LOL Sober

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

I heard someone share recently that she had a rough Zoom call and had a hard time not exploding at her boss. She wanted to push back on some of the constructive criticism her boss was offering, and also to air out a few things that she thought her boss had contributed to the problem.

She said her whole head was throbbing and it took every ounce of energy to just keep her mouth shut. She knew she’d be better off thinking through what the right things to say might be and make sure she didn’t say some of the things she was thinking at that very moment. She just kept telling herself to pause when agitated, as we learn in recovery.

She eventually said, “Thanks for that feedback. Let me think about it all and I’ll get back with you.” She said her tone was pleasant, patient and calm, even though that isn’t what she was feeling. And as she talked, she noticed herself on the screen saying these things that she didn’t feel but wished she was feeling. In other words, she saw someone on the Zoom screen who was behaving exactly as she would like, despite thoughts that were in the gutter.

When she got off the call, she said she exploded a little bit. She said she spent a half hour cursing this guy out in her head, then she said a prayer and called a sober friend. By the end of the day, her brain had gotten to the place where her body was—calm, respectful, not agitated, open-minded about some of the criticism.

She ultimately felt like her boss was right about a few things, and misinformed about something else. So she reached out back out later in the day, said she was going to take a look at what he’d brought up and work on fixing it, but that there was one thing that she hoped he could take a look at the next time around. His reply was that he hadn’t considered that thing and he was glad to know about it now, and he apologized for prematurely pinning it on her.

That’s a sober victory.

I loved that story because I’ve had some instances of it in my life the past three years. Zoom is a strange medium that holds a mirror up to your face as you speak. Sometimes you see dumb stuff, like maybe that part of your sandwich is still hanging off your face from lunch. Sometimes you see bigger ideas, which is that your own growth is right there on screen, being a positive, patient influence on people even when you don’t feel that in your head. It really can feel like you’re watching a better version of yourself on TV.

I don’t always love the slogan “fake it till you make it,” because I don’t want to be living a pretend life of good behaviors while having disastrous, alcoholic thoughts. But I mostly like that slogan because I have seen the benefits. I need to do good things, over and over and over again, to set an example for myself, and then my brain usually follows. I ultimately think when I have good actions and not-so-good thoughts… that’s mostly a win. And the more of those wins I rack up, the more my thoughts get a little better.

And yes, I too have had a few Zoom calls where my feelings were not great but I had a smile on my face and I was calm and understanding. It’s an odd juxtaposition, me wanting to bark at somebody, while not barking at that person, while watching myself on a Zoom window not bark at that person. But it’s a real sign of growth in my opinion, and I’ll take that any day.

However… I would like to get a little better about showing up for Zooms with barbecue sauce all over my face!

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:

OVERHEARD AT A MEETING:

"Alcoholics are the only people in the world who want a Pulitzer Prize for writing a check!"

(Credit: AA Grapevine, November 2008, by Ed L. of Wrightwood, California)

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

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

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

I saw a story recently on Medium.com that said the average human being will meet 10,000 other people in their life.

At first, I was a little dubious of that statistic, because 10,000 people seems like a lot, doesn’t it?

But the more I thought about it, the more that sounds about right. Also… the more I thought about it, the more I felt like I met about 10,000 people last week at a few 12-step meetings I went to.

In all seriousness, if you live to 75 years old, that’s about 133 new people per year. And based on a quick examination of that number, it doesn’t say you became friends with 10,000 people, or even that you could remember 10,000 peoples’ names. Just that you met them. I’m guessing that includes every person you chitchatted with on an airplane, or at a doctor’s office waiting room, or in line at Walgreens.

Then you think about all the kids you met when you were younger, and then you probably got to know some of their parents, all of your neighbors, all the kids at elementary school and middle school and high school. Think about every sports team or activity you participated in, and the coaches and parents you got to know.

Then, if you went to college, do the same thing.

Then, think about every workplace you ever were in, and every new apartment or house you move into… As you can see, I think that figure is about right for most people.

Now let me get to the part that interested me as an addict.

First of all, I think participating in recovery programs raises that number—10,000—substantially. In my 13-plus years of sobriety, I think I have gone to about four meetings a week. That puts me at around 2,800 total meetings, which is a lot of sober people I have at least introduced myself to.

