LOL Sober

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I read an athlete autobiography recently where he mentioned that humans have between 2,000-3,000 thoughts per day. So I went down a Google wormhole and tried finding a good source for that fact, and found that it is actually very much debated.

Some scientists have estimated it might be as high as 60,000-80,000 thoughts per day. For the record, 80,000 thoughts per day would be more than one per second. That’s a lot of thoughts!

Some of the debate ended up centering on, what actually is a thought?

I didn’t find a firm answer on the definition of a thought but it is an interesting thing to unpack. If I’m mad about an email that I just got from a co-worker, that’s one thought. If I then consider whether to respond right away, or maybe it’d be better to wait, or maybe I should drive to their house and then when I get there punch them in the face… is that one big thought? Or four small ones?

So yes, if you’re keeping score at home, I discovered lots of thoughts about thoughts.

Anyway, that isn’t the point of this newsletter. I found a good amount of consensus around the idea that the number is probably closer to 6,000 thoughts per person per day. So I am going to use the figure 6,000 for this exercise because that seemed to be the most recent batch of headlines summarizing what scientists are saying.

So if you have 6,000 thoughts per day and I subtract eight hours every day for sleeping, that’s about 375 thoughts per hour, which is one thought every 10 seconds.

I wanted to try to plot out what my thought statistics used to look like during active addiction, and what they look like now.

By my estimate, when I was actively using during the final few years of addiction, I think about 5,000 of my 6,000 thoughts per day were about drugs and alcohol. That might sound like too big of a number, but I don’t think it is. When I was at my bottom, I spent more than half of every day getting drugs and alcohol, then using them, then covering it all up, then starting to plan for the next day, then dealing with the after-effects of my use that day—as in, passing out, puking in the bathroom, disguising my breath.

I also remember I probably had a good 500 very sad thoughts every day about how bad things had gotten. I would constantly churn through in my head whether I needed help, whether I was going to die, whether I was even worth saving. Oof. It’s painful to think back on the percentage of every day that was stuck in that shame.

Now fast forward to today. Let’s use that 6,000 figure. Obviously, 5,000 of the 6,000 thoughts now are about sex … just kidding, that number is probably more like 100 per day, which is still higher than I’d probably like.

So that leaves 5,900. I’d say my brain thinks about work for probably 2,000 of those thoughts. I’d say 2,500 of them are about my family—I’ll include the cats in there. (Stay off the freaking air conditioner, Mittens!)

That leaves about 1,400. I probably spend 500 thoughts on recovery, 100 on the gym, 100 on which errands to run, 500 on TV, movies and podcasts (I consume a lot of media) and 200 or so on miscellaneous stuff.

Now here’s the most interesting question from my little experiment. Of my 6,000 thoughts per day, how many are positive? How many are negative? And what are the patterns there?

I kept track of my thoughts for a few days, and here’s what I figured out about myself. I’d say about 30 percent of my thoughts are not good. Most of those negative thoughts center on pointing a finger at somebody for doing something I don’t like and me deciding what an a*****e they are. Then I often had a second thought about what I should do to stand up for myself or teach them a lesson or whatever other b******t flows through this river in my brain.

That’s one thing I noticed about negative thoughts: They are an infectious disease if I don’t treat them right away. I can go on a tailspin of bad ideas in a way that I don’t about positive thoughts. I wish it were the reverse!

But then, let me throw out some hope: I find recovery-based thoughts tend to immediately begin to pour in at some point. I’ll go from that bad thought, plus the vengeance I might need, into 60 seconds of nonstop thoughts about forgiveness, whatever my side of the street is, what parts of me are perhaps overreacting to the moment. Even though I don’t always do it, I do have a voice in my head that constantly tells me to pause because I am agitated. I need to encourage that voice to speak up!

This is where my spiritual fitness comes in. When I am really in recovery mode, my next five thoughts are all about the solution. Do I pray? Do I get to a meeting? Do I make a few phone calls?

Or… do I sit with the bad thought? The payback that is deserved? Or the self-pity I want to sit in? I’ll be honest, self-pity is a warm bath. I like to just lay in there and feel aggrieved and feel like the world always screws me… it’s a bunch of b******t, but sometimes I like it.

This is where I will say the one suggestion I would make based on what I found. I got into a few tailspins of a flood of bad thoughts, and I eventually got out of the tailspin but it was much harder than if I immediately recognized the tailspin was coming and did not get into it to begin with. So I am suggesting to myself that next time I feel that coming on, I need to halt it immediately, or it will run wild with my next 50-100 thoughts. Then it takes a few hours sometimes to get out of that mud.

Man, now I am having some bad thoughts about this newsletter being too long and all over the place. So I better go and quickly try to get myself out of that tailspin!

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:

Did you hear about the drunk who staggered into an upholstery shop to sleep it off?

He woke up recovered.

(Credit: AA Grapevine, October 2005, by the Quilchena Group in Vancouver, 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!

