LOL Sober

If you want to subscribe to LOL Sober, hit the purple button below. I’m mostly publishing free pieces but I am hoping to generate a few bucks to pay for my web site and some other costs. Paid subscribers do have access to frequent premium pieces—such as THIS comedy special about my 10 favorite addiction/sobriety jokes!

When I was a freshman in college, I was just getting started on a drinking problem. I wouldn’t drink every night, but I wanted to. And I also wanted a girlfriend.

I met a fellow freshman who I really liked. She seemed lukewarm on me, but I kept inviting her to parties and she kept coming. At one point, I thought maybe I had worn her down enough to officially be considered boyfriend-girlfriend. And a big part of that was because we shared a mutual love of camping and the outdoors.

Just kidding. I hated the outdoors. I grew up in rural Pennsylvania but I never quite enjoyed nature like so many friends of mine. I didn’t love hunting or fishing, even though I had done quite a bit of both. And I would have rather slept in the laundry room at a Holiday Inn Express than outside in the nicest tent on earth. It just wasn’t for me.

But my potential girlfriend—we’ll call her Debbie—loved hiking. Loved looking at birds and trees and mountains. She practiced building fires and I practiced lighting cigarettes. It wasn’t a good match. And yet I completely pretended that I was Mr. Bass Pro Shops.

I bring this up on an addiction newsletter because I found phoniness to be a telltale sign that I was searching for something that was impossible to attain—I wanted something to fill the void in me, even a potential girlfriend who I had nothing in common with. I had all sorts of dating partners like that in my early days, where I just tried to immediately turn myself into something I wasn’t so that maybe they’d like me. That is dangerous territory for an aspiring alcoholic, because it’s the starter kit for living a life of lies.

In this case, I was trying to date Debbie when a new Lemonheads album came out. The Lemonheads were a great alternative rock band in the 1990s that I always enjoyed, and their new album had a song called “The Outdoor Type.” It was like they were singing the song to me. It was a cover of a song released a few years earlier, about an indoorsman who was pretending to be the outdoor type to date someone.

Let’s just say that freaked me out. I couldn’t believe someone had me pegged like that—the song was the perfect encapsulation of searching so hard for fulfillment from another person that you become a total fake.

I think about it now, at age 48, and how there is a certain amount of phoniness involved in the dating scene, no matter who you are. Everybody wears nicer clothes and makes sure their hair looks ok and they don’t have s**t stuck in their teeth if they are early on in the dating process. That’s pretty normal. But I think I would never dream of pretending to be a camping super-fan just to get somebody to like me any more.

I consider that a gift of sobriety—it took me a long time to figure out who I was, then how to live as that person, not the person that I think somebody else wants me to be. So I don’t think I ever want to go back to pretending that keg stands in the woods is my absolute favorite thing in the world!

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 but I am hoping to generate a few bucks to pay for my web site and some other costs. Paid subscribers do have access to frequent premium pieces—such as THIS comedy special about my 10 favorite addiction/sobriety jokes!

I was at the gym recently for about two hours, and for the first 90 minutes or so, I watched the end of an action movie, then several MMA fights and then a news show, which primarily focused on the war in Iran.

Then I went to the treadmill and climbed on to get in a run. I found myself a little jittery, and was hoping to run off whatever kind of bad energy I was feeling. I put on a TV show on my phone but then I thought, maybe I will run for a bit with no music, no TV, no cage fighting. Maybe the silence would be good for me.

So I did that, and it was fine. Then I glanced at the treadmill screen in front of me, and there was a stock image of a small creek running down through the woods. It was a blurry image, meant to just be the throwaway backdrop picture as you type in the speed and incline of your walk or run.

But I found myself staring at that image and feeling calm. I zoomed in my eyes on the water, and the rocks, and the greenness of the vegetation surrounding it. Next thing you know, I looked up and 10 minutes have gone by and I found myself much more peaceful.

So what is that about, exactly? Well, I don’t know, for sure, but my opinion is that with me, I swallow imagery and sounds all day that are fun and fine and entertaining. But they aren’t very nourishing. They don’t really do much for me other than entertain.

Let me be very clear: I like to be entertained. And I will not be eliminating fun podcasts so that I can listen to the soothing sounds of a babbling brook, and I will not be glueing a waterfall photo on the inside of my eyelids.

