitting right there, then he didn’t apologize right away. No courtesy knock. No gentle opening of the door and saying, “Hello? Anybody in here?” He just cruised on in and went off about the gym when he discovered somebody was in there. And even in that split-second of awkwardness, I was able to quickly process the idea that I played a significant part in the whole mishap. If I had locked the door, none of it would have happened. It’s pretty much on me, and as tempting as it might have been to yell, “Yo, geezer, get the f— out of here!”, I was actually able to say right away, “You know what? I should have locked the door.”

So there you have it. Sobriety, discovered on a bench in a gym bathroom. Bet you didn’t think you’d hear somebody say that today, did you?

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:

Now that I’ve been sober for awhile, I've discovered three things:

* My wild oats have turned into 100% bran.

* I finally got my head together and my body fell apart.

* It's easier to get older than it is to get wiser.

(CREDIT: AA Grapevine, November 2005, by Richard M. of 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

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 the news stories from last week where NASA announced that there is an asteroid coming through the galaxy toward Earth. NASA tweeted out that the asteroid is about the size of an Olympic-sized swimming pool and that there is a 1-in-560 chance it hits the planet. And if it does hit, it will be right around Valentine’s Day 2046.

My first reaction was that my wife and I have been together for 25 years now and I am running out of ideas for Valentine’s Day, so I was ecstatic that I could probably skip at least that year. (Just kidding.)

My second reaction was about five minutes of complete fear. The odds are very slim (1-in-560) in the grand scheme of things. But I did start to think about some of the things that only happen once every 560 days or so in my life. Such as: coming out and the car doesn’t start, or a road that I use is closed because a tree is down, or the power goes out all night, and on and on. The fear side of my brain can go alllllllll day on stuff like that. In all seriousness, 1-in-560 is highly unlikely… but we have all had stuff that is a 1-in-560 chance of happening actually happen in life. Sooooo…

My third reaction is my most important reaction. We’re not going to be struck by an asteroid on Valentine’s Day 2046. I feel pretty safe saying that. And even if it does happen, what am I going to do? Start building an underground bunker? Construct a cannon to shoot at the asteroid as it plummets to Earth? Watch Armageddon to strategize?

Stuff like this is really interesting to me, because it is 100 percent, without question, out of my control, and those things help me to remember that most of life is actually completely out of my control. It gets hard to remember that when you get sober and stay sober for awhile, because good things start to happen. But there are sooo many things beyond me! World wars, cancer, solar flares, lightning strikes, tornadoes, climate change, a tree falling on my house, sinkholes, tidal waves, Valentine’s Day asteroids… I mean, I can keep going but that seems like a scary enough list.

I’ve had moments like this, where you feel existential fear and confusion and sadness and anger about something that is deeply bothersome. I was in New York City near the Empire State Building on Sept. 11, and I’ll never forget how drunk I got that night. I just wanted to be numb because I couldn’t process how the world had changed that day. In sobriety, there have been a few moments when it seemed like war was inevitable and that can be a little overwhelming. I’ve seen people in sobriety who seem like their recovery is threatened because of political elections, or the various debt ceiling debacles we’ve had over the years, or countless other things. I’ve been sober long enough now that there have been a few significant economic downturns where people—me included—start panicking about the state of the world. It’s heavy stuff.

Then there is the next level of stuff, like your job or raising kids. Even if you’re really good at your job… do you actually have control over whether you get laid off, or the business goes under, or another business takes over your company? Usually, the answer is no. Even if you’re the CEO of a company, there’s a lot that is beyond how far your arms can reach.

And then with something like raising kids, I’ve learned the hard way that you do the best you can and you have to trust the universe. Will my kids inherit my addiction issues? Will some other kid talk to them about sex or drugs or Santa Claus before they’re ready? Will they end up with good husbands or wives or want to stay single or find a good job where they’re treated right? You can go on and on and on, and the answer remains, you’re responsible for the effort, not the outcome.

So after I read about the possibility of a Valentine’s Day asteroid wiping out the world, I went from laughing to being scared to laughing again, and it’s because there is something incredibly beautiful about the vastness of the world and its unpredictability. I have found that once I accept that almost everything is out of my control, there is a sense of relief. I feel like that weight is off my back, and it’s on me to try to get better at trusting the universe.