I listen to guided meditations sometimes whenever I feel like my brain is going too fast to meditate without somebody holding my hand. If you haven’t tried guided meditations, I think they’re awesome. There are hundreds of them on YouTube, with a bunch of good ones targeted at a specific topic—letting go of resentment, working through anxiety, the loss of a loved one, and on and on. You can pick one that is an hourlong or five minutes or 10 minutes or whatever you’re looking for.

A few days ago, I was listening to a guided meditation about anxiety that really got me thinking. The guide was talking about envisioning the issue that is giving you anxiety, and then to think about the story you’re telling yourself about that situation versus the truth. He said to keep a special eye out for where your story might be exaggerating any wrongdoing by somebody else, or where you might not be thinking clearly about your role in the situation. All pretty standard stuff.

But then he said something that I hadn’t thought about before. He said to now think about the same situation and your feelings, and then recognize that you are probably exaggerating your own feelings to yourself.

Whoa. Think about that for a second, because I realized that’s usually true. If somebody acts like an a*****e, I’m not mad. I AM MAD. If somebody hurts me feelings, I’m not upset. I AM UPSET. If I need to stand up for myself, I’m not going to bring it up. I AM GOING TO SEEK REVENGE.

I’ve focused for so long on the part of anxiety and resentment where I might be taking an angle on the story I tell myself, that I might be overhyping somebody’s supposed misdeed, or creating a motive that might not be there.

But I haven’t spent much time thinking about how I am also taking my own basic feeling—maybe I’m sad or mad or feeling disrespected—and capitalized it. I take that small slight and I spin it into a big slight, which then causes my small emotion to be a BIG EMOTION.

Again, whoa. That’s probably something most people already are in touch with. I haven’t been. It made me think about the great Pixar movie, Inside Out, where the main characters of the movie are the emotions in a little girl’s head—Joy, Sadness, Fear, Anger and Disgust. Each character is a distilled version of each emotion, and they have outsized reactions in her head. The Anger character, voiced by Lewis Black, is particularly funny to me because of how red-faced and explosive he gets. I feel that guy living inside me sometimes.

Years ago, I started trying to ask myself a series of questions when I am twisted up about something. A few of them are:

Is this as big of a deal as you’re making it out to be right now? In a month, will you remember it?

If the answer is yes, it’s a big deal and will be remembered… should it be remembered? Or should you start aggressively trying to let it go even though it sucks?

What was your role? Even if my side of the street is 1% of the problem, that’s still something to turn my attention to. And the dirty little secret of almost every single ugly situation I have encountered in the past 13 years of sobriety is closer to 50-50 than 100-0.

So what action can I take now when I think about my own emotions in the stories I tell myself? Here are a few questions I am going to try to ask myself about my feelings.

Is the level of emotion—mad, sad, disgusted, frustrated, ungrateful—overblown? The answer is probably yes.

If the answer is yes, what do I need to do right now—not two miserable hours from now, not after yelling at my kids for 10 minutes, NOW—to let the air out of it? It could be a few phone calls. It could be a 10-minute guided meditation. It could be to eat a freaking sandwich—H.A.L.T. (Hungry Angry Lonely Tired) is a real thing.

And in the occasional example where someone or something really did screw me over or break my heart, once I have lower-cased my emotions, what needs to happen next?

Do I need to follow up with somebody and let them know where my head is at in a calm, collected way? That does happen. Part of sobriety is not getting treated like crap, firing yourself up for a month about it, then having it happen again. It can mean standing up for yourself… but not with your fists balled up, ready to rumble.

Whew. That’s a lot to unpack, and I have the entire weekend to do just 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:

What’s the last thing a drunk says before he's hospitalized?

"Watch this!"

(Credit: AA Grapevine, October 2005, by T.B. of 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!

I have been thinking a lot lately about the relationship between my social media use and my addictive personality. I don’t do much social media, but I do have a profile on almost every platform and I do check them. I will tweet out a link to this newsletter post that you’re reading or listening to right now. I will post it on Facebook and Instagram and YouTube. And I will get excited if there are a bunch of retweets or new followers or friend requests.

So I am on there… but I’ve decided to be more as an observer than as a participant. That’s not an accident.

Some people can do social media. I can’t. I tried. It’s not social media’s fault; it’s me. I dabbled in posting a lot on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram but I found myself trying to get likes, overreacting positively or negatively based on who retweeted or gave me a heart emoji. I found it very similar to the way my brain started to react to drugs and alcohol. It was very addictive, and I would notice when a post or a picture wouldn’t get any traction, and then I would notice that my mood was affected. I was kind of getting high—or low—off it.

Again, I think there are lots of people out there who love social media and get a lot out of it. I see the good it does for some people. I am not one of those people. I just can’t do a lot of mood-altering things—that includes substances and other behaviors, and I would include social media as something I saw as starting to be a corrosive force in my life.

One other big thing about social media is that I caught myself being pretty fake online. And I have spent too much of my life, both before and after I got sober, pretending to be stuff that I’m not. As a kid, I wanted to be a jock around jocks, a brainiac around the smart kids, a badass around the tough kids, a troublemaker around the rowdy kids… I could keep going. Come up with a kind of kid, and I was always trying to chameleon into it around those kids. I get tired just typing about that hustle.