And within that, because it is such a deep, powerful program, I think it raises the number of people you meet on a very intimate level. If you’re in sobriety, think about the number of people who you’ve met at meetings who put themselves out there and reveal some of the most painful things life can throw at us.

Then compare that with the number of people who do that in your everyday life. For me, it’s a wild contrast—I was at a meeting recently where three different people cried as they aired out incredibly difficult circumstances in their life, and it was a beautiful reminder of the safe space that recovery can provide.

That brings me to my most important point. The Medium story goes on to discuss how few of those 10,000 people truly end up being impactful in your life. The article proposes that most of us probably only encounter about 10 people of those 10,000 who are truly impactful. Or, if you’re outgoing, maybe you get to 25.

I can say this with certainty—I have met way more than 25 people in recovery who have been truly profound influences on my life. I’m not talking about people I exchanged numbers with and occasionally hung out with. I am talking about the people who have been profound influences, who I will remember forever.

I won’t throw out their names here, obviously, but I can rattle them off one after another after another. I’d guess that number alone is close to 50 people who actually changed the course of my life. That means they helped me, which means they helped my wife and my kids, and their kids, and all my coworkers and neighbors, and on and on and on.

Throw in all of my family and friends, and I feel really good that I have about 100 people like that. And when I think about how much life is like football, and you need a good offensive line to block for you… I will take 100 linemen over 10 or 25 any day.

So thank you, recovery!

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:

An exasperated wife of a drunk said in an argument, "Don't you even remember your own mistakes?"

"No," replied the drunk. "There's no use in two people remembering the same thing!"

(Credit: AA Grapevine, October 2008, from 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!

There’s a new movie that came out this past weekend called “Three Thousands Years of Longing.” It stars Idris Elba and Tilda Swinton, and it’s basically a reimagining of the idea of a person getting three wishes from a genie. Swinton is the person, Elba is the genie.

I haven’t seen the movie and I probably won’t—it’s getting mixed reviews. So I have no idea if it’s good or bad or so-so. But I did start thinking about what I would do if I had three wishes. It was a thoughtless fun little exercise while I ran on a treadmill at the gym, but I ended up having a very deep and interesting revelation from it.

Let me start with some obvious wishes that I first thought about… but then decided I would not do.

I would not wish that I could drink like a normal person. I’ve seen the benefits of a life without any drugs and alcohol, and I like it. So I think I would not wish to be a normie drinker, believe it or not. And also, I have a pretty good imagination… but I still cannot imagine becoming a person who can handle drinking like a normal person. As the old jokes goes, “If I could drink like a normal person, I’d do it every day!”

I also would not wish to go back in time and tell myself to never start drinking and drugging. I don’t think it would work, for one. In fact, I am such a contrarian that it might make it worse to know I probably shouldn’t be drinking and drugging. I think my younger self would have taken it as some sort of challenge.

And then, what about wishing to get rid of all drugs and alcohol in the world? It was one of my first thoughts, because I have seen addiction up close and it is devastating. But I don’t know if I would wipe it off the face of the earth. There are millions of people who use alcohol responsibly, and there are millions of people who need opioids for their healthcare.

I also thought about going back in time to prevent myself from getting sick with bacterial meningitis. As I have discussed many times on this newsletter, I got sick with meningitis in college, spent a week in a coma and ended up having multiple amputations on my feet. So I have a significant disability that affects me every single day and causes a lot of pain. I also think getting sick got me introduced to opioids much sooner than I would have, and pushed me into the EZ Pass lane for becoming a raging alcoholic and drug addict.

I did think long and hard about the most obvious wish: Hey genie, give me $50 billion! I kept coming back to that one, so I can’t pretend to dismiss it. The truth is, I would be worried about me as a billionaire, even with 13 years sober, because money can be just as addicting and problematic as some other addictive behaviors for somebody like me. But I do think you need money in the world, and you can do a lot of good in this world with money, so I would think long and hard about that.

I ultimately landed on the idea that I would probably use my three wishes for something like world peace, and getting rid of cancer, and maybe ending hunger on Earth. Stuff that is bigger than me.

When I got done thinking it through, though, I realized that I do sometimes wish a lot of the bad stuff that has happened to me—from meningitis, to the amputations, to the addiction stuff—had never happened. But if I got rid of those things, I might also lose everything I learned about myself, all of the tools I picked up over the years, all of the wisdom. Most of the important lessons I have learned over the years have come from pain.

