LOL Sober

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For the entire pandemic, I s**t-talked Zoom meetings. I’d say things like:

“They’re not the same as in-person meetings.”

“It’s harder to hook up with newcomers, and the newcomer is the most important person at any meeting.”

“I miss walking into meetings with someone from the parking lot, and then out of the meeting and into the parking lot with another person.”

“It takes two or three Zoom meetings to equal the spirituality I get from one actual meeting.”

It was all true: Those are some of the best parts of in-person meetings. And I do need to say how incredibly valuable community is for a recovering addict, and I build better community with people that I hug and say hi to in person.

However… I might need to make amends to Zoom meetings. Is there a Mr. or Mrs. Zoom that I can apologize to? Because Zoom meetings are pretty awesome. Part of my bad-mouthing of Zoom meetings was also some “good ol days” b******t, where I am remembering the past with a fondness that might be a little overblown. Trust me, if I went back in time to February 2020 and talked to myself about the local in-person meeting scene, I bet I would have been moaning and groaning about a bunch of stuff. In recovery, we often say, “I won’t regret the past nor shut the door on it,” and perhaps in this case I should be saying, “I don’t regret the past nor shut the door on it… nor salivate over a rose-colored reality that didn’t actually exist.”

In fact, I recently caught myself logging onto a Zoom and thinking about a few things that in-person meetings can’t provide. Stuff like:

“It’s 10:30 pm on the East Coast and the last meeting in my state ended an hour-and-a-half ago.”

“I’m sick of the same people saying the same things at the same meetings in my town, and I don’t have many other options.”

“I don’t like that one guy who I see at meetings. He rubs me the wrong way, but I always see him.”

“I am really crunched for time, so I can’t get across town to the meeting.”

Guess what? Zoom can take care of a lot of those problems. There are Zoom meetings 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If you wake up at 3 am with a craving, or it’s 3 pm and your work day went off the rails, it takes 10 seconds to find a Zoom meeting.

If you’re struggling with personalities in the actual rooms, you can log onto a Zoom with a bunch of people you’ve never met before, and you don’t necessarily have to meet again. I especially enjoy hearing people talk that I have never heard before, and Zoom is a good solution to that.

And wow, for convenience, logging onto a 7 pm meeting at 6:59 and logging off at 8:00 is awesome sometimes. I also like if you gotta run to the bathroom or answer one of your kid’s questions, you can either bounce from the meeting and rejoin five minutes later, or mute yourself and turn your camera off and take care of business.

So, as with most things, I am trying to have balance in my recovery. The truth is, Zoom meetings are a tool none of us had for the first 80 years of trying to get sober. Now we do. I should be thankful and appreciative of that!

I try to hit 2-3 in-person meetings and 2-3 Zoom meetings per week. I have found that to be the right mix of principles and personalities, and it’s nice to have a few evenings where a meeting is literally 60 minutes long and I never leave my recliner.

So, Mr. or Mrs. Zoom, if you want to just let me know what I can do to make this right, I would be happy to do that! Your meetings are a fantastic part of the foundation of my sobriety!

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

HEARD AT MEETINGS: “The closest I ever got to a 4.0 in college was my blood/alcohol level.”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, July 2002, Dave S. from Ithaca, New York)

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

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

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

I had a slow work time over the holidays and into the new year. I am a writer for a living, so my job now isn’t 9-to-5. Sometimes it is absolutely frantic for 10 days and then it is quiet for a week, then it is medium-level busy for three days, then slow for 10 more days. I’m in a slower period right now.

That sounds great, right? And it is. Every time my life is hectic, I find myself saying, “Man, I really need some peace and solitude.” And when I get that break, I have no complaints at first. I go to the gym, go in to have lunch with my second-grader at her elementary school, scoop the cats’ litterboxes, stay on top of whatever work stuff comes along, take a nap, watch sports, catch up on TV shows—it’s pretty awesome and I feel that every day.

But… I also felt like crap quite a bit. Sluggish. Rudderless. Looking for something to light a fire under my ass. I think that’s the addict in me. Half of being an active drug addict and alcoholic is the actual getting high part; the other half is the hunt for “dry goods,” and then the coverup afterward. In addition to the high, there’s a lot of adrenaline and mystery and high-wire acts that comes along with active addiction. If that sounds like a terrible shitshow, it is. But some of us love the shitshow. I’m guessing there are a lot of people out there nodding their heads. I can’t tell you how many sober people I have met over the years who handle boredom just about as badly as busy times.