That carried into college and then young adulthood. It was all a scam. I was filtering my outsides in real life before you could actually filter your outsides on TikTok or Instagram.

That popped up for me a lot on April 1, because lots of people were posting jokes and pranks, and lots of other people were saying, “Hey, be careful, don’t trust what you’re seeing on social media today.” And it dawned on me that maybe you shouldn’t trust everything you see on social media ON ANY DAY, not just April 1.

I remember before I pulled the plug on most of my social media life, I posted a picture once of my family at a pumpkin patch. I think about that photo a lot, because the reality of that photo and the words I typed about that picture were completely different.

The photo was me, my wife and three kids, smiling on a beautiful fall day, all holding pumpkins. I wrote a typical dad post, about how I’d just spent a wonderful afternoon picking out the perfect pumpkin with my awesome family… blah blah blah, you’ve seen 1,000 posts like that.

Some of that was true, especially when I looked back at the photo. But here’s the truth about the photo in the moment: I was annoyed that I had to leave the TV and miss three hours of college football on a Saturday afternoon. I was sweaty because I over-dressed to be lugging kids and pumpkins around a field on a 65-degree day. I was in incredible pain because I have a limit of about 30 minutes of walking because of significant foot issues, and I did four times that, with pumpkins on my shoulders. By the time we asked someone to take a picture of us, I wanted to print the photo out, light it on fire and launch it toward Mars.

But instead… I posted it on Facebook later that night and wrote about what a fantastic day at the pumpkin patch I had just experienced.

The photo got a bunch of likes, and my kids sometimes see that picture on my phone and smile about it. So that’s good. But I didn’t love what it did to my insides, and so that is one of the last photos I did that with. I just don’t find that it feeds my spiritual condition in a helpful way.

So I’m out for the most part on social media. I still like looking at other peoples’ social feeds quite a bit, so I will be on there, lurking. And hey, I’m about six or eight weeks away from getting asked to go to a pumpkin patch, so it’s entirely possible I end up posting a stream of photos that are b******t. But I’ll take it one day at a time…

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....

After my first meeting, I went home and told my wife, "Hey, they were kind of nice. They invited me back for next time."

She replied, "You go right back and see those people, because nobody's invited you back anywhere in the last 10 years!"

(Credit: AA Grapevine, by Anonymous, October 2005)

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

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

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

I think a good chunk of the people who subscribe to this newsletter are in recovery themselves. But I also know a bunch of subscribers who are just interested in learning about the sober community, so they signed up.

So I thought it would be fun to run through the questions I get asked the most about sobriety, from people who are not in recovery themselves—or from curious people I have run into over the years who seem so interested in what sobriety looks like that I wonder if I might see them at a meeting some day.

—10. Can you drink non-alcoholic beer?

I remember somebody asking me this question and then a bunch of followups about it, and I couldn’t help but think, “Does this guy want to stop drinking himself and he really likes the taste of beer?” Either way, my answer is that I can’t. I don’t know about other people. But I can’t. I believe there are trace amounts of alcohol in non-alcoholic beer but don’t fact-check me on that.

I can’t because drinking was a ritualistic behavior for me, and anything that starts up that ritualistic behavior, I can’t even mess with. I personally don’t really want to drink non-alcoholic beer, anyway—I didn’t drink because I loved the flavor. I loved the effects… until I didn't.

—9. What do you do at parties?

I get this one a lot because having a drink in your hand is such a fundamental part of many parties. But I’ll say two things. One, nobody notices or really cares if it is a Diet Coke or a water in your hand instead of an alcoholic drink. Most people at parties are half-tipsy and don’t give a s**t about anything other than their own drink, anyway.

Secondly, I got sober at 32 and am 44 now. I’m married and have three kids. So the party scene for people like me is pretty calm. I’d say I only get invited to about five parties a year, probably less, where there is significant boozing happening.

I guess if I were in college, or single and 24 years old, this would be a thornier question. But I do know plenty of young people who have much cooler social lives than me, and they have found a way to juggle not drinking while also hanging out with groups of people.

So the short answer is, it is possible.

—8. How much does it cost?

I think sometimes people conflate rehab treatment programs with 12-step programs. But the truth is, 12-step recovery costs nothing. We do pass a basket to pay the rent and buy books, but you don’t have to give anything. We always seem to get the rent paid somehow.

—7. Was it hard?

Hmm, how do you answer this question? It’s a tough question.

On one hand, yes, because I wanted to stop drinking and drugging for about five years before I actually did. I knew the pain and suffering it caused for me and others every single day, and I couldn’t stop. So that would classify as a hard habit to break, I guess.

And as far as the first month or so of sobriety, yes, that was an entirely new life. It was scary. Physically, I couldn’t sleep, and I didn’t know what to do when I would get mad or sad and couldn’t reach for a substance to take care of the problem. So there were parts of early recovery that were indeed quite difficult.