Later that day, I was at a 12-step meeting where the speaker was very funny. He went out of his way to say repeatedly that sober people are not a glum lot, which is one of my core principles of staying in recovery—I did not get sober to be miserable. And as I looked around that room, at all those former drunks and addicts laughing, it was the most joyous and happy room of any kind I had been in in a long time.

And that got me thinking about how if I hadn’t fallen down so far, I could not have appreciated climbing back up as high as I have. Once you know that pain of hitting rock bottom, everything feels a little more beautiful, a little more humorous.

With all of that stuff in my mind, it dawned on me that I had stumbled onto a pretty important idea—that if I had wishes that I could make with a genie, I basically wouldn't change anything about my own life.

Think about that—I came to the realization this life sitting right here in my lap is exactly the one I want. I often grumble, “Living the dream” when people ask me how I’m doing, but I. Might. Actually. Be. Living. The. Dream.

Holy s**t.

So that propelled me into the weekend—a realization that I have the most awesome life. Now, check back with me in a few days, when we can’t get the kids out the door for the first day of school, and I’ll probably have forgotten it. But for a short time, I felt like I could let the genie stay in the bottle!

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’m an old dog and sobriety is a new trick.”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, from October 2008, by Ed L. of Wrightwood, California)

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

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

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

I wanted to talk about Better Call Saul, which concluded last week. For those who are unfamiliar, it is a spinoff series from Breaking Bad. If you are unfamiliar with Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad, well, you should stop reading now and go watch both shows.

I wanted to discuss Better Call Saul even though it doesn’t have much drug and alcohol use in it. It’s about a lawyer who helps drug cartels and drug makers. But it’s not about drug and alcohol addiction or recovery.

So why am I talking about it? Well, first of all, I love talking about great TV shows. And Better Call Saul is in my top five shows ever made, and it’s actually ahead of Breaking Bad. In case you really care about these things, my top 5 shows as of this writing are: 1. Succession; 2. Better Call Saul; 3. The Sopranos; 4. The Wire; 5. Breaking Bad.

The second reason—the real reason—I wanted to talk about Better Call Saul is because there is serious addiction on display, with serious consequences. It’s just not substances. It’s the hustle. Or, as we used to call it in the 12-step program I started out in, it’s “getting over.”

I won’t get too deep in the weeds with a synopsis of the show, but the lead character, Saul, is a scam artists. Flashbacks show him observing his dad running a small store decades ago, and he would sit there as a little boy and see local con men pull one over on his dad repeatedly, and he vowed to never let that happen to him. So he became Saul Goodman, which isn’t even his real name. It’s all part of the con.

The addiction part is that Saul runs scams, shows some remorse, tries to stop, can’t, runs scams again. Rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat.

I really identified with that part of things. I had a whole system of scams that I would run. I would manipulate doctors to write me prescriptions, then pay cash so that there was less of a paper trail with my health insurance company. But I also saw a pain management doctor for legitimate chronic pain issues involving my feet. So I had a steady stream of legal opiates that I was using, and everybody in my life knew about it. It’s similar to if a doctor told you it’d be a good idea to have a glass of wine every day, then you drink five bottles and cover up the aftermath as everybody in your life just assumes you had the one glass.

The scam was exhausting. I had to drive all over the place to go to urgent care clinics, doctors’ offices and hospitals, then get over on them, then find pharmacies that I hadn’t already gone to over and over again. I ended up being an expert on all the mom and pop pharmacies in the New York/New Jersey area. And I had to try to spin all those plates without anybody ever connecting any of the dots that were spread out all over the place.

As we saw on Better Call Saul, I knew everything was going to come crashing down somehow or some way. Saul did, too, at various points. He managed to keep it going way longer than you’d expect, constantly escaping either the cartels or police. Me, too.

But eventually I sought help and I got sober… then I ran into the “hole in the doughnut” problem. If you’re unfamiliar with that phrase, it pops up in recovery literature and at meetings sometimes, and it’s usually in reference to building a relationship with a higher power.

But in a general sense, it’s the idea of wrestling with giving up the old lifestyle—the drugs and alcohol, but also all the other bad behaviors that pop up, like lying, stealing, working people over, etc.—and replacing it with something more spiritual.