It reminds me of a quote in the movie Heat, a 1995 classic directed by Michael Mann with Al Pacino, Robert De Niro and a bunch of other stars. Cops are onto De Niro’s bank robbery gang, and De Niro and Co. know it. But they have a big job lined up and are deciding whether to walk away, or go for it. De Niro asks Tom Sizemore’s character if he wants to bail or go through with it. Sizemore’s character, Michael, finally says, “For me, the action is the juice.” He votes to do the bank heist because bank heists are in his bloodstream. He certainly does them for the money. But he wants the thrill, too.

And I still find myself wanting the thrill. I don’t want to chase drugs and alcohol, and I don’t want to rob any banks. I don’t want to do anything illegal or dumb or unsafe. But I still feel a pang to do something exciting, to have something looming on the horizon that will fill me up with electricity. I’m one of those people that might complain about being frantically busy at work, or having to drive my family eight hours in a minivan… but I complain worse when there is nothing going on. The action is the juice, even if it’s a shitshow.

That’s not good. I’m far enough into sobriety that I should probably handle free time better. There is something beautiful and essential about having nothing to do for four hours, and nothing to fill up those four hours. I gotta think more about how to sit in my backyard on a warm spring day and just soak in the sound of the birds and the brightness of the sunlight. It’s a beautiful thing but it’s going to take me awhile.

In the meantime, though, there is a lot of buzz about a Heat sequel coming from Michael Mann. Maybe that will come along and when life slows down, I’ll just watch that 65 times like I have with Heat.

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 speaker was going on and on. A man in the fifth row stood up and walked out. As the speaker was winding up, the man returned. After the meeting, the speaker asked the man where he went.

“I went for a haircut,” he said.

“A haircut? Why didn’t you get a haircut before the meeting started?”

The man replied, “I didn’t need a haircut before the meeting started.”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, June 2002, Jay C.)

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

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

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

I heard somebody say the other day at a meeting that if they could go back in time and hit a button to make sure they’d never become an alcoholic and a drug addict, they would. I found myself nodding along, because… well, isn’t it obvious? No kid ever thinks, “What do I want to be when I grow up? An astronaut? A musician? Ooh, no, I want to snort Vicodin all day!”

So in that sense, who wouldn’t get in the time machine and make sure they don’t ever go through all that pain and suffering for themselves and others? It’s an easy yes—cancel my drug addiction and alcoholism! Thank you! Have a great day, time machine!

I guess that would also mean I could drink and use drugs casually like a normal person, so that’s an added bonus, too. As I have said many, many times, I quit drinking and drugging because I couldn’t stop and it wrecked my life. I didn’t quit because I hated it. I hated what it did to me, so if I am climbing in a time machine to delete my addiction issues, I guess occasional drinking and drugging would be a perk.

(Quick aside, though: I am reminded of an old recovery joke, which is: If I could drink and drug like a normal person, I’d do it every day! I almost can’t fathom a scenario where I am not a drug addict and alcoholic, and I just have two beers every Friday night and that’s it. I mean… I just can’t even imagine it.)

But as I nodded along, I also started to think about what would happen to my recovery if all of my addiction got wiped out. In that scenario, I would guess that by wiping out the addiction, I also wipe out the recovery.

So, do I ever work on myself? Do I ever examine the way I process resentments? Do I ever consider character defects, and how to properly say sorry to people, and how to take inventory on my behaviors on any single day? Do I ever overhaul what I think it means to be a good friend? Do I ever learn that there is a difference between lying and telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? Do I ever try to eliminate people pleasing?

Probably not. It took a lot for me to get to my bottom, which caused me to realize I can’t just stop the alcohol and drugs, I need to start a new life, with new attitudes, new behaviors, new opinions, new everything. I think I might be a better dad, husband, worker, neighbor, son, brother, everything because of how bad it got. Without that, what would have caused me to want to overhaul my life?

With all of that in mind, believe it or not, my answer to whether I would hit the button to eliminate my addictions is… no. I wouldn’t change a thing. I certainly wouldn’t choose for how ugly it got, but I also wouldn’t give back the wisdom I have gained over the years. So I will take the really bad because of the really good.

Now, do I want to tell my mom and my wife and my bosses that I am super happy about the hell they went through because of the joy that’s now in my life? Uh, no. But I will share it with you all!