But that gym moment did remind me that I will become whatever I consume. If I wake up tomorrow aiming to be a spiritually fit, serene father, husband and neighbor, but then I listen to people scream at each other about the NBA MVP or the top 2028 presidential primary candidates, well, those two things do not add up to serenity. I’ve written in the past about the audio of life, and how our inputs are really never turned off any more—I pour music, podcasts, TV, the news, Instagram reels, whatever, directly into my ears, which then affects my thoughts, which then affect my actions. Those sounds matter.

And I would say the same thing about sights—what I look at all day will impact how I look at the people I care about. That means I need to seek out babbling brooks and quiet as much as I do UFC events and football games… though I am now intrigued by the idea of seeing how I would feel if I could merge having sports happen in the woods…

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 but I am hoping to generate a few bucks to pay for my web site and some other costs. Paid subscribers do have access to frequent premium pieces—such as THIS comedy special about my 10 favorite addiction/sobriety jokes!

I did some alcoholic math the other day, and it had been awhile. But I was reminded of perhaps my favorite slogan about what it means to be an addict: One is too many, and a thousand is never enough.

To summarize, if one is good, you better hide the rest, because I’m coming for it, whatever it is.

In this case, I am trying to lose some weight. My biggest vice is from about 8 pm to midnight. I’ll have a reasonable dinner and be cruising along, then the seal breaks and I absolutely crush some package of chips or cookies. If there are peanut butter cups within 40 miles of me, I will smell them and eat them, too.

Lately, I have been doing pretty well with having two small cookies right after dinner, then two cookies much later, right before I go to bed. I have a little bit of a snack, then I still have something to look forward to before I turn in for the night. If that sounds a little like the way I used to count drinks and pills, well, you’re not wrong.

I was doing quite well with that recently until I opened up the package the other night and found seven cookies left. Hmm, what to do? This is where my masters degree in alcoholic math kicked in. I thought to myself, if I eat two cookies now and two cookies later tonight, that leaves me with three. But three does me no good. What’s the point of three? I need four. If I have three left, I might as well have none, because I need four.

I decided to run some quick calculations. Let’s see… 7-2-2=3… but for tomorrow, that leaves 3-2-2, which equals -1 … yep, okay, I got the answer: I should just eat all 7 cookies. Like, right now.

And that’s what I did. I don’t know what happened to eating several cookies after dinner and then several closer to bedtime. But all seven went right down the hatch. This is exactly what I did with drugs and alcohol. I’d have one beer left sometimes, and think, what’s the point of one beer? I either need 24 of them, or 0. No in-between. I remember having one Vicodin once for like two days as I tried to round up more. I just kept thinking, why bother with one? I needed closer to the 1,000 mentioned in the slogan I said at the beginning.

But that left me in the same spot as I used to be when I was drinking and drugging: A look in the mirror where I wonder, geez, man, do you have no self-control? You just flushed an important goal of yours down the toilet, and what do you have to show for it? What is the real difference between four cookies and seven cookies? Is your self-esteem better? Are you a better husband or dad?

The answer is no! I just wanted the freaking cookies because they are delicious!

The thing that is a little tougher about food boundaries is that I have to eat. I didn’t have to drink 12 beers in two hours, or eat 45 Percocet in a day. In fact, those things were killing me. Cookies won’t kill me, or if they do, it will take awhile. Cookies haven’t almost cost me my job or gotten me arrested for being over the legal limit. With food, I have some wiggle room.

So I don’t need Cookie Rehab, or at least not yet. But hey, save me a seat if Cookie Rehab does exist!

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 called the Al-Anon hotline and said, “My husband just finished off a liter of vodka, passed out, and fell flat on the floor. I can’t wake him. I think he’s dead.”

The Al-Anon on duty tried to reassure her, saying in a calm, soothing voice, “Don’t get excited. First, let’s make sure that he’s really dead.”

There was a half-minute of silence, a gunshot, then the wife’s voice: “Okay, what do I do next?”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, March 2002, Wil H. from Arlington, Virginia)

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 but I am hoping to generate a few bucks to pay for my web site and some other costs. Paid subscribers do have access to frequent premium pieces—such as THIS comedy special about my 10 favorite addiction/sobriety jokes!

I had a recent conversation with someone who was wondering if they might have a drug or alcohol problem. This is a pretty regular occurrence for people in recovery, because I think many people wrestle with whether or not drinking or drugs are doing them any favors or someone they care about.