It was hard. I found myself with 30 days sober but still able to just blurt out lies without even having to think about it. I was still broke, so I’d use my corporate card sometimes for stuff I shouldn’t have been using my corporate card for. When collection agencies would call for overdue bills, I would b******t them on the phone about having mailed a check already, then I would hang up.

I ultimately realized that I had to change everything—not just abstinence from mood-altering substances—or else it wasn’t going to work. I quickly felt much more spiritual… but also a little bored. I was working hard in my professional life and busting my ass as a dad and husband, so it wasn’t that I didn’t have stuff to do. In fact, every minute of every day was accounted for.

But I didn’t feel the same juice without all the hustle. I know, that sounds terrible. But it’s the truth—the mayhem may have been, well, mayhem, and it might have been unmanageable and out of control and illegal… but it was never boring. My brain was constantly engaged and on fire trying to keep the whole thing from falling apart.

I saw that in Better Call Saul, too. He couldn’t resist. He just kept getting sucked into another con. It was bad for him—but he couldn’t not do it.

I won’t spoil the ending but I will say it isn’t a fairytale wrap-up to the show. There is real pain handed out as punishment, and rightly so. It was an oddly satisfying yet bitter way for the show to walkoff into the sunset, but I enjoyed it.

I’m so glad it didn’t end that way for me. There is a version of my sobriety where I stopped drinking and drugging but was still constantly trying to run game on the world. And if I had to guess, the ending to my story would have been closer to Better Call Saul than to what it has been for the past 13 years.

So my overall grade for Better Call Saul is an A. An all-time great show, with an all-time great scam artist/junkie at the center of 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:

HEARD AT MEETINGS: “We don’t seem to give up a life of failure without a fight.”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, June 2003, Ms. Sam H. from Jacksonville, Florida)

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

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

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

The other night, I started itching my lower leg. Like, really itching. Like, itching to the point where later that night, one of my kids asked if I had been wrestling with a puma.

What happened? Why was I itching so much? No idea! It might have been a bug bite, or maybe I had a brief allergic reaction that caused a half hour of clawing at my own skin. I don’t know.

But it reminded me of the insanity of addiction. Back when I was deep in the weeds with painkillers, I would take so many that I ended up itching and itching and itching my arms and legs, to the point where I would be bleeding.

People would notice, too. I had been running a scam where everybody in my life knew I was occasionally taking pain medication for my chronic foot pain. But their definition of “occasionally” was probably that I took painkillers a few times a week. My definition of “occasionally” was that I would take painkillers a few times per hour.

Here’s the thing: I wasn’t actually allergic to painkillers. I didn’t have any problems whatsoever when I was taking painkillers according to a doctor’s directions. It was only when I went from two pills every 4-6 hours to 15 every two hours that I had problems.

Hmm, I wonder if taking 8 times as many as prescribed might have been the issue?

It was the same thing with alcohol. I had no problems drinking 2-3 beers, or even 4-5, in a night. But—shocker!—I began to have allergic reactions when I would drink 15 beers and chew a can of Skoal and mix in some muscle relaxers and then eat some sketchy food at midnight. Must be the allergies again!

My solution to the painkiller problem? The same as I always did, which is to not change that behavior at all, but just add in other wacky remedies. For the itching, I began taking Benadryl wayyyyy more than the package said, and I also started to buy Benadryl cream and put it all over my arms and legs. I spent most nights nodding off on the couch while also dripping cream all over the cushions. Gross.

And on nights where I got really drunk, I didn’t do the obvious thing, which is only drink 2-3 beers. Nah, that would have been too easy.

Instead, I tried periodically eating a piece of bread between beers. So by midnight on many days, I would have 10 beers and eight pieces of bread in my stomach. And guess what… I usually ended up hugging the toilet bowl even worse than before, without the bread in my stomach.

Ugh, I am so glad I don’t live like that any more. I know this edition of my newsletter isn’t the most helpful, other than “Geez, I’m so happy that isn’t what life is like in sobriety.” But hey, sometimes that’s the best kind of help, isn’t 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:

HEARD AT MEETINGS

"Today, it is so nice to hear the birds chirping in the morning. I can remember a time when they used bull horns."

(Credit: AA Grapevine, June 2007, by John E. of Palm Springs, California)

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

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

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

I recently read a Fox Sports profile of Maxx Crosby, who is a great young NFL player for the Las Vegas Raiders. He got sober a few years ago, and it’s a cool story. Here is a link to it.