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:

Hoping to commune with nature, two boozers went on a camping trip. But by nightfall, the mosquitoes were so bad, they retreated into the tent and started drinking. Finally, one poked his head out to see how things were going and saw a swarm of brilliant fireflies.

“We’re done for!” he cried to his buddy. “They’re coming after us with flashlights.”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, May 2002, Chris B. from Columbia, 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!

I just got done watching the Hulu TV show, “Fleishman is in Trouble,” and one of the main themes of the show was “you gotta put the oxygen mask on your own face before you can help others.” It was said multiple times on the show, by multiple characters. That’s also something I have heard quite a few times in recovery.

It got me thinking that about 95 percent of the time, I have found that to be true. But with the other 5 percent, I’ve found that that thinking can sometimes be problematic.

Let me back up and give a quick review of the show. I really liked it. It’s based on a novel, and it digs into the aftermath of a divorce, then it becomes a meditation on love and relationships. I won’t say much more about the plot, but I thought the show was quite good. If I made a top-10 list of the best shows I watched this year, I think I would have considered it but ultimately put it in the 15-20 range. I thought there were some storytelling issues that held it back a little bit—specifically, I thought the narration over top of the show didn’t quite work. Overall, though, it’s definitely worth checking out.

As I said, one of the main points that characters make in the show is that you have to take care of yourself first so that you can take care of others later. That phrase—put the oxygen mask on your face first—is something I’ve heard many, many times over the years in sobriety, and it is something that I agree with. I really do believe in that idea and I have seen the repercussions of not doing that. I’ve seen people who have invested more time in getting others sober than themselves, and it begins to impact their sobriety. I definitely have done that kind of thing, where I am over-investing in other peoples’ sobriety and then experiencing ups and downs based on how they’re doing. I’ve found it to be a dangerous way to operate in recovery if you do it for long stretches of time. I need to make sure my recovery is in the best shape possible, then reach out my hand to help others. I haven’t had it work out well in reverse, where I put the oxygen masks on a bunch of other people, then hope I can find my own oxygen mask.

So for the most part, I love that concept of putting on your own oxygen mask first. But let me tell you the dangerous side to that phrase. It involves rationalizing what I will call an expanded definition of that phrase. I’ll give you an example that’s not quite true but is rooted in some truth.

Let’s say you have a hard week of work and feel wiped out and edgy on a Friday afternoon. So you go to your husband or wife and say, “Hey, I had a brutal week. I am spiritually empty right now. I need some time to just unwind with some peace and quiet, so I was thinking about hitting a movie tonight by myself. Could you take the kids to their activities and feed them dinner and put them to bed?”

Your spouse says, “Absolutely, go for it,” and so you do. It’s a lot of fun and very relaxing. You do whatever you want, when you want it for a few hours.

The next morning, your spouse asks you how you’re doing and you say you feel okay… but you’re also sensing that there’s an opportunity to maybe fudge the truth a little. It was pretty cool to just do whatever you felt like without any responsibility, wasn’t it? The self-pity valve has been turned on, big time. “The movie was great,” you say. “Thank you so much for running things at home. But I’m still out of whack. This week crushed me. I think I just need to unwind and watch football on the couch today.”

All of a sudden, you’re trying to spend Day No. 2 in fake struggle mode while doing whatever you want, when you want it.

You see the issue there? I’ve found myself a few times over the years corrupting the definition of that phrase. The oxygen mask idea is that there is a plane crash coming and everybody is trying to figure out how to breath. I don’t think it applies to weaseling a golf outing with buddies or sleeping in every day for your self care!

So I guess my point is that I need to be 100 percent sure of my motives when I am thinking about self care. It’s pretty easy to wield that phrase like a weapon to get out of things that I’d rather not do. I need to put the oxygen mask on myself first, for sure. But I also need to make sure anybody even needs an oxygen mask in the moment.

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: “One reason I don’t drink anymore is that I want to know when I am having a good time.”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, March 2002, Dick L. from New Westminster, British Columbia)

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 youngest daughter is in second grade, and her elementary school has an awesome open-door policy that parents can come in and have lunch with their kids any time they want. You go in and get yourself a little tray and then a plate of elementary-school pizza or popcorn chicken and then you walk out into this sea of tiny voices.