And my other thought was just to stay present, and to plan a helluva good Valentine’s Day 2045, the year before the asteroid hits!

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 AA member described a distinguished, heavy-drinking military friend as "standing at the bar, head and shoulders above the crowd, fearing nothing but closing time."

(Credit: AA Grapevine, December 2005, 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 we read “To Employers” from the Big Book, and the biggest thing that hit me was a reminder how hard it must have been to try to get sober and keep your job in 1940, or 1950, or 1960, or 1970… basically for most of the time that 12-step recovery has existed.

That part of the book is really good and helpful, and I bet it played a part in the evolution of the way work places treat alcoholics and addicts. It’s written really well, and it’s written well ahead of its time when it describes the alcoholic and how to interact with an alcoholic. But it was written 80 years ago, and the world was so different then.

I’ve been sober since 2008, and even in that time span of 14-plus years, I’ve seen huge changes. So it made me realize that I don’t think that there has never been a better time to get sober than 2023. That might sound like a wild thing to say, but here are six reasons why I think it is true.

—1. Employment

After we read that passage the other night, people shared about some of the laws that have been passed over the years that give legal protection to employees. That’s certainly come a longgg way since 1940, and I’d say legal protection has increased pretty dramatically just since 2008, when I got sober.

And setting aside actual legislation, I also think most companies have become more human about addiction. I do hear from time to time about certain employers that maybe cling to the old thinking of “Go to rehab this weekend and we’ll see you on Monday.” But not many. So that’s great.

—2. Societal understanding

I feel especially strong about this one. I think the concept of mental health is more embraced than ever, even from just a few years ago. So addiction empathy was bound to increase, too.

When I came into the rooms in 2008, awareness about the opioid crisis was just starting to explode. As I have written before, I was an active participant in the opioid crisis at its peak in the early to mid 2000s. And I can say that from about 2005-2015, I felt a specific spike in people learning about the dangers of pills, which then helped them better understand alcoholism, too.

And sadly, I felt like in my own life, I noticed more and more people who had someone in their lives who had developed an opioid problem. For whatever reason, with opioids, the idea that this is a disease that digs deep into people and requires treatment seemed to have sunk in a little better than alcohol. So I watched as some of the hardline “just stop, get your crap together and stop drinking” people saw the reality of addiction and gained a better understanding that addiction—any kind of addiction—isn’t as simple as poor willpower or a lack of morals.

—3. The cell phone

You could argue that with cell phones, buying and using drugs and alcohol has never been easier. Same with legalization of marijuana and gambling—it’s never been easier to ruin your life in the palm of your hand.

But I would also argue that I couldn’t imagine getting sober in 1945 and having anything close to the network that I have now if I could only call people if they were at their house near a rotary phone and I was at my house near a rotary phone, and they weren’t outside churning butter or playing bluegrass music or whatever people did back then.

I guess things got slightly better a few decades later when the answering machine was invented. But boy do I take for granted the idea that I could call 25 people today, leave them a voicemail or text them from wherever on earth that I am. In that context, I think the concept of sober connection is maybe the biggest improvement on earth.

That makes it even sillier then that sometimes my phone weighs 400 pounds and I cannot pick it up out of my back pocket…

—4. The inter-webs

I wrote last month about how much I have come around on Zoom meetings. Early on in the pandemic, I whined because they weren’t quite the same as in-person meetings. And they’re not, at least for me. I think my exchange rate right now is about 1.5 Zoom meetings equals 1 in-person meeting. So I am someone who needs about 4 in-person meetings a week, which translates to about 6 Zoom meetings. I usually end up doing about 5 meetings a week, three in-person and two on Zoom.

But holy crap, isn’t it nice that Zoom meetings exist? You can find one at any time of night or day any more, and then be logged on from your couch in 10 seconds. You can turn your camera off and sit there in your underwear if you want. I tried that at an in-person meeting recently and was asked to leave!

And beyond Zoom meetings, you can also email the Big Book to someone in five seconds. You can have sober literature at your fingertips immediately. Need meeting? You can find one in less than 30 seconds, and they usually give you directions to the meeting with one more click! If you’re looking for a specific topic, such as how to work through a resentment, you can search within sober literature and find some suggestions. In 1950, you could have to have the actual book, and then read it—who wants to do THAT?

