LOL Sober

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I was going through an old duffel bag the other day and I came across a funeral card of a recovery friend who didn’t make it. He was the first person I’d ever gotten close to in sobriety who died from the disease, and it ripped my guts out.

That reminded me of how one time I went to a meeting and aired out some tough stuff that I was going through in recovery. It wasn’t drug or alcohol related—it was just bumpy, non-life threatening stuff that comes up in a good, sober life. Afterward, an old-timer came up to me with a very solemn look on his face and said, “Hey… at least you’re not dead. You got that going for you!” Then he broke into a big smile, and so did I. For some reason, that helped.

And then more recently I hit a few meetings where people were just coming back to the rooms of recovery after a relapse, and they shared very harrowing stories of almost dying.

That concept just kept coming up over and over again. It all felt like a big conspiracy by my higher power to remind me that what that old dude said to me is a very low bar for gratitude every day… but it’s true.

I’d ask anybody listening to this or reading it to try to count up the number of times you should have died, or when someone else could have. For me, I can’t even come up with an accurate count. I know I overdosed many, many times and mixed drugs and alcohol in a way that could have kept me from ever waking up.

So I like that general idea of reminding myself how much worse it could have been and how bad it could be. It’s not really a sustainable way for me to stay sober—I think if I whispered to myself every morning, “Wake up, sleepyhead, aren’t you glad you’re not dead?” it would wear off by about day three. I can’t go to that well too often.

But when I need a jolt, it sure comes in handy.

I should probably apologize for putting a new ear worm into your head that you’re going to sing to yourself nonstop the rest of the day… “Wake up, sleepyhead, aren’t you glad you’re not dead!” Consider it a free gift from your friend, Nelson H.

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 TRUE STORY:

An old-timer in the northeast United States didn't like to use the term "pigeons" when referring to the women she sponsored. She much preferred to call them her "babies."

One day, while shopping in a mall, she ran into one of her sponsees, who was there with her husband and their new baby. The sponsor looked at the infant and declared, "My goodness, what a beautiful baby!"

The husband, suppressing a smile, answered, "Thank you, we prefer to call him our pigeon."

(Credit: AA Grapevine, from Anonymous, in 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

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!

We just celebrated Father’s Day at my house, and I gotta say, I think it might have been my favorite one I’ve ever had. We didn’t really do anything mind-blowing, but my kids said very personal things to me and gave me very personal things. It felt like the sign of relationships that go much deeper than surface level, and I am proud of that. They know me, and I know them.

It reminded me of my first sober Father’s Day, back in 2009. It was an awesome, refreshing day, because holidays had been such a disaster for me in the past. I always took the opportunity on a day like Father’s Day to get completely out of control drunk or high because I knew I probably wasn’t going to get yelled at on my birthday or Father’s Day. It was MY day, guys, so I will projectile vomit wherever I want and however many times I want!

I remember on Father’s Day 2009 that I made a lot of phone calls to my sober network—probably 5-7 people. I wanted to express gratitude, and most of them were fathers, too. And I remember one conversation very vividly because I said something along the lines of, “It’s days like this that make sobriety worth it. This is why I push so hard to stay sober—for my wife and kids.”

I sensed some hesitation on the other end of the line, so I inquired why. I remember the guy being very cautious and gentle, but eventually saying something to me about how once you’ve been sober for awhile, you can’t stay sober for something else. You can’t stay sober for your wife, your husband, your kids, your job, to make more money, to get your parole officer off your ass. His point was that you have to figure out the higher power thing, and then use that to stay sober because you want to be sober.

I was confused by that. Aren’t kids a pretty damn good reason to get sober? Isn’t being a good husband a good reason to get sober? He said yes, but pushed me to think about what happens if a sober person gets the thing they want—the house, the job, the parole, the wife… what then? What’s the driving force behind your sobriety then?