The room is always so happy. There are zero conversations about in-laws overstaying their welcome or upcoming layoffs at their workplace or inflation or overdue bills or anything else that might wreck an adult’s day. In there, the conversations are about soccer practice and magic tricks and how to make slime in your dining room. In other words, it’s almost 100 percent joy, with no living in the wreckage of your future or your past. It’s 20 minutes of 100 8-year-olds being completely present, and it is a beautiful thing.

Anyway, there’s one kid who always has some kind of pasta salad dish that his parents pack for him. And for the first 10 minutes of lunch, this kid performs surgery on his lunch. He carefully sifts through the pasta salad and he pulls out every carat, every piece of chopped broccoli, every pea, everything he doesn’t like. And at about the 11th minute, when every gross part of his lunch has been removed, he devours the whole thing. Every single bite.

I bring this up because I have been thinking a lot about some of the many awesome sober people I’ve met over the years who come into recovery, then find one or two things they don’t like, and then they bounce. Some of them I have never seen again. I have no idea if they’re muddling through life still trying to manage their drugs and alcohol, or if they found another way to get sober, or if they’re dead. As I write this, I can think of a few guys who I know died of the disease… all because they didn’t like one or two parts to 12-step recovery.

It’s so tragic. It’s so unfortunate to see somebody let one nitpick prevent them from getting into recovery, but it happens all the time. I think of that kid picking out the things he doesn’t like about his lunch, then smashing the rest of it, and I wish people could do that.

I certainly have had to do that. I’m pretty open about certain things in 12-step recovery not being for me, and that’s okay! In meetings, I constantly hear people—including me sometimes—saying take what you want and leave the rest. Seriously, recovery is a buffet. Fill your plate and leave everything else behind.

To be more specific, let me run through a list of things that have tripped me up in the past:

—God/religion/prayers: This is the No. 1 thing I have heard in my sober time, and it has bothered me before, too. I don’t normally say the Lord’s Prayer at meetings because I think it is a religious prayer, not a recovery prayer. And yes, 12-step recovery programs use the word God a lot. That used to bug me but it doesn’t any more because I think the 12-step programs do an awesome job of explaining how the definition of your higher power is whatever the f**k you want it to be. It doesn’t have to be the religion your parents shoved down your throat, or anything else. You pick! It breaks my heart when just those three letters—G-O-D—make people run from the chance to change their lives for the better.

—Specific people: Surprise, there might be a person (or three!) who make you roll your eyes at a meeting. I’ve found 12-step recovery to be the most delightful batch of people in the world, but of course there are some people who aren’t my cup of tea. I’m not going to act high and mighty on this one, because I have been sober for 14 years and for that entire time, I have come and gone from meetings if there is a personality in there that I don’t like. I try not to ever hate the person or bad mouth them or even be mad about it. I just find another meeting. I know people over the years who get hung up on one or two a******s and they throw out the baby with the bathwater. Hell, they throw out the baby, the soap, the bathtub, the loofahs, everything… all because of one person they don’t like.

—The type of meeting: I’ve seen people who bail on recovery because the way a specific meeting is set up. They say there are too many old-timers… or too much reading… or too many people… or not enough people… or it’s too cliquey… and on and on. Again, I have absolutely felt this way many, many times because I am sick of reading specific books, or I am not in the mood for the format of the meeting. I was going to a few meetings for awhile where we read from a step from the 12 and 12 every week, and I ended up reading each step maybe five or six times in one year. That was enough for me for a little while, so I have been picking different meetings since then to get a breather from the monotony. I also used to go to a popcorn style meeting where whoever shares picks the next person, and I didn’t like getting picked if I didn’t want to share, and I didn’t like not getting picked if I did want to share. Guess what? There was no reason to bail on recovery. I just found other meetings where you could raise your hand.

Okay, I’ll stop there. The reason this pains me so much is because that is not how I drank. I tried every combination humanly possible, over and over and over again, to be able to continue drinking, which I bet is pretty common among my fellow drug addicts and alcoholics. I specifically remember how during my freshman year of college, I should have worn a lab coat all year because I was doing science experiments. Beer before liquor… cheap beer and expensive liquor… expensive beer and cheap liquor… eating bread before I drank so I could drink more later… drinking on an empty stomach so I would get drunk faster and save money… shot-gunning two beers then immediately smoking a cigarette… I tried everything to get the perfect high. Why won’t I do that sometimes in sobriety?

I’m glad that as of right now, on Jan. 10, 2023, I am in a head space more like that kid in the cafeteria, taking out all the vegetables but still enjoying a delicious lunch!