I am fascinated by the concept of being rich and famous and young while trying to get sober, because I just don’t know if I could have done that—and Crosby is doing it in Las Vegas, of all places!

I got sober because I was spiritually bankrupt, but actual bankruptcy played a part, too. I was about $100,000 in debt and that number was getting about $500 bigger every day.

If I had had fame and millions of dollars to play with, I might have needed more time to hit rock bottom. And I also think if I had been rich, I might have gone to one of those fancy beach rehabs were you can ride horses and frolic on the beach and decide when to come or go. Frolicking would not have been good for me, though. I needed a rehab that made me feel like I never wanted to go back to rehab.

In that profile of Maxx Crosby, I was especially interested in a section about him when he was in college at Eastern Michigan. Eastern Michigan isn’t exactly a powerhouse college program, so Crosby was a big-time big man on campus there. The story says people started to say, “Hey, we think Maxx might have a problem.”

And more often than not, other people would act surprised and say, “But he’s playing great!” And it was kind of true: He was playing great!

But that’s one of the biggest misconceptions that I have seen in recovery. I know a lot of very successful, very smart, very ambitious, very high-achieving people who have terrible addiction issues! I would include myself in there for one or two of those categories. When I went to rehab, I had a great job at a big, successful company. I had two beautiful, healthy kids. I had a house and a strong, longterm relationship with my wife. I hadn’t been arrested. I had zero DUIs. I had no drunken car accidents. I hadn’t actually had to file for bankruptcy. I hadn’t been fired from my job. I hadn’t even had an official overdose.

For quite a few people in my life, they might have thought, “Rehab… really? You seem like you’re doing okay.” I wasn’t! I needed rehab, even if my life looked pretty damn good on paper. I think that’s part of the reason that I didn’t seek help sooner. I had bought into the idea that drunks and drug addicts all go to prison for the fifth time and then go to rehab.

The truth is, some alcoholics and addicts go to prison for the fifth time and then go to rehab. Others become CEOs or university presidents or college football All-Americans and then hit rock bottom. For me, I was definitely struggling in every aspect of my life, but you might not have known it.

But I knew it. I knew I felt broken every single day and had no idea how to live life with drugs and alcohol… and no idea how to live life without drugs and alcohol, either.

So I really appreciated that part of the story. I enjoy reading those stories because they’re great comeback stories and I always get something out of them. And I bet lots of other people do, too.

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

An AA member was trying to get ketchup to come out of the jar. During her struggle, the phone rang. She asked her four-year-old daughter to answer it.

"It's the minister, Mommy," the child called to her mother. Then she added, "Mommy can't come to the phone to talk to you right now. She's busy hitting the bottle."

(Credit: AA Grapevine, June 2007, by C.J. of Bozrah, Connecticut)

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

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

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

I went to a meeting in another state recently, and I desperately needed it. I’d traveled about 1,000 miles over 5 days in a minivan with my wife and three kids. So nerves were frayed. Egos were damaged. Disaster was imminent.

Disaster is probably too strong of a word. On trips like those, where I am into my third or fourth day without a meeting, I never get cravings for alcohol or drugs. But I do start to act more impulsive, I argue more, I take things way too seriously, and all the other behaviors that often came along with being an active alcoholic. In recovery, we use the term “emotional sobriety” a lot, and that’s what I am talking about here.

Anyway, I got to a meeting, and the meeting was on Step 9. I always soak up more at meetings when I am a little depleted, so I was doing that when it came to a guy who seemed to have a southern twang, even though we were in Pennsylvania.

He was a very good speaker and I was enjoying hearing him discuss his experience with Step 9. Then he took a step back and said something along the lines of, “Steps 4 and 5 were about me gittin’ rahttt with myself. Steps 6 and 7 were about gittin’ rahttt with God. And Steps 8 and 9 were about gittin’ rahttt with others.”

Whoa, I guess I always kind of knew that but never heard it put so succinctly. Steps 4 and 5 dealt with a full deep dive of where all of my anger and resentment resided and what my role was in all of it. I remember looking at the pages of my notebook and feeling like I was looking at the blueprint for my alcoholism. I had to clear out as much of that crap as possible. It was poison poured out onto notebook paper.

Then Steps 6 and 7 were taking a look at my character defects, and I think the word humility appears in our literature about 975 times when discussing these two steps. So that was me gittin’ rahttt with God and the universe.