I had to let that seed grow for awhile but I eventually understood what he meant, and I have seen that in sobriety. When I used to chair meetings in New York City, I’d routinely have people who needed you to sign their card after a meeting to indicate they’d attended. I remember getting to know a few guys pretty well for a month or so, filling out their card every meeting, and then I remember filling out the last line for a guy… and I never saw him again. He had done his 25 or 30 12-step meetings as mandated by a court, and he was gone. That was the one thing keeping him coming to meetings. It made me a little sad, but it strengthened my resolve to find a purpose in sobriety other than getting people off my ass.

I think I got to a good place. I don’t stay sober these days because anybody else wants me to. I want to be sober because I’ve seen how much better life is. That includes joyous days like Father’s Day.

Let me end with some straight talk, though. I think the day after Father’s Day might be one of the bumpiest days of the year for me. As an addict, when everybody is nice to you and giving you gifts and taking your suggestions with no questions asked, it feels like more is better, so I wake up the next morning thinking every day should be Father’s Day. And it definitely is not. I have three kids, two of whom are teenagers, and they got up the next day and were just regular old teenagers again. Which meant they went back to ignoring me and thinking I am the lamest person on Earth.

So yeah… only 361 days till Father’s Day 2023. But who’s counting?

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:

On their first date, a man asked his companion if she'd like a drink.

"Oh, no. What would I tell my Sunday school class?" she said.

Later, he offered her a cigarette and again she declined: "What would I tell my Sunday school class?"

On the drive home, he saw a motel. Figuring he had nothing to lose, he asked if she wanted to stop in there.

"Okay," she said.

"What will you tell your Sunday school class?" he asked, shocked.

"The same thing I always tell them: 'You don't have to drink or smoke to have a good time.'"

(Credit: AA Grapevine, from David R. of Arlington, Texas, October 2008)

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

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

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

When I hit rock bottom with drugs and alcohol, I went to rehab. More specifically, I went to an intensive outpatient program at a rehab facility. I had never been to a 12-step meeting before.

So I started out there and got close with the counselors. Almost immediately, I learned that I wouldn’t be able to leave rehab until I had a program outside of the rehab, too. So then I started to go to 12-step meetings.

I picked up a sponsor right away because that’s what my rehab counselors said I needed to do, and for the first month or so of sobriety, my program was going to meetings, meeting with the rehab counselors and other patients, and talking to my sponsor.

It worked pretty well. But then I remember my sponsor saying to me, “Hey, you have to get other phone numbers and find other people in the program.”

My first thought was, “Oh no, he wants to break up with me,” but that was just the very insecure newcomer part of me.

My second thought was, “He’s worried that he might be busy and not able to pick up a call from me.” I said that to him, and he smiled.

“That’s one part of it. But the bigger thing is, I don’t know everything. In fact, I know very little. I know what worked for me. So that’s why you need to find a wide network of people.”

I pressed him on that a little bit, because I really looked up to him. When I looked at him, I thought, “He has what I want.”

He explained it some more, that you want a very diverse lineup of people in your sober life so that you can always find someone to lean on for whatever kinds of issues you might run into. I nodded along but I still didn’t really understand the need to have 10 people like my sponsor, when I already had him!

But the good news about me in early recovery, I really did have an open mind. More than I would have thought. I remember thinking, “OK, I really trust this dude and he is saying this helped him and might help me. What the hell do I have to lose?”

When I look back on early recovery, being open-minded might have been the most important single thing I had. And it’s not like I had anything to do with it—I felt so broken inside that I just surrendered to the world and said, “Tell me what to do and I will do it.”

Fast forward 13 or so years, and I have an awesome network of sober people in my life. I have assembled people who who are young, who are old, who are literature experts, who aren’t literature experts, people with kids, people in corporate life, people who aren’t…. it’s an incredible rolodex of people with all different kinds of backgrounds, for all different challenges in recovery.

Sometimes I need my network for big things… and sometimes for small things.