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: “My drinking could be divided into three stages: impulsive, compulsive, and repulsive.”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, February 2002, Gary from St. Catherine’s, 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!

There’s a very funny joke from an old Grapevine that goes like this:

The best time to eat crow is when it is still warm.

I find that quite hilarious, and very true. I would, however, say that “still warm” doesn’t mean you can’t spend a few minutes contemplating the best way to say sorry about something. And you could probably call your sponsor and pray a little bit to make sure you are going to apologize in the right way, at the right time, and the crow would still be at least room temperature by the time you were ready to make amends.

Let me tell you the way that played out recently in my life. My wife is someone who is constantly telling me to be careful because of wild new financial scams that are happening in the world. So she’s told me about checking the gas station pumps to make sure there isn’t something over the credit card slot that will steal my info… she’s told me to guard my wallet at airports because people can scan your wallet if it’s thin and steal your credit card info… And she recently told me that there’s been an increase in chiefs stealing checks out of the mail, washing them and then writing them out to themselves to steal your money.

When she told me that last one a few weeks ago, I rolled my eyes and said, “Ah, sure, I’ll be careful about that. And also, you said I should maybe start wearing a metal helmet around my ass to protect my wallet from people at the airport, too, right?” She didn’t laugh.

Now, I am basing that sarcasm on being 45 years old and never having my identity stolen. I’ve never had any checks washed or credit cards scanned by the Spirit Airlines departures area. I actually can’t think of anybody I know who’s had any of that happen, either. So I have always chalked it up to the "a guy on Facebook said…” genre of fear-mongering and conspiracy.

And as far as sobriety goes, I have really worked hard in recovery to not live in the wreckage of the future. Yes, I could get cancer. Yes, there could be a terrorist attack. Yes, my identity could get stolen. Yes, climate change could cause the Atlantic Ocean to wash my whole house away. That stuff all used to make me scared, and make me feel hopeless, and make me want to numb the pain with drugs and alcohol. That kind of fear is real, and I feel some it on a regular basis, and I push myself hard to live where my feet currently are, not where they were, or where they will be.

But… that’s all rationalizing away what is a pretty clear case of contempt prior to investigation. I don’t need to react to my wife the way that I did. Sure, maybe I don’t need to panic every time some dude who just came over from MySpace to post on Facebook that hackers are shining sonogram machines into the sides of houses and somehow stealing Social Security Numbers from the street. (Quick note: I made that up. Nobody is doing that as far as I know, and I hope I didn’t just introduce an insane conspiracy theory into the world.)

But maybe I don’t need to be dismissive and a jerk when someone mentions that kind of thing to me, right?

OK, so let me get to the reason I am telling you this story. This week, I saw on my online bank statement that I had been charged $32 for an overdraft because I had sent someone a check for $5,000. The problem is, I hadn’t sent anybody a check for $5,000. When I looked at my account, I found three checks from six weeks ago that I mailed on the same day, in the same blue mailbox, and none of them had been cashed.

When I called the bank, they pulled up a visual of the check and said, “This looks like a clear case of check washing. Someone must have stolen the mail, cleaned the checks and rewritten them.”

I got it all straightened out and wiped from my account. My wife would never even know it happened, and I would never have to eat s**t. But I consider moments like that to be valuable humility reminders, and some would even say those are times when your higher power steps in to right-size you. So I went downstairs and told my wife that we’d had some checks washed but that everything was fine.

The look on her face… I’m not sure what the perfect word would be to describe it. Let’s just say she was the happiest check-washing victim in the history of humanity. She LOVED this moment and literally said, “See, I told you so. You were so dismissive of me and you made fun of me…”

I started to argue with her that for every 100 of these supposed scams, very few are real and are worth freaking out about. She argued back, playfully, and I eventually thought of that Grapevine joke—that the best time to eat crow is when it is still fresh. So I said to her, “You know what, you’re right. I definitely don’t need to wave you off when you raise a concern. I’m sorry, it won’t happen again.”

I got a little aggravated for a moment because she still seemed so happy to be dunking on me. But I didn’t say anything, and I thought, hey, if I am going to stand under the rim, I am going to get dunked on. So my belly is full right now with piping-hot crow, and there is something incredibly funny and deserved about it.

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

A woman was driving home from a conference when she saw an old acquaintance, obviously down on her luck, thumbing for a ride. So the woman stopped the car, and the hitchhiker got in, smelling of gin.