—5. Help is all around

I had some nervousness putting this on the list because in my experience, BAD help is more available than ever, too. But there are more treatment facilities and more treatment specialists than ever, and I believe that means there are more GOOD places to go and people to see than ever before. I also happen to know several recovering people who put together 10-plus years of sobriety themselves and then got into the treatment field themselves, and that’s also a combination that wasn’t possible in 1940 or 1950 or even 1960. My guess is, that is something that has mostly come about in the last 30 years or so. I will say that at my rehab, out of the five people I dealt with, the counselor that I connected the most with was a woman who had 15 years of sobriety herself. I thought it helped to have a fellow addict talking to me.

—6. Aid for loved ones

Along the same lines, I think there is a better understanding than ever that addiction can be a family disease. So there are more Al-Anon meetings than ever, and programs like Al-Anon for loved ones of addicts. And I think there is a better understanding today than years ago from mental health professionals—psychiatrists, psychologists, marriage therapists and so on—about the impact and treatment possibilities when addiction is in the picture. I can’t proclaim to have been married and gone to a therapist with my wife in 1980, but my guess is that would have been a different kind of conversation back then.

OK, now that I put that list together, I need to sound like an excited pyramid scheme salesperson for a minute because I am feeling quite grateful. It really hit me hard the gift that today might be the greatest day in human history to try to get sober. There’s a case to be made that March 9, 2023, is a better day to find recovery than March 9, 1940, and March 9, 1950, and so on. And there’s a case to be made that March 9, 2023, is a better time to get sober than March 9, 2010, or March 9, 2020, or even March 5, 2023.

Wow, that an epiphany, and what a time to be alive. Of course, I wrote this entire thing myself with no editing or consultation with anybody, so the whole thing might be a bunch of b******t?!?!

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 came to AA because of back problems—my wife was on my back, my boss was on my back, my creditors were on my back…"

(Credit: AA Grapevine, December 2005, by William L. of Asheville, 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!

My wife was talking about an old friend of hers recently, and I didn’t know who she was referring to. Apparently we had used to hang out with her in the early 2000s, and my wife was rattling off facts about her. I had no recollection. Then, she finally said, “Remember she had that horrible hip injury from a car accident and she told all of us about it at dinner one night, and then you started calling her hippy?”

Ugh. Now I remembered her, and I cringed at myself. What a dick.

It brought up two big things for me. One is that I had a lot of relationships like this from during my drinking days, where we would hang out with people at bars and restaurants and I would be blasted the whole time. I’m not sure it would be fair to the other people to call them friends in those situations. Who knows how many other shitty, mean nicknames were handed out?

The second thing is that it reinforces, yet again, the difference between not drinking and drugging any more, and actually growing along spiritual lines. Can you even imagine the person who hears about a terrible hip injury and subsequent surgery and decides, “You know what, I will call you Hippy!”? I don’t want to be that guy any more.

I’ve tried just being me, without any drugs or alcohol but also with zero maturation. I especially had trouble with that when I was doing standup all the time, because standup requires a certain level of loud obnoxiousness and a desire to perform that can seep into your real life. All of a sudden I would find myself at the grocery store busting somebody’s chops and realize that I was doing a roast when nobody asked for that. What it showed me is that I still have that side of me that can be domineering and in-your-face and condescending, and that I don’t really like that side of me. I don’t mind it if I am doing a comedy act for 10-15 minutes in front of a crowd that signed up to attend a place where people get on stage and are rowdy. I just don’t want to turn my office cubicle or the cereal aisle at the grocery store into that stage, too.

I was a happy drunk, so I didn’t get into fistfights all the time. But I definitely turned into Howard Stern and would start goofing on people, asking inappropriate questions, probably some flirting… and I usually did it all in front of my wife. I can’t tell you how many mornings I would wake up and my wife would say, “Man, I wish you wouldn’t ask people about their sex life” or “Why do you have to make fun of people all night?”

I used to wave her off. “What was the big deal?” I thought. “It’s all in good fun.”