But on the other hand, the things that have gotten me sober and kept me sober are not very complex. I went to 90 meetings in 90 days, got a sponsor and worked a program. And it all came together. I work pretty hard to stay sober… but not as hard as I worked to stay drunk and high every day. That was a full-time job, and I always felt horrible.

So I guess my short answer is, at a certain point, it becomes much harder to stay active than it is to stop. That was my experience.

—6. Do you have to be religious to get sober?

Well, this is an interesting question that people would probably answer a little differently. But I would give what is probably the most common answer, which the founders of 12-step programs said quite frequently: 12-step programs are spiritual programs, not religious programs. And while the words “God” and “Higher Power” pop up quite frequently, it’s still a program of suggestions, with lots of wiggle room to choose your own God adventure.

—5. Do you like being in 12-step programs?

I haven’t gotten this one too many, but it’s often from people who seem to think it is like Brussel sprouts. I get it, going to meetings is often portrayed on TV as being prescribed to people who got into trouble and need to do them in order to avoid jail time.

But for me personally, I don’t like being in 12-step programs. I love it. And I don’t love it for some really impressive reason—I love it because my life got a lot better. If I had a disease and some medication cured it if I took it every day, and then my life got better and better every day… I mean, do I need to keep going?

—4. Is it just a bunch of old dudes in church basements?

Haha, I’ve said this one myself, jokingly, but it’s not really true. I’m sure there are meetings that look and smell like old dudes in a church basement. But I’ve had no trouble finding all sorts of meetings, with a diverse group of people by any demographic you can come up with.

Do a lot of meetings happen in church basements? Well, I do find myself in quite a few churches, and often times it’s in the basement. But when I have been asked about that I get the sense that people are envisioning dark dungeons down in the guts of a church, past boxes of Bibles and the old air conditioner from the rectory… that has not been my experience. They’re well lit and beautiful places to try to catch a dose of sobriety!

—3/2. Can you still smoke weed?

Let me combine two similar questions here…

In my first few years of sobriety, I don’t ever remember anybody wondering that. But since legalization of marijuana has been on an uptick over the past decade or so, I have heard that one quite a bit, including from a few newcomers who were coming to their first meetings.

It’s a tricky one to answer in general, because I’ve heard people make compelling cases that most sober literature focuses heavily on alcoholism, and alcohol alone. I’ve definitely heard of people identifying themselves as alcoholic/addict, or just addict, and then being told that alcoholism meetings are for alcoholics only. I was at a different 12-step fellowship recently where the group conscience was to ask people to identify as clean, not sober.

I personally don’t get too hung up on that stuff. I have a more liberal interpretation of that, because I know the truth about me and my addictions: I cannot drink alcohol, smoke weed, take pills, anything. I say I am an alcoholic and an addict, and I consider myself clean and sober.

The second, similar question that I get: I’ve noticed just in the past year or two, as legalized gambling sweeps through the country, I have gotten asked, “Are you able to smoke weed? And what about gambling?” My answer is that I personally do not gamble because I just know it wouldn’t end well for me. When I was active with drugs and alcohol, I did gamble quite a bit and never got into too much trouble with it—not like booze and pills, anyway. But I saw it doing some of the same things to my brain, so I avoid it.

—1. Do you have to go to meetings forever?

Well, let me put it this way: Yes, as long as I view forever as one day at a time. I don’t know if I am going to need to stay sober for five more weeks or five more months or five more decades. I am just trying to make sure I don’t drink or do drugs today.

But to answer that question fully, I will say that I often wondered that myself, even when I got into the rooms and started hearing the “One day at a time” mantra. I’d never been arrested, never had a suspended license, never gotten a DUI, never been fired from my job, never even bought drugs from a drug dealer… maybe somebody like me wasn’t bad enough to need meetings fo…

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 learned almost right away how important service is to sobriety. I remember I only had a week or two sober when my first 12-step group voted me in as a greeter, and I loved it. It also forced me to meet people and get plugged in and stay plugged in with the group. It was clear that service had to be a part of my life if I were going to stay sober.

In sober literature, service is a constant theme. My 13-year sobriety coin says “Unity, Recovery, Service” on it. So it’s obviously really important.

I often hear that, though, and think it means service within sober programs, and that’s it. In my head, I think if I am chairing one group and the treasurer for two other meetings and I sponsor people… hooray, I did my service!

But I am unaware of any spots in any sober programs that emphasize that service work ends at the door to the church. In fact, I believe the concept of practicing these principles in all our affairs means exactly the opposite.

I am thinking about this because my wife and kids recently got invited to a baby shower in New Jersey, about a four-hour drive away. You may recall me moaning and groaning a few months ago because they got invited to a bridal shower in New Jersey six months ago, and I ended up driving them to and from it. I called myself their Uber Goober—I literally was not invited to either of these events.