In this case, we had an awesome hour-long discussion and I explained my situation and how much a life of recovery has been great for me. I mentioned at the end of the call that I probably won’t ever bring the topic up with him again, unless he wants to talk more about it. He was confused by that, and I said, “I try to mind my own business. If you want to go further down the road of recovery, I’m available any time. If you aren’t interested, I’m never going to pester you.”

He seemed genuinely surprised by that. He asked me, “Why not?”

I couldn’t tell if he wanted me to recruit him or what, but I explained that my sobriety is my business, and his is his, if he even chooses recovery. I told him I learned a long time ago that if somebody doesn’t want sobriety, I’m wasting my time trying to convince them. And I told him that that was certainly the case with me—nobody could have convinced me to try 12-step recovery until I was ready.

My friend seemed to understand that. But I also got the sense that he wanted to be convinced, or at least talked into trying sobriety for awhile. I gently just reiterated that I don’t have to bring in new members or anything to keep my sobriety membership card, and that I’m there for him any time he reaches out.

It was a good conversation. But I could tell my MYOB (mind your own business) philosophy was a little confusing to him. So we talked about it some more later, and I just told him that when I mind my own business, I tend to get in a lot less trouble than when I am trying to fix others. That goes for sober people. That goes for work colleagues. That goes for bad drivers on the road. That goes for pretty much everybody and everything.

But I will say that I have to try to balance that MYOB idea with striving to be a warm person. I don’t ever want to turn a cold shoulder to anybody, or even give off that vibe. It’s really a delicate dance to have firm boundaries and also be a welcoming person. I’m not sure I always get that completely right, because it’s a pretty mirky line to draw. I want to be available for help without over investing in someone’s life who doesn’t need that from me.

Now that I think about it some more, it’s so funny that BYOB was such a part of my life for 30 years, and now I’m trying to hype up the idea of MYOB when it comes to not drinking.

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

HEARD AT MEETINGS: “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 but I am hoping to generate a few bucks to pay for my web site and some other costs. Paid subscribers do have access to frequent premium pieces—such as THIS comedy special about my 10 favorite addiction/sobriety jokes!

I was at a meeting recently where the conversation drifted toward deep analysis of the word “promptly” in the 10th Step. As a reminder, the 10th Step says, “Continued to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.”

To me, that means that you take a look at your day, figure out if you owe any amends, then you take care of cleaning up your role in whatever mess you participated in. Pretty basic stuff.

At that meeting, my mind drifted toward the “promptly” part because a guy shared a comparison that had been given to him by a sober friend. His friend had told him that the “promptly” part is a little bit like eating a bowl of oatmeal and leaving it in the sink. If you fill it up with water and rinse it out, you probably have no issue. But if you let that oatmeal dry for eight hours and then try to wash it, you’re dealing with a different thing.

I nodded my head because the comparison is obvious—if I am out of line about something and I wait five years to correct it, that is not good. Whatever the original issue was, now it is dry oatmeal stuck to the side of a bowl. So that’s where the promptly comes in.

But I also have been told over the years that “promptly” doesn’t have to mean “instantly.” There is a big difference. If you say something mean to your spouse at 10 am, is it better to blurt out an apology at 10:05? Or am I better off working through it and making sure I do it right at 11 am or 1 pm?

I think there are situations where the right answer could be either option—I’ve definitely fired off a shitty comment and then immediately realized it was unacceptable and I’ve said that right away, and that was the right thing to do. But I have also seen the benefit of calling up a sober friend, going to a meeting and praying for a few minutes, then doing an apology the right way.

I find that sometimes my immediate apologies are over-the-top in two different ways. One is that I go overboard and act like I just stole their puppy and I backtrack off what my point might have been. By that, I mean, if I think it is a terrible idea for one of my kids to spend $300 on a sweatshirt at Lululemon and I say a snippy thing that I regret, I will immediately want to say, “I am sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. Here is $300 and please let me drive you to Lululemon.” Then I get pissy about it later because I realize I wasn’t trying to clean up a mess that I made with any sort of integrity—I just didn’t want her to be mad at me. That is some people-pleasing b******t by doing an instant apology.

The other way I mess up instant apologies is by saying, “I’m sorry I said that, but you were being a jerk.” That’s not an apology! That’s justification. Maybe I need to stand my ground on something principled but still apologize for a bad behavior, but I rarely am able to spiritually respond five seconds into a disagreement with that level of serenity. It takes some time to get that right.