And then Steps 8 and 9 are obviously about making amends to others.

I’ve always been soooo glad that Steps 8 and 9 are where they are in the program because I realized I had a lot of work to do. Saying sorry is really easy. Do I mean it? Or am I saying it like my 7-year-old does sometimes, “Sorrrrrrr-ree” like she thinks you’re an a*****e for asking her to stop spilling chocolate milk all over the living room?

It sounds ridiculous, but I still sometimes rush to say sorry for things when I have no real intention of changing my behaviors or my attitude. I am saying “Sorry about that” just because I want you off my ass.

And that usually means I didn’t get right with myself and God before I tried to get right with you. I recently showed up a half hour late to lunch with somebody and said, “I’m so sorry to keep you waiting.” But I wasn’t, really. I had been blabbing with some friends, realized I was going to be late for lunch and just kept going. Deep down, I was thinking, “Ah, she’ll get over it.”

That’s fine and all. But the “Hey, I’m really sorry about that” part of things was total b******t. I hadn’t quickly unpacked my role in it, then calculated an apology based on real spirituality. It was just a throwaway.

So I’d like to thank the man with a southern accent, wherever you are. I am going to be spending some time thinking about how I “git rahtttt” going forward in my life.

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

"Not going to meetings is a misdemeanor. The more of them I miss, the meaner I get."

(Credit: AA Grapevine, December 2008, 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 think I have mentioned this before, but this newsletter is not my full-time job. In my full-time job, I use my real name but I am a writer for a pretty big company. So my stories end up getting a nice-sized audience.

Well, about a year ago, I wrote something about my own addiction and recovery, and lots of people read that. I ended up getting lots of emails and responses on social media, and I also got quite a few handwritten letters from people.

One letter, in particular, caught my attention. It was basically a form letter from a major drug company, and it said that they had been notified that I had had an issue with one of their painkiller drugs. I’m sure drug companies are obligated by law to reach out to people who say they’ve had an issue with a drug they make.

This letter was hilarious, though. It had boxes to check about whatever issue you had. There were boxes for allergic reactions to the drug, high blood pressure from the drug, and on and on. And then there was a box to check about addiction, with a small space to write out what your addiction issues were.

It’s a serious topic but I had to laugh. Yeah, let me write about my addiction issues in 33 words or less on three tiny lines on a standardized form. That ought to be easy!

I stared at it for a long time and was considering filling it out. Would it do some good for somebody? Maybe the drug company would change any bad behaviors in marketing or selling the drug?

I ultimately just chuckled and folded it up and put it back in the envelope. I’m not sure my comments on painkillers would really change the world much, so I decided to not respond.

I have spent some time sitting with my feelings about the way drugs and alcohol are marketed and sold in the world. Same with nicotine products. There probably are some adult conversations to have about that.

I ultimately fall back on the idea that yes, there are some things that are shady and destructive that should be addressed. There’s a documentary called “Crime of the Century” that’s out right now about the Sackler family and their role in the opioid crisis. I was going to watch it but I just couldn’t bring myself to open up that wound. Because as brutal as this is to admit, I was a part of the opioid crisis. I was using and abusing painkillers (and alcohol) for that entire time period when opioids were really starting to creep into the world on a big scale. I was doctor-shopping and stealing painkillers at a time when the market was taking off, so like it or not, I contributed on a small scale. That’s not something I am proud of.

But in my life—I’m just talking about myself here—I didn’t become a raging alcoholic and drug addict because I saw a cool poster or an ad. I was always going to go down that path, and there is no single company or marketing campaign that could have really started that for me. I was on that road already. I think if you ran a computer simulation of 10,000 versions of my life, I think I would have ended up in rehab all 10,000 times. But 6,000 times might have been for painkillers, 2,000 times for alcohol, and 2,000 times for some other drug that I got hooked on during that simulation.

All that really matters in my sober life is that this is one of the times I got hooked on both painkillers and alcohol, and in this version, I got sober. So I’m not going to spend too much time looking backward on who did what to get me addicted. I just want to spend my energy on being thankful for this sober life… unless this is a simulation?

Hey, wait a minute, am I in a computer simulation right now…

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

HEARD AT MEETINGS

“This disease tells people they don't have it, and then, after they make it to AA, it tells them they are cured.”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, December 2008, by Jim F. of Tasmania)

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’m going to tell you a story from this past weekend that feels really wild to me, and I swear it’s 100 percent true. Sometimes I’ll meld together a story or two in this newsletter or change some details to avoid violating anybody’s trust in my life, and I try to be upfront about that every time.