After they’d been riding a mile or so, the rummy noticed a brown bag on the front seat. “What’s in the bag?” she asked.

“It’s a bottle of wine. I got it for my husband,” the driver replied.

The drinker fell silent for a minute and then said, “Good trade.”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, February 2002, Frank C. from Omaha, Nebraska)

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

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

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

A few months ago, I was really bothered about something in my professional life. But I kept telling myself that it wasn’t a big deal. But I had decided it wasn’t a big deal, on my own, despite how it was making me feel. I didn’t share it with anybody in my sober network because it seemed too small for a 45-year-old adult who’s been sober as long as I have been.

I prayed about it, and I ended up remembering a lesson about humility that I had gotten from about 10 years ago that I really needed to remember in that moment. Here goes:

I went to a meeting at a treatment facility about a decade ago. There were maybe 40 people there. About 10 of those people, me included, had some sobriety and were coming into the facility just for the meeting. The other 30 were all people in treatment. So lots of people with 3 days sober, 10 days sober, 1 month sober.

The chairperson started the meeting by announcing that he was there in place of the normal chairperson, Hank (not his real name). He proceeded to tell the story of why Hank wasn’t there. Hank, it turns out, had relapsed and was holed up in a motel with other addicts, all drinking and doing meth. He described the scene in the motel room, and it involved drugs, alcohol, sex workers, dirty rooms, old food containers… just all-out debauchery. He said the topic for the day was going to be don’t drink or drug, no matter what, and he spoke at length about how the bottom looks, which involved lots of details about Hank.

In the moment, I was moved by the story because it was so vivid. But I did feel a little pang about somebody sharing someone else’s relapse story, and it’s not like it was a relapse story from five years ago—Hank’s relapse was happening right then. But I didn’t think much else about it until he stopped speaking and opened it up to the group.

Almost immediately a guy raised his hand and said he was celebrating 14 days sober, and that he appreciated the speaker but that he thought it was not cool to have put Hank’s situation out there like that. He spoke for another two minutes or so and he wasn’t gentle and he also wasn’t mean—he actually had a lot of humility in his voice as he reprimanded a dude with a lot more sobriety than him. He had a difficult message to the replacement chairperson, and as he shared, I watched the speaker’s face to try to figure out what he was thinking and what he would say.

At the end of the guy’s share, the speaker said something unexpected. “Thanks for sharing,” he said. “I need to really think about what you said, because I think there’s a good chance you’re right. I’m going to pray on it and try to explore what my motives were in sharing that story, and if I need to make amends, I will. I really appreciate you bringing that to my attention.”

I think about that exchange a lot, especially when I have times that I am thinking I am too wise to be vulnerable. There were so many powerful things that happened in that exchange. One is that a newcomer had such fearlessness and clarity to be able to call out somebody with much more sober time.

Another is the chairperson. I think he deserves a lot of credit for in the moment being able to admit he might have been wrong. I still have the urge to duck and cover during criticism and then try to defend myself, without pausing to reflect upon what I am being called out for. In a situation like that, where it’d be easy to go straight to “What the hell do you know? I’ve been sober for five years and blah blah blah.”

But instead, that dude said maybe he was wrong and that he was going to spend some time sitting with it. I never saw the chairperson again, but my feeling as I left that night was that he meant it and he was probably going to end up coming to the conclusion that it wasn’t his place to air out Hank’s business like that.

So I was thinking about the amount of humility shown by everybody involved that night, which could have gotten ugly. I have to always remember that vulnerability isn’t the same as weakness—one of the biggest mud puddles I step in on a regular basis is thinking that I am too old, with too much recovery time, to be thrown off by so-called small things or “luxury problems.” The truth is, if a luxury problem is causing you to think about drinking or to act like you’re already drunk, it’s not a luxury problem—it’s just a problem.

I put an image at the top of the written post of a meme where Leonardo DiCaprio is making a toast with the words “I take great pride in my humility,” and as funny as that phrase is, it’s kind of true for me. But to take great pride in my humility, I gotta share things, big or small, when I am off the spiritual beam.

Humility, humility, humility, humility, humility…

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 is leaving a well-stocked lake carrying two buckets of fish and an empty whiskey bottle when the game warden stops him.

“Do you have a license to fish here?” the warden asks.

“No, sir,” the man replies, “these are my pet fish.”

“Pet fish?” the warden exclaims.