So when my wife asked me if I had any interest in driving them to the baby shower, through some of the toughest roads and bridges and tunnels in the United States, my first thought was, “I have absolutely zero interest in doing that. In fact, what is less than zero? Fine, I have -5 interest in being your Uber Goober again.”

But my second thought is usually better than my first. So I thought about how nice it would be for my wife and our three daughters if they didn’t have to worry about the stress of getting there and back, so I volunteered.

I knew what I was getting into. It is a thankless job. About the only commentary I get is why I took that road or slow down or I have to pee or I have to pee AGAIN or something smells bad, it must be dad. But I took the job anyway, and the idea of doing service work beyond the rooms of 12-step programs was in my head. I need to get better at that—I don’t want to be a kind, generous person to all my sober friends and then an asswipe to my family.

So I did it. I drove them down and back. It sucked big-time, and I definitely spent an hour or so on the way home saying things to myself like, “I will never again help out unless there’s something in it for me” and “Do they even know how sucky the Garden State Parkway is on a Sunday afternoon as they listen to their music and play their iPad games?”

Then we stopped as a gas station in Jersey, and when we went inside, there was a motorcycle dude with a jacket that said “Sober and free.” It had a few visuals that indicated this guy might be in a program—also, I’m pretty sure the word “sober” helped my amazing Sherlock Holmes skills. I approached him and we started talking, and sure enough, he had 12 years sober. I mentioned the rehab I went to in New Jersey, and his eyes lit up… he speaks there once a month about the beauty of sobriety.

In the car, my wife and kids got a kick out of me making a friend in a gas station candy aisle. “Everywhere you go, you find some friend to talk to!” my wife said.

Yep, that’s one of the gifts of this program. And it’s also a form of service. That guy has no idea how much he helped me get right-sized and in a better headspace for the rest of the trip home. By the time we got to Connecticut, I was grateful for the opportunity to get my family to and from New Jersey safely and efficiently.

Did I get any thank yous from the four of them for being an incredible Uber Goober? Nope. But I went to bed that night knowing the truth, which is that it was good service work for my family, whether they know it or not. So the Uber Goober slept really well!

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

HEARD AT MEETINGS....

An old-timer spoke about the danger of becoming complacent and explained the need for the Steps in her life. "The way I see it," she said, "I might have gotten the monkey off my back, but the circus is still in town."

(Credit: AA Grapevine, September 2005, by S.E.A. from New York, NY)

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

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

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 a speaker at a meeting recently who said something so profound I am still thinking about it. He said the real tragedy once active addiction has begun is that it kills your imagination. You begin to think that life cannot go on like this… but also that a life without drugs and alcohol is not possible. You cannot see a life with or without drugs. There’s no imagination left.

Oof. I bet there are some heads nodding right now, because I so get that. I was terrified of taking away the thing that was killing me, and I was even more terrified of what life would be like without the substances. I remember thinking that even if I managed to not drink or drug for awhile, there’s no way I could do it for very long. What a terrible prison cell to be put in.

And with no imagination, that meant I had no hope, either. And no hope means the candle is just about to burn out. In one piece of sober literature, that moment of total despair is described as “pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization,” and that is a perfect summary of active addiction with no imagination left looks like. Again, oof.

I remember those days all too well. There was so much darkness, and I had so much light around me in my life. I had a good job, a great wife and two awesome kids who were little. They were nothing but imagination at their ages when I really was at the bottom.

When I think about that time in my life, November 2008, as I went into rehab, I don’t know what my imagination levels looked like. I do remember a funny conversation I had after my first 12-step meeting, when I announced that I had a few days sober and was new. A guy came up to me and gave me a warm hug and said, “Make sure you stick around for the cash and prizes.” I remember thinking, “Oh cool, they must do some kind of raffle here for new people. I hope it’s a lot of cash and prizes, because I am broke.”

I got pretty close with that guy over the coming weeks, and he was one of those guys who oozed hopefulness and optimism. He was the kind of person who lifted others up just by being him. I eventually asked him, “Hey, what actually are the cash and prizes?” He smiled and said, “This right here is the cash and prizes,” and he pointed from himself to me.

The cash and prizes were the intense, beautiful connections that alcoholics and addicts make with one another. Honestly, I don’t know if there is a price tag I could put on some of those relationships that I have had, including that one.

They’re worth more than a million dollars, because those are the relationships that turned my entire life around. Those are the relationships that started to spark up the old imagination machine. Those are the people that I looked at and thought, '“Hey, maybe this is possible.”

I guess that means the way to pay it forward is to be that person for somebody else. I have met quite a few people over the years that are newly sober and just can’t see it yet. But then they do. Sometimes it takes a few weeks or even a few months but they get there. I’m going to try to be one of the imagination revivers today.

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 is walking along the beach, savoring his sobriety. He comes across an old bottle that has washed up on shore. Curious, he pulls out the cork. Out of a puff of smoke, a genie appears.

"Thank you for saving me," says the genie. "It seems as if I was a prisoner of that bottle for ages. Now I am free."

The drunk considers the genie, reflects, and replies, "Thank you for sharing, I identify!"