So the oatmeal analogy is so good—it doesn’t even require you to completely wash out the bowl! You rinse it and loosen up the gunk still in the bowl, then you wash it a little later. It’s actually perfect, isn’t it?

I will be thinking about that bowl of oatmeal a lot going forward, and I bet that is a phrase I end up saying to people in my sober life in the next few years. I will leave out one key part of that phrase, though—I have never eaten a bowl of oatmeal in my life, and don’t plan to! So I don’t like oatmeal… but I love that phrase!

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 but I am hoping to generate a few bucks to pay for my web site and some other costs. Paid subscribers do have access to frequent premium pieces—such as THIS comedy special about my 10 favorite addiction/sobriety jokes!

There is a great passage at the end of the first 164 pages of the Big Book where the authors offer some encouraging words about moving forward as a sober person, including the iconic line “trudging the road of happy destiny.”

But there was another line from that last page that jumped out at me recently: “The answers will come, if your own house is in order.”

A lot of the sentences before and after that line are about trusting a higher power and having faith that this too shall pass when life gets lifey. So that line about when the answers will appear during what can be a tricky world really stood out to me, because of the emphasis on my house being in order.

At the time, I had a few situations in my life that were perplexing, and I found myself praying and reaching out to the universe to try to figure out what to do. When I read that line, I realized that I wasn’t ready for an answer to arrive, because my house wasn’t in order.

I had missed quite a few meetings and seen my sober calls dwindle a bit. So my spiritual gas tank was running at about a quarter tank, which is enough to live and be happy for me, but not enough to navigate complicated people or decisions. Sure enough, the minute I tidied up my house a bit by getting more spiritually fit, I felt like the answers to these complex decisions started to get a little more focused.

It reminded me a little bit about how some basketball players thrive in pressure situations by first taking some deep breaths and clearing their heads. Why do they need to do that? They’ve shot a million free throws in their lives. They have undoubtedly played lots of close games. They could quite literally do the shooting motion in their sleeps.

Well, I think that line probably has something to do with it. It’s the idea that my house must be in order for the answers to come. In their case, it’s a shot to win a basketball game. In my life, it’s how to figure out what a good parent is, how to pay tens of thousands of dollars for college and how to be optimistic about not getting cancer again. So it’s basically the same thing, huh?

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 but I am hoping to generate a few bucks to pay for my web site and some other costs. Paid subscribers do have access to frequent premium pieces—such as THIS comedy special about my 10 favorite addiction/sobriety jokes!

I was talking to someone recently who was in the middle of a long, busy work day, and I said, “Damn, I hope you have a big cup of coffee waiting for you later this afternoon!”

She said that she no longer drank caffeine, and I applauded her for that—I kind of wish I had no caffeine in my life but also don’t really want to get anywhere near that idea in real life. I love a good cup of coffee or Diet Mountain Dew to keep me moving on a slow afternoon.

Then she said something that made my head almost spin off my body. She said, “Once in a while, on a day like this, I will reward myself with a cup of decaf.”

I said, “What do you mean?”

She said, “Well, I’ll just have one cup of decaf coffee as a pick-me-up.”

I just stared at her, completely perplexed.

I said, “But…”

She understood what I meant, that I didn’t get how that was a reward and a pick-me-up. She explained that she liked the taste of coffee more so than the caffeine, so she liked to treat herself to a cup of decaf on days where she is struggling.

I nodded my head and continued in the conversation, but in the back of my head, I kept saying, “What the hell? Who drinks coffee for the taste? What person in the history of the world would ever drink coffee without caffeine in it?”

Within 30 seconds, I remembered that I am a hardcore addict who never understood how anybody could leave half a bottle of beer, or three painkillers in the cabinet, or extinguish a half-smoked cigarette. Of course I thought about the effect of something before the taste of it.

Looking back, I’m not sure I have ever had a nonalcoholic beer, or caffeine-free Coke, or anything else that didn’t have the good stuff in there. So it is—and probably always will be—a complete foreign concept to just enjoy the taste of something, or to see it as a reward without it having a chemical payoff in there.

It’s funny how this idea makes total logical sense on the surface—my friend liked coffee and didn’t want caffeine any more. That’s perfectly reasonable, right? And yet I still cannot wrap my brain completely around the idea of a decaf coffee. I feel like if I was really thirsty and somebody handed me a cup of decaf coffee, I think I would have a hard time getting excited about drinking it.

So for now, you can have your unleaded coffee—I still want the diesel fuel!