Maybe it was fun. I honestly don’t know. People generally didn’t seem to be mad at me the next time I hung out with them, and I didn’t pick up on too many that avoided hanging out with us in the future. But I can say for sure that I would be mortified if I saw myself acting like that now. Even if people are laughing and having a good time, I really try to live a life where I don’t mock people and pick at them and come up with hilarious nicknames about their car accident injuries.

Goddamn, I hate even saying that in retrospect. Arghhhhh… live and learn, 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:

A drunk was driving down the street. He was nervous and anxious because he was due to appear in court, but couldn't find a parking place. Raising his eyes to the heavens, he cried, "God, take pity on me. If you find me a parking place, I will go to church for the rest of my life, I will be kind to my family, and I will give up drinking."

Miraculously, a parking place appeared immediately. The drunk again looked up and said, "Never mind. I found one."

(Credit: AA Grapevine, December 2005, by Dennis H. of Flagstaff, Arizona)

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 stumbled upon an interesting piece in Discover Magazine over the weekend, and I included the LINK HERE.

To summarize quickly, a massive study found that 12-step recovery works better than other forms of addiction treatment. As someone who is a big fan of 12-step recovery, that was music to my ears. But I also am not someone cheering for 12-step recovery like it’s my favorite sports team or anything. I personally think there are many different ways to get sober or participate in harm reduction programs… they’re just not my preferred method for not drinking until I puke every day.

To unpack the study further, here are some details that stood out to me. This study was basically a study of other studies—it combined findings and data from 35 different studies into one big study. That big study included data from 145 different scientists and over 10,000 people with alcohol issues. That is a giant study!

With the 10,000 participants, they had been randomly assigned treatment plans, and then the scientists tracked success rates of the various treatment programs. Here’s a quote from John Kelly, the Harvard professor at the center of organizing this study. He said 12-step programs were “dramatically better when you’re talking about remission, sustained remission and complete abstinence over many years… It can also reduce craving, reduce impulsivity, and massively changes social networks. It can also increase spirituality, which can help people reframe stress and find meaning and purpose.” 

There were a lot of interesting things in that quote. I have found 12-step recovery almost completely eliminated cravings, and I love what it has done to help me with impulsivity. When I first got sober, I had no alcohol or drugs in my system and yet was still having a thought and then immediately doing it, with no ability to pause. That’s not the case any more, and I am grateful for that. Nobody needs a 45-year-old man roaming the streets with the impulse control of a preschooler.

I also like that he mentions a positive relationship between spirituality and finding meaning and purpose. I definitely had chunks of time in sobriety where I had very little spirituality and was not craving alcohol and drugs… but I was rudderless and confused and fearful and a genuine disaster to be around.

But my favorite part of that quote is the part where he says 12-step recovery “massively changes social networks.” As I often write in this newsletter, having a huge network of sober friends is something that has changed my life. I wrote last week about how America is in a friendship crisis, with about 1-in-8 people saying they have zero close friends. I have a lot more than that, and some days they save my life, and other days they just make it a lot better. It wasn’t easy—I started with zero human beings on earth who knew the truth about me in 2008, to now, and it took some grinding to learn how to be close to people. There were times—including some days right now—where I don’t want to hang out with anybody, don’t want to call anybody, don’t want any connection at all. But I’ve found it incredibly important to push through those moments as fast as possible.

One important caveat I would throw on here about this study… I’m not sure why anybody has to adhere to the idea of “choose one path.” This study sets up some specific choices of ways to get sober, and I think that’s how most people outside the rooms tend to think about sobriety: You either try 12-step programs, or you go a clinical psychiatrist, or you go to rehab.

My suggestion would be, why not try all of them? Most of us addicts got drugs and alcohol any which way possible, and if you had said to me that I should choose liquor stores or pharmacies or drug dealers, I would have said screw you, I am going to do whatever it takes to make myself feel better. I’d encourage people to apply the same logic to recovery. Why not go to rehab and start hitting 12-step meetings and get a sponsor and begin cognitive therapy?

I didn’t go through the study page-by-page, but I would love to know the success rates of people who tried five things all at once to get sober. Something tells me they probably did okay. The idea of “more is better” sure worked for me when I was an active addict. Why not when I am an active sober person?

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've been sober a while but I still occasionally get the shakes—chocolate, vanilla, or strawberry.

(Credit: AA Grapevine, August 2008, Scott M. of Staten Island, 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