“Yes, sir,” the fellow explains. “Every night I take these fish down to the lake and let them swim around for awhile. Then I whistle and they jump back into their buckets, and I take ‘em home.”

“That’s a bunch of hooey!” says the warden. “Fish can’t do that!”

The guy looks at the game warden for a second and says, “Here, I’ll show you.”

“Okay,” says the warden, “I’ve got to see this.”

So they walk back to the edge of the lake, and the man pours the fish into the water. Then he stands back and waits. Several minutes go by, and the warden gets impatient. “Well?” he asks.

“Well what?” replies the drunk.

“When are you going to call them back?” the warden demands.

“Call who back?” asks the man.

“The fish!” says the warden.

“What fish?” says the drunk.

(Credit: AA Grapevine, January 2002, Gini L. from McMinnville, Oregon)

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

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

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

A few days ago, I was in the bedroom and was going to jump in the shower. So I closed the door, but right before I was going to strip down and get in the shower, I remembered I had to pay a bill online. So I sat down in just shorts on the bed, opened up my laptop and paid the bill.

At the exact second when I closed my laptop, my wife came in the room and got an alarmed look on her face. “What’s going on in here?” she said. She wasn’t mad. Just a little mystified.

So was I. I said, “Uh, I had to do something on the computer.”

Her eyebrows were scrunched up a little bit but I was totally confused. Then it hit me. I had gone in the bedroom, closed the door, took off most of my clothes, then popped open my work laptop on the bed. When she walked in, I closed the computer up and stood up from the bed. You can probably imagine what her assumption was.

That was the end of it, but when I got in the shower, I thought about the whole thing and how nice it was to have the truth be the same thing that you’re saying is the truth. This is still relatively new for me. In active addiction, you couldn’t believe a word I said. If I wasn’t lying to cover my tracks, I was embellishing my work performance, overstating my happiness, leaving out details about why I didn’t show up for something, and so on. It was all one big house of cards to keep that lifestyle going. Even before I really went off the deep end of addiction, I was often completely full of s**t. So it’s a muscle I worked for a long time in my life.

Then I went to rehab, and I realized I had to tell the truth if I expected to stay sober. I had to tell the truth to my wife, my kids, my sponsor, my boss, everybody. And I didn’t always like that, because sometimes the truth sucks. Sometimes I would whiff on a work project, and the urge was to try to blame someone else, or say the power went out at my house, or come up with something else that numbs a little bit of the sting. But luckily I found that it wasn’t sustainable to live my life trying to avoid the sting of the truth. Instead, I started to try to figure out how to feel the sting, then move on from it.

I gotta say, as I stood in that shower the other day, I had a moment of gratitude that the story I tell every day is usually true. I have mentioned before I caught myself a few times in recent years trying to cover my tracks a bit, and it left a yucky feeling that I was proud to have. That meant I have a radar now that detects my bad actions and lets me know about it. In that instance, I had told my wife I would be home at 6 from work once, then I stopped and got gas and a soda and just sat in my car and screwed around on my phone. On the drive home, I hit 60 seconds of traffic on the highway. When I walked in at 6:40 and my wife said, “Hey, what happened? I thought you left at 5:30 and would be home at 6?”

My first reaction was to blurt out, “I hit a bunch of traffic on the highway.”

She nodded her head and accepted that answer. Was that answer true? Uh, sort of. But not really. I left out the part that stings—the part where I have to fess up to screwing around on my phone instead of coming home when I said I would. And that sat with me a little bit for a few days. I didn’t like the feeling of lying, even if it was hidden in some truth.

So looking back on that day with my laptop, it felt pretty good to actually be paying a bill instead of whatever scenario she had in her head!

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:

One drunk says to another: “How many moons do you see tonight?”

And she replies, “In which row?”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, January 2002, Dave S. from Ithaca, New York)

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!

Have you heard Taylor Swift’s new song, “Anti-Hero?” If you have ears and a brain that can process sound, you probably have. It’s one of those pop songs right now where you can be in the car and switch radio stations four times and it’ll be on three of them at that exact moment. It’s everywhere. Here is a link to it on YouTube.

I was struck by the basic message of the song, which is about looking in the mirror and realizing that you’re involved in every one of your problems. Is every problem your fault? Nah. I’ve talked about how much I love the spiritual axiom that is in the Big Book where it says, “It is a spiritual axiom that every time we are disturbed, no matter what the cause, there is something wrong with us.” I personally think that is true about 99 percent of the time. But I also think there is 1 percent of the time where bad s**t happens and in those instances I would not tell that person whose house burned down or their dog got hit by a car that they should be looking in the mirror to figure out what’s wrong with them.