(Credit: AA Grapevine, August 2005, by Donny B. of Wurtsboro, NY)

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

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

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I stumbled upon an old PSA from the 1980s warning kids to stay away from drugs, with a specific recommendation to avoid marijuana at all costs. It used the phrase “gateway drug.”

I laughed. I remember as a little kid being scared away from weed, and I didn’t light my first joint until college. The entire time, I had this deep fear that if I smoked any weed, I would have no control over what happens after that.

That was a pretty good instinct now that I think about it. I’m not sure if it’s because the ad scared me away… or if some part of me, deep down, knew that there were no single thing that was a gateway drug for me—because they were all gateway drugs! It wouldn’t have mattered what order I tried alcohol, weed, pills, whatever—I was going to be an addict.

I should just say right here that one of the most frequently-asked type of question I get is how I feel about the drug war, the opioid crisis and legalizing pot. I think because I am an alcoholic and an addict, people assume I want everything to be illegal or at least have strong opinions about those topics.

I don’t. The strongest opinion I have is that I cannot under any circumstance do any of those things. But I actually don’t have much of an opinion about whether anybody else can. I know most of the population can drink and not have their lives become unmanageable, so hey, go have a good time, guys—I won’t be joining you!

I don’t really vote or protest for or against any of those things. I just know that they do not work in any way for me. I guess if I had to say something about my viewpoint, I would say that I have done a lot of work involving inmates who had a desire to stop drinking and drugging, and many of them are in prison because of drugs and alcohol. And some of them are in prison based on laws and sentencing guidelines from decades ago, not from 2022. So it is important to me the way we show forgiveness to people who make mistakes but want to do better.

Let me get back to the gateway concept because I find it still applies in my life. I accepted a long time ago that alcohol and drugs were terrible for me and I need to totally abstain. That even goes for non-alcoholic beer. I just cannot go through any of the motions of drinking booze, in any way, because I think that could be a gateway back.

I also cannot smoke or use chewing tobacco any more. I had a pretty nasty nicotine habit when I was an active addict, and nicotine, drugs and alcohol are too wrapped up together for me to ever go back to nicotine. In my head, they all party together.

I also cannot do any kind of gambling, even lottery tickets. It was never my biggest problem, but I did like the way gambling made me feel. Now that gambling is legalized in over half the country, including the state I live in, I have to be very careful to avoid all the apps and online casinos and real casinos. As somebody who watches a lot of sports, I feel like I am getting drilled in the face every 30 seconds with a new opportunity to spend all of my money on football games and UFC fights.

So overall, when I think about my sobriety, I think about it like a big road that I am on. I know where that road is going. I know what it takes to stay on that road, and it ain’t easy. I get tempted all the time by the stuff I already mentioned. But those are gateways to get off the road I need to stay on and try a different one. And I can’t do that.

As I wrote this one, I did look at what was a pretty long list of stuff I can’t do and I felt a pang in my stomach like, “Oh man, that’s all the fun stuff! I can’t do any of it.” That’s not true. That’s the bad voice in my head. The truth is, there are a million ways to enjoy life other than that list for me. I just need to do it without a non-alcoholic beer in one hand and some scratch offs in the other!

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:

SENILITY PRAYER:

God grant me the senility to forget the people I never liked,

The good fortune to run into the ones that I do,

And the eyesight to tell the difference.

(Credit: AA Grapevine, August, 2005, from Cindy 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’ve been thinking a little bit recently about real gratitude versus gratitude-with-strings-attached. I sometimes have been catching myself doing nice things because I want something in return.

By that, I mean, sometimes I catch myself doing things like dropping a few dollars in a tip jar but waiting until the people behind the counter are looking. I need the acknowledgement that I did something kind.

About five years ago, I ducked out of my office for an hour around lunchtime. I went to a nearby Cumberland Farms gas station and got a soda. I used to like to get out of the building for a bit, grab a drink and make a call to a sober friend or two.

When I left, I turned left onto the street to head back to the office, and as I did so, I saw that there was a wallet that had basically exploded onto the road. There were cards scattered all over the intersection.

I remember driving through the intersection and thinking, “Sucks for that person,” and then getting about a tenth of a mile before feeling like I’d have wanted somebody to have tried to collect those items and get them back to me.

So I turned around and went back to the gas station, parked and then ran out in the middle of the intersection a few times to gather up everything. After five minutes or so, I had everything I could find: the wallet, a woman’s driver’s license and a bunch of credit cards and insurance IDs.

I went back to the office and spent an hour or two trying to track down this person. It was an older woman who didn’t have any kind of social media footprint that I could find, but I eventually tracked down her son-in-law, who was a teacher at a local high school.

Eventually, about three hours after I ran around under a red light trying to collect everything, I heard directly from her. She was very grateful, and asked to meet back at the same gas station a few minutes later. I met her and her husband over there and gave them the wallet.

On the drive over there, I caught myself thinking, “I wonder what they’re going to give me. I hope they’re rich. This could be my lucky day. Maybe $100? Maybe more? That’s how much saving those credit cards must have been worth.”