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 but I am hoping to generate a few bucks to pay for my web site and some other costs. Paid subscribers do have access to frequent premium pieces—such as THIS comedy special about my 10 favorite addiction/sobriety jokes!

I was talking to a friend recently who has a few years sober, and he’s about 60 years old. He is a die-hard Patriots fan, so he spent January in a very excited mood. I didn’t probe too deep because I thought this was just a sports fan getting amped up about a playoff run by a team that has had about as much success as any pro sports team has had in the past 50 years.

But eventually he dropped a truth bomb on me: In his lifetime, the Patriots had gone to 11 Super Bowls and won six of them. This was going to be the 12th… but the first one he would ever experience as a sober person.

I had to pause for a moment and work through the math. The Patriots got to the 1986 Super Bowl and got crushed by the Bears. They lost another one in the 1990s. Then in the 2000s, the team went on an incredible run where Tom Brady and Bill Belichick were a nonstop playoff presence, often making it deep into the playoffs. That, of course, included six Super Bowl wins. It had been a dynasty that is almost impossible to achieve, and my friend had missed pretty much all of it.

OK, that’s a bit of an exaggeration. He was there, technically, but not really enjoying any part of it because life was miserable every day—it’s hard to get revved up about sports if you think you might die every day because of your addictions. I have a similar experience with some of my favorite sports teams having success during my active addiction days—I was present (sort of) and remember them. But there was no actual joy. It’s hard to feel joy if you are also feeling pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization every day.

It was a great reminder about what addiction does—it takes away entire chapters, not pages, from the books of our lives. I have to stay sober today because if I don’t, I have no idea when I get sober again, or if I even am able to. I am not someone who would have one weekend bender and stop, and based on my experience with people who have relapsed, I am not alone. I would disappear for months, or more likely, years.

So I ended up rooting for the Patriots on Sunday because I wanted my friend to actually experience a Super Bowl win despite being alive for many of them. It didn’t work out for the Patriots, obviously, but the future looks bright for that team—and my friend.

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 but I am hoping to generate a few bucks to pay for my web site and some other costs. Paid subscribers do have access to frequent premium pieces—such as THIS comedy special about my 10 favorite addiction/sobriety jokes!

I went to the gym over the weekend, and the second I walked through the front door, something was off. I go to a very big gym, so there are always people in there moving around. On this day, the people seemed weird and robotic. The lighting seemed more bright. The sound of the treadmills was different.

Then I realized what the problem was: There was no music playing. And the sound coming-out of the speaker system was a low-level bzzzzzz that sounded the hum of an old high school gym’s lighting setup—almost like a medical lab.

I paused for a moment because I realized nothing was actually different except for that sound. The people were the same. The machines were all moving and sounding the same. It’s that that loud, unexpected background noise was flooding into my ears and polluting my whole interpretation of the moment.

That got me thinking back to a recent podcast I was listening to, where the hosts were chitchatting about where their best ideas come from—as in, did they find themselves stumbling upon good ideas in the shower? On walks? When they first wake up in the morning?

One of the hosts then said that he felt like he had less good ideas these days because he found himself constantly looking or listening to something at all times. So he said he puts music on when he jumps in the shower, and he listens to podcasts on walks, and he scrolls on his phone when he lays down at night and when he first wakes up in the morning. Then he said, “I think my output is worse because my input never stops.”

I really had to think about that, because I too enjoy the fact that I almost never am left completely alone with myself. I listen to podcasts, watch TV shows on my phone and scan social media during any break in life. I think it is very cool that in 2026, if you’re sitting in a doctor’s office or at the DMV waiting area, you can entertain yourself and not have to stare off into space getting aggravated that your day is stalled out.

However, the gym scenario and that podcast made me think about the flip side to it, which is that my output is affected by my input. That certainly goes for letting my mind wander and come up with work ideas, or remembering that someone’s birthday is coming up, or a place where I might have left something that has been missing. If I am watching videos of guys blasting airhorns as people tee off at snooty golf courses—a common occurrence, I will admit—there is no space for me to think about how I should tell my wife I was grateful for that dinner she made, or that I haven’t checked in with a work colleague in awhile.

But even more than that, I realize that constant entertainment also deeply impacts my mood and outlook on life. If a terrible world event is happening and I doomscroll about it for the afternoon, you can imagine what it does to my brain. If I go to the gym and blast AC/DC in between football podcasts, I’m enjoying myself but I am also not exactly focused on serenity and being of service to others.