But most of the time, a look in the mirror is probably worthwhile. Which brings me back to the Taylor Swift song, because she’s zeroing in on that same general message. What I like about the song is that she’s flagging behaviors and attitudes in her life and raising her hand to take accountability. I don’t even think she’s saying she is 100 percent responsible for those problems. Just that she needs to own up to some portion of it.

This section specifically speaks to me:

I should not be left to my own devicesThey come with prices and vicesI end up in crisis (tale as old as time)I wake up screaming from dreamingOne day I'll watch as you're leaving'Cause you got tired of my scheming(For the last time)

It's me, hi, I'm the problem, it's meAt tea time, everybody agreesI'll stare directly at the sun but never in the mirrorIt must be exhausting, always rooting for the anti-hero

I like the general idea here that it’s hard to look in the mirror. I’ve found that in recovery. Part one of looking in the mirror was relatively straightforward: I had a significant drug and alcohol problem and had to clean up that wreckage. There was nothing to debate about it. It was clearly my issue that I needed to get help for.

But part two has been trickier. There have been issues in my life where I am responsible for 50 percent of the problem and somebody else is responsible for 50 percent. But in those circumstances, I need to throw my hand up, like Tay-Tay does in “Anti-Hero,” and own my portion of that. Then I need to accept what happens next. Sometimes people say, “Ah, thanks for saying that,” and nothing else, and you have to be comfortable that they’re not going to own their part of it.

When that happens, it’s some next level recovery stuff. It’s so easy to get pissed and tell them to fess up to what they botched. Luckily, I have found that most of the time, when you say, “It’s me, hi, I’m the problem, it’s me” in that type of situation, the other person or people usually chimes in that they could have done their part in a better way, too. Not always. But quite often.

And when that doesn’t happen, I usually am able to shrug my shoulders these days. That other person being unwilling to say “It’s me, hi, I’m the problem, it’s me,” is ultimately their problem, and it probably causes them pain the same way it causes me pain when I refuse to take responsibility.

I’ll tell you this much, though: I’m actually pretty excited now to have a song to listen to that can get me in the mood to eat some s**t. It’s like a soundtrack for my life! Thanks, Taylor Swift!

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:

Desperate, a drunk goes into her doctor’s office and pleads, “Doctor, doctor, you’ve got to help me! I can’t keep my hands from shaking.”

“How much do you drink?” asks the doctor.

“Not much at all,” she answers. “I spill most of it.”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, December 2001, Dave S. from Ithaca, New York)

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 daily inventory. And a guy raised his hand who said he asked his sponsor how he should do a Tenth Step inventory every day. And his sponsor told him, “Pretend your entire day was recorded. If you sat down with your spouse or your sponsor and watched the whole tape, what are the parts you wish you could fast forward past?”

I liked that a lot. It distilled down something that can feel complicated.

Sometimes I wrestle with the inventory work that recovery encourages. It’s good. It’s helpful. It’s greatly benefited me in helping to understand thought patterns and behaviors. But I also haven’t been bummed out when I stop doing it on a regular basis, because it can feel unrelenting. I remember some days where I felt like I was my own dog owner, smushing my own face into an accident I had on the kitchen floor.

But I liked that idea of thinking about it like instant replay. So I have been thinking about that a lot as I move through the day. It actually helps me in the moment because I’ll think to myself, “Now, would I want video of me driving 55 MPH in a 25 MPH zone played in front of my 17-year-old who just got her driver’s license?” The answer is no, and I’ll find myself slowing down the car. That kind of thing is the beauty of inventory work. It’s not so much that I throw penalty flags on myself at midnight for something I did at noon. That’s certainly been helpful to me in the past, to be able to accurately assess behaviors after the fact and think through the repercussions and how I feel about them.

But ideally, the goal is to not repeat things, right? So if I am able to think about it in the moment, and think it through in real time and adjust my behavior, that’s a huge win.

And lately, I haven’t had any days where I would be truly embarrassed if cameras had been following me around all day. I can’t think of too many times where I had an outburst or bad behavior that I would be ashamed of. Maybe it’s time for me to get my own reality show!

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 what they say, ‘In AA there’s a wrench for every nut.’”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, February 2001, 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