So by the time I got to the gas station, I had whipped myself into a frenzy that I had just done a $100 good deed.

The woman and her husband were already there, and they were extremely grateful in person. They thanked me over and over again. The woman said to me, “I should give you something for saving me so many headaches,” and I recall waving her off, saying, “Nah, I just hope everyone would have done the same thing.”

I don’t think I really meant it. Deep down, I wanted her to say, “No, I absolutely insist that I give you, the Mother Theresa of Cumberland Farms, this $100. Actually, make it $1,000.”

But she didn’t. She had said thank you, mentioned giving me something, accepted “No, thank you” as an answer, and she was going to move on.

What an a*****e. How dare she not recognize that I was playing hard to get with my gratitude?

I spun my wheels for a bit driving back to the office, lamenting what jerks people can be. Then I made a call to a sober friend and told that story, and before I could even listen for a response, I realized I was the jerk.

In my life, gratitude can’t have an expectation attached to it. I can’t think that if I do something my kids want, they will come home and scoop the litterboxes and do the dishes. Not going to happen. I can’t expect if I do a good job at work that there will be a promotion and bonus attached to it.

And I don’t know what I expect when I pause my tip-giving to make sure a sufficient amount of the staff notices. What am I looking for there, a standing ovation? Should the CEO appear like a genie and grant me a lifetime of free meals at the restaurant?

An hour later, I was in the right head space. I had done the right thing, and figured out the right reason a little bit later, and it ended up not being a $100 good deed. It was a million dollar good deed, just without the actual million dollars, because I felt gratitude on a very deep level.

The kicker to the story? About a week later, I got a letter in my office mailbox. It was a note from the woman whose wallet I had found. I don’t remember giving her my name or address, but she hunted me down somehow. She had written a quick note on a Post It that she attached to a copy of a letter she sent to the president of my company. In that letter, she described what happened, and she said she knew our company would always be successful because it hired wonderful people like me.

As I finished the letter, I felt even more gratitude than I had before, and right as I was about to fold it up and put it back in the envelope, I noticed there was something else in there.

And it was… a $100 gift card.

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

"When it comes to gratitude, my mind is like teflon. When it comes to resentments, my mind is like flypaper. Meetings help me to reverse that phenomenon."

(Credit: AA Grapevine, from July 2005, by David K. of Wilmington, Delaware)

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 caught a really interesting Daily Reflections reading the other day. Here it is:

OVERCOMING LONELINESS

November 17

Almost without exception, alcoholics are tortured by loneliness. Even before our drinking got bad and people began to cut us off, nearly all of us suffered the feeling that we didn't quite belong.

AS BILL SEES IT, p. 90

The agonies and the void that I often felt inside occur less and less frequently in my life today. I have learned to cope with solitude. It is only when I am alone and calm that I am able to communicate with God, for He cannot reach me when I am in turmoil. It is good to maintain contact with God at all times, but it is absolutely essential that, when everything seems to go wrong, I maintain that contact through prayer and meditation.

Again, that is the Nov. 17 reading. I found about 10 different parts of that reading that spoke to me but I am going to focus on one line: It is only when I am alone and calm that I am able to communicate with God, for He cannot reach me when I am in turmoil.

The second part of the sentence really grabbed my attention—the idea that when I am in turmoil, I cannot connect with my Higher Power.

Throw out the God stuff in that sentence for a second. As I have mentioned many times on this newsletter, I only have ever had a vague understanding of what my Higher Power is. I don’t have a church. I don’t have a God with a painting on the wall anywhere. And my God doesn’t have a religious text that I read every day.

It’s all much squishier and hard to explain. But a lot of it boils down to a few simple concepts. One is that I believe there are lots of things bigger than me—the sun, the universe, gravity, the ocean, and on and on. So I am not a higher power, and as long as I remember that I am okay.

The other big thing is that I haven’t closed the door on anything. I have met people who have had bad experiences with religion and really bristle at the God stuff. I get it. I feel that way sometimes. I just always try to make sure I am open for anything in the spiritual zone.

So my higher power is a lot about spiritual principles and paying attention to what the universe is telling me—I often find what I need when I listen for my higher power to speak to me through other sober people. It’s remarkable how much calling three sober men with strong principles and a strong program can feel like God spoke to me.

Back to that second half of the sentence I highlighted: “For he cannot reach me when I am in turmoil.” That word really struck me—turmoil. I no longer drink and do drugs, but I certainly can get addicted to stuff. That includes food and caffeine, but it also includes grudges, gossip and anger. It sounds weird to say I can get addicted to anger, but it’s true. Anger can be exciting. It can give you a sense of a purpose. On a boring day, sometimes a good white-hot boiling beef with someone can be riveting.

When I think about the word turmoil in that sentence, it really makes sense to me that if I am in turmoil—even if it’s just a snippy email or text message while you’re at the grocery store—I cannot possibly process things the way I want. I can’t be quiet and listen for the words I need to use or the email that I need to type. It’s all me. Go. Go. Go.