Now, I’m not going to pretend that I am only going to listen to 12-step speaker tapes or self-help books while I am running on the treadmill or laying down for the night. Far from it. But I am going to try to leave space for my brain to just recharge and not be distracted more going forward… but for old time’s sake, here is a link to AC/DC’s “Back in Black” on YouTube. Go ahead and crank that s**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:

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.

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I had a very interesting conversation a few years ago with someone in sobriety who was extremely aggravated about the behavior of some other people at meetings. He said a guy had started coming to a specific meeting with a guitar, and he would sometimes raise his hand to share. Then he would say a few words before telling everybody he wanted to sing a song for them.

I had to laugh, because I’ve never seen that or heard about something like that. And I will admit, if the moment presented itself, I’d probably tell the guy there’s a time and place for playing music, and meetings aren’t it.

It got me thinking about a bad tendency of mine, which has gotten better over the years but still exists: I kinda want to be the sheriff of Sobrietyville. I should be keeping an eye on how people park, how they share, whether they’re on their phone too much, whether their share is enough about the topic, etc.

I’ve run into trouble in the past with this concept of policing recovery meetings. My worst one was when I knew a guy was celebrating his anniversary before his actual anniversary, which is a no-no in my head. Recovery is a one-day-at-a-time thing, and celebrating a year sober when you have 11 months and 12 days is different than having one year. I think most sober people would agree with that.

The guy was pissed, and he yelled at me for not minding my own business. When I shared that anecdote with other sober people, they agreed—with him. They told me to butt out, that I was playing the director role that is discussed various places in sober literature. I need to be an actor who plays his part to the best of his ability, and that’s it. No stage-managing.

See, nobody voted me deputy lieutenant of the sobriety monitoring division. Nobody ever even thought about putting me in that position, or creating that position in any way for anybody.

The one caveat to that is that I do think there are egregious behaviors that the principles of my recovery program require me to speak up about. The biggest one is inappropriate romantic behavior at meetings. I’ve seen it a few times and it hasn’t only been men… but it’s usually dudes hitting on people that they shouldn’t. We even have a term for that—13th stepping. In that case, I have always pulled the guy aside and said, “Hey man, you really think you should be getting that young woman’s phone number? She has 15 days sober and you have 3 years.” Luckily, that has seemed to be enough.

The other big one—which I have not seen first-hand—is any kind of safety violation, physical confrontation, or threatening behavior. That’s unacceptable, too, in my opinion. I feel like every person who wants to get sober deserves to have a place to come where they won’t get harassed or threatened.

After that, it’s a really tough call. I have had issues with cross talk at meetings, where I thought people were inappropriately directly addressing others at a meeting. In those cases, I usually bite my tongue and then cave in and say something to the person. I once pushed hard at business meetings for a specific meeting that we needed to add a strong anti-crosstalk statement, and we did add it.

Did people actually follow that request that we added? Not really. That meeting was a little later at night, and nobody seemed to mind. At the end of the day, I had to learn that every meeting is autonomous. If a meeting’s members wants to be rowdier than I personally like, who I am to be reprimanding people? I’ll never forget going to a meeting in Virginia once at 9 pm on a Saturday night and the chairperson introduced the topic as page 69 from the Big Book, which happens to talk openly about sex.

He proceeded to make multiple wisecracks that were pretty sexually suggestive and gross, and my eyes bulged out of my head. It’s one thing if some newcomer wilds out and goes rogue about sex at a meeting. But the chairperson, who happened to be celebrating 10 years sober? Not cool, in my book.

I didn’t say anything but I must have had a pretty nasty look on my face because an older woman pulled me aside afterward. She said, “It was great to have you at this meeting. I wanted to just let you know that this is a meeting that we have voted to keep in this spot on Saturday nights, with this vibe, because that’s what we wanted to provide to sober people. Not all meetings are like this. But as you could see, we have a lot of younger people come in, and we wanted an environment that is a little more PG-13.”

I smiled and nodded my head, and I left with a warm feeling in my stomach. At the end of the day, I don’t have to go to meetings more than once if I don’t want to. And if people want to act like drunken rugby players talking about sex, or play a sweet guitar melody for their share, if that’s what a group wants, who am I to jump in with my sheriff’s hat on?

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 didn’t know I was sick until I started getting better.”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, November 2001, Kari B. from Brooklyn, 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