But this one is 100 percent true. Hollywood sometimes says at the beginning of a true story that it is “inspired by real events.” This one is real events.

I should also say that there is a decent chance you will get to the end of this story and say, “Uh, I guess you had to be there?” It might only be amazing to me. You tell me.

Okay, so this weekend, I took my kids to a carnival in Connecticut and met up with a bunch of sober friends. It was freaking awesome. It was 100 degrees in an open field, so I felt like a big chunk of fried dough for most of the day. But we had such a blast.

Then I hopped in my van with the three kids and we started to drive back. It’s about an hour drive. As sad as it was to have to leave the carnival, everybody was looking forward to the air conditioning.

As we pulled through the carnival parking lot, I saw a blue purse just laying on the ground. I pulled up beside it and asked one of my kids to jump out and grab it. She said she was too tired and didn’t want to get out of the car. I also felt too tired and lazy and didn’t want to get out of the AC. But finally my daughter got out and grabbed it.

It was a woman’s purse with a lot of important stuff in there: driver’s license, insurance cards, multiple credit cards. We googled her name and came up with a phone number. I tried calling it and texting it, and I think it was the right number. But she didn’t respond.

So we decided, as a family, to drive to this lady’s house and just knock on her door. She lived about a mile away. When we got to her house, we saw her, her husband and two little kids all sitting around an inflatable pool in their front yard. The dad got up and started walking over when he saw a van load of weirdos pull into the driveway.

I walked toward and him and said, “I’m looking for Amanda,” and she got a look on her face that indicated she was Amanda. Then I held up her purse and their jaws dropped. I don’t even think she knew she was missing her wallet.

I handed it to the guy, who seemed very grateful, then got in the car and started to back out. My daughter said, “Hey, here comes the guy,” and I put the window down.

“Take $20, please,” he said, and he tried to hand me a $20 bill.

“Nah, buy something for your kids,” I told him and I backed out.

It was a fun ride home. My kids talked through all the scenarios and realized we did the right thing, and I could see in their faces that they were experiencing the incentives of doing the right thing in real time. I emphasized to them that you gotta try to do the right thing in life because it’s the right thing, not because there might be $20 in it for you. They seemed to get that, and it felt like a moment we’re all going to remember for a long time. I know I felt warm and fuzzy inside.

Here’s a wild kicker to that story, though. When we got home, I threw on some gym clothes and went and worked out. Then I had to get gas in my car and grab a few things at the grocery store. I pulled in the gas station and it was hectic—cars everywhere, people trying to get in and out of pumps.

I filled up quickly, then zipped over to the grocery store. But when I started walking into the store, I realized I did not have my wallet. I tore up my car. I checked my pockets over and over again. It was nowhere.

It dawned on me that maybe it fell out of the car or out of my pocket at the gas station… though I don’t think I’ve ever had something like that happen. I’m usually good about making sure I have a hand on my wallet.

I hopped in the car and drove back to the gas station. I pulled into the lot, which was still a shitshow of people backing in and out of pumps, driving the wrong way through the lot, etc. And there, on the ground near the pump where I had been 10 minutes earlier, laid my wallet, face down, ass up, with cards laying all over the ground.

Nobody had picked it up and walked off with it. Nobody had picked it up and taken it inside to the manager of the gas station. Nobody had picked it up and tried to find me like I had done four hours earlier. It was laying there, waiting for me, amidst the chaos. I couldn’t believe it.

I got back in the car with my wallet and I couldn’t help but laugh. I just returned somebody’s wallet and then almost lost mine for the first time in my life but didn’t? Really weird, right?

By the time I got back to the grocery store, I was thinking a lot about my relationship with a higher power. Lots of people would immediately chalk up my two wallets story to a God moment. I’m not quite there yet but I do like to compile those types of things in a God pile, because it sure feels like the universe telling me something.

I’ve written here many times that I do not have a church or a religion yet. My definition of a higher power is squishy and I can rarely ever verbalize it in a way that somebody else would understand. In my case, it’s something along the lines of the universe, that I trust that when I do the right things, the right things happen for me. Now, sometimes the right thing to happen to me is that I do a nice thing and nobody notices, and nobody gives me money or a pat on the back. It’s just that I learn again that doing the right thing is the right thing.