That’s when I want to argue and defend and do all sorts of turmoil behaviors, and my brain is good at cranking out lots of stuff to keep the turmoil tornado going.

It’s interesting that this reading’s title was “Overcoming Loneliness,” because the answer to turmoil for me isn’t as simple as just sitting in a quiet room. That certainly helps most of the time. But I find myself occasionally taking deep breaths and trying to clear my mind… but I end up just sitting by myself and whipping myself into a frenzy.

So that’s why the best answer to quietly defeating turmoil is to get to a meeting. I end up getting my turmoil valve shut down for an hour, which clears out space for the better, healthier stuff to come back into my brain. I was a little bit grumpy and argumentative and frustrated over the weekend and I got to a meeting. The meeting went around in a circle and I was the first person who got called on. I had 50 things that I wanted to say, but I felt like the most valuable action might be for me to pass and just listen.

I did it, and the meeting went very well and helped enormously.

To be totally honest, though, we got done a little early and the chairperson asked if anybody who passed would want to share. Did I then share those 50 things I wanted to say? Yes, I very much did.

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 newcomer climbed up to the top of a mountain with the idea that if he could get close enough to the heavens, he could talk with his Higher Power. Scanning the sky, he called out, "God, what does a million years mean to you?"

To his surprise, a booming voice answered, "A minute."

The astonished newcomer bravely continued, "What does a million dollars mean to you?"

God answered, "A penny."

Now confident, the new AA asked, "May I have a penny?"

After a short pause, God replied, "In a minute."

(Credit: AA Grapevine, July 2005, from Chuck B.)

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 joined a gym for the third time in my life, and I realized in that moment that this was the first time I was doing it for the right reasons. And this will come as shocking news… the first two times were before I got sober, and the first two times were also a complete waste of time.

My first gym membership was my freshman year in college, which happens to be almost the exact time that my addictions were unleashed. I was drinking, smoking, dabbling in drugs and lifting weights. My one goal was to get into the best shape possible so that I could then get drunk so I would be able to talk to women. Then I wanted as many hookups as possible.

I had a good year in the gym. I got into the best shape of my life, and I was 19 years old so I didn’t have the dad bod going yet. But that wasn’t very spiritual, and it wasn’t very sustainable. So by year two of college, I had stopped going to the gym… and my drinking and smoking and chewing Skoal had doubled. If you’re pondering for a second if a person really could smoke and chew tobacco at the same time… trust me, it’s possible, and it is disgusting. That made for some nasty moments hugging a toilet bowl at 2 am.

The second gym membership I got was when I was 25 years old, living in New York City. I had moved there with my girlfriend (now my wife), and I had begun to drink and use painkillers in a way that started to scare me. I had known that I liked getting drunk or high a little more than normal people by then, and now I had begun to drift into needing to do it almost every night.

I was in that phase of addiction where I had created some rules for myself to manage my drinking. I could have two beers per night on work days as long as I went to the gym first. Then I told myself that I could go up to a six-pack on Friday and Saturday nights as long as I had gotten a workout in and I waited four hours after my last painkiller. I had this math equation in my head where one side was healthy stuff like the gym, and on the other side was the painkillers and alcohol. Somehow they equaled out.

But like all guidelines I ever established for myself… I couldn’t live up to them. My workouts got shorter and shorter because they were cutting into my drinking time. Pretty soon I let myself drink three beers per night on weekdays “to help me get to sleep easier,” and I began to count Thursday as a weekend day instead of a weeknight.

After another year or two, and my gym membership was canceled and I was getting loaded every night, regardless of whether I worked that day or had to the next day. My addiction had officially begun.

Now fast forward to 2019. I’d been sober for 11 years, and I had started to tack on a few pounds. That was causing some issues, physically and spiritually, so I bought some weights and started to work out at home. I came up with a workout plan that I was comfortable with, and it was a gradual plan. I really put some thought into it and decided I wanted to do medium-level workouts every single day to build it into a habit, rather than a quick-fix thing I would burn out from.

And I worked out at home for two-plus years, until early in 2022, when I decided to jump a notch by joining a gym. I’ve been going almost every day since then with the same goal of reasonable workouts as a daily part of my life. I won’t go too deep into the benefits of what it has added to my recovery, but the benefits are extensive. In my experience, there is a connection between my emotional, spiritual and physical wellbeing, and that when I have a good program for all three, it’s the best way for me to live my life.

Is the dad bod gone? Not really. I’m chipping away at it but I still have a little bit of that old shitty math equation, where one hour of working out means I can eat one hour’s worth of cookies every night. I don’t need a mathematics whiz to again realize that equation doesn’t quite work for this tire around my waist line. But… baby steps, right? At least I’m not hovering above the toilet with a nicotine barf explosion, and for now, I will take 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....

"Experience is what you get when you don't get what you want."

(Credit: AA Grapevine, from D.J.W. of Tukwila, Washington, July 2005)

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

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