The cool thing about the way the higher power concept has worked for me is that I find great spiritual value in those things even though I still don’t have a religion that quite works for me.

And the truth is, I don’t need anybody else to understand my higher power. I just need to have one, and work on having a relationship with that higher power. I don’t need you to understand mine, and I don’t need to understand yours.

I also have the part of my brain that says, “Hey, it’s a coincidence that you found one person’s wallet and returned it, and then you lost your wallet and the universe let you have it back.” I was thinking about that last night and I googled God and coincidence and came across the quote that Albert Einstein supposedly gave once, that “Coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous.”

Either way, I will be thinking about it for a long time. Even if Sunday was just two unlikely things happening on the same afternoon that are freaky and funny coincidences, hey, I’ll take it and be thankful to the universe for that.

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

A NEW AA WAS HAVING TROUBLE SLEEPING because he felt guilty for cheating on his income taxes. His sponsor suggested he make amends, so he sent the IRS the following letter:

Dear Sir or Madam:

I cheated on my taxes and cannot sleep until I make amends. Enclosed is a check for five hundred dollars.

Sincerely,

A reformed citizen.

P.S. If I still can't sleep, I'll send you the balance.

(Credit: AA Grapevine, from November 2008, by Bud B. of Satellite Beach, Florida)

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 am in a pretty spiritual place these days. Key word: pretty. By that, I mean, I have moments almost every day where I want to pull my hair out about something. That’s probably common amongst addicts and alcoholics… actually, that’s probably a human thing, isn’t it?

One thing I noticed recently about myself: I end up laughing about almost every one of those aggravating moments. Sometimes it takes a week. Sometimes it takes a few days. Other times, I call a sober buddy and we’re laughing about it two hours afterward.

That got me thinking: If I’m going to laugh about something later, why can’t I do it closer to the actual aggravating moment? Why wait five days or even five hours to recognize that I’m probably overreacting and that there is humor in the situation?

I’ll give you one specific example. I have a very hard time on road trips with my family. Any parent probably gets what I am talking about. You plan to leave at 10 am, then somebody forgets a bag and you have to turn around. Then you get going and you make it a half hour and somebody has to pee. Then you make it another half hour and somebody else has to pee. Then two kids start arguing about who gets to sit where. Then you hit traffic.

It’s obvious what the problem usually is. It’s that I came up with a plan that included lots of expectations about what will happen when, and then life happens. I take tiny little issues I won’t even remember later, and make them into absolute catastrophes. A lot of it is on me.

It happens over and over again. I know the issues, and I go to that place anyway. I absolutely morph into Clark Griswold every time, where I have these preposterous expectations, then some s**t hits the fan, and I blow my stack. Every time!

What ultimately pulls me out of that funk is that I make a phone call or two to a sober friend, or I get to a meeting. And then I laugh. I always laugh. Because it’s funny—the Clark Griswold Vacation movies were always comedies, right?

Those calls always help. I’m able to find the humanity in these situations because guess what, a*****e? A 7-year-old kid doesn’t always have a Navy SEAL’s bladder control! And you know what, sometimes there’s road construction that slows you down.

I almost always end up chuckling with a friend who usually empathizes with what I’m dealing with. I’ve even made phone calls to sober friends where it goes to voicemail, and halfway through the voicemail, I am laughing at myself already.

So I’ve started to really press myself in a tense moment to say, what will be amusing about this a week from now? My goal is to try to find the humor in a difficult situation closer to when it’s most difficult, so hopefully it becomes less difficult in the moment. In that example above, if when I hear my little buddy say 26 miles into a 300-mile trip that she has to pee, why not chuckle to myself and say, “Ha, I knew this would happen! Haha.”

We’ll see how it goes. My family and I are actually going on a trip soon that is a longgggggg drive, so I will get to put this experiment to the test. Something tells me I am still going to be grumbling when I have to stop at the rest area 10 minutes from my house. But maybe instead of an hour of grumbling this time, it will be five minutes of grumbling and 55 minutes of laughing to myself.

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:

FROM MEETINGS, A SLIP OF THE TONGUE:

“Our description of the alcoholic, the chapter to the obnoxious…”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, from July 2007, by John K. of Titusville, Florida)

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