Case in point: I was at the airport near my house last week, listening to a podcast on my AirPods when there was an announcement. I barely heard it but thought, “Hmm, that kind of sounded like they said my name.”

Like most responsible adults, I said, “Ah, it’s probably somebody else” and ignored it.

Then my phone started to ring. It was a sober friend who had also texted me right before he called. It said: “Get back to security.” I answered the phone call and he said they’d announced my name and that I needed to go back to the TSA station.

So I hustled back to security and discovered that I had left behind one of my cards from my wallet. It would have been a giant pain in the ass if I hadn’t gotten it back, and I might have never even figured out where I had left it.

That was reason No. 417 for why you want to have a lot of sober friends, not just a few. Sometimes my network saves me from big stuff, like drinking and drugging, or getting arrested because I am enraged about something. And sometimes they save me from smaller stuff… like losing a credit 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

"I was a functioning alcoholic. I about functioned myself to death."

(Credit: AA Grapevine, from Deanna S. of Canton, Georgia, from October of 2008)

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

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

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

My daughter graduated from middle school a few days ago, and the principal gave a short speech before they introduced the kids. The point of her speech was that yes, it was insufferably hot in the gym, and yes, it was way too crowded in there, but that we should all rejoice in the moment because most people do not often get a lot of applause moments in life.

My first thought was, “Geez, we gotta get this lady to some 12-step meetings.”

I’ve written about anniversaries before, and I have heard numerous people over the years make the case that it doesn’t say anywhere in the 12 steps and 12 traditions that you should get a coin and a round of applause for celebrating lengths of sobriety. I get it. Most meetings that I have been to that celebrate anniversaries usually say, “It’s not a tradition of the program, but it is a tradition of this meeting to celebrate sober time.”

But I love anniversaries. I remember how much getting to 30 days clean and sober meant to me, and then getting my coin was everything I hoped for. I was going to big meetings in New York City at the time, so it was 50-plus people cheering and yelling for me. It was a nice little incentive.

And let me tell you, looking back, I needed the applause for that first year. One of the things that I saw in my life is that when I told everybody I needed to go to rehab, they were so happy and excited for me. Then everybody in my life was happy and excited that I stayed sober.

But I did start to find the pink cloud wearing off for me, and the people around me, too. I actually found I hit more speed bumps in my relationships at about the 3-6 month mark than the 3-6 week mark. I think what happened is that once the sheer joy of seeing me try to get sober wore off a little, many people in my life started retracing moments where I had obviously lied to them or hurt them or stole from them in the past, and it was starting to get unpacked.

In the workplace, I was surrounded by very kind and understanding people… but I also had been basically a no-show employee for a few years already, and now I needed to leave early every day to go to rehab as I tried to figure out how to ACTUALLY do my job.

Hey, I’m not complaining. That stuff needed to happen.

My point is, I sometimes had quite a few people outside recovery who loved me a lot but didn’t like me that much. So to have a roomful of people in recovery who were cheering me on, no strings attached, no backstory filled with pain and lies… I needed it. I always knew I could turn toward that group to help me with everybody else.

I also love that at meetings, you’ll sometimes see somebody celebrate 24 hours sober, then another person with two months, then another person with three years, then somebody else with 27 years. I think that is important, that we celebrate all lengths of sobriety, because we have people at all different stages. When I had a month, it really helped me to see somebody get three months. When I had a year, it really helped me to see somebody hit five years. It felt like they were helping me see the next stop on the long journey of sobriety.

It reminds me of one of my favorite sober jokes…

A guy walks into his first 12-step meeting and is introduced to three sober people. He has one day sober, and he asks the first person how long she has been sober for.

“10 years,” she says.

“Wow, that’s great,” the newcomer said before asking the second person how long he had been sober for.

“Five years,” the second person says.

“Geez, congratulations, that’s awesome,” the newcomer says. Then he asks the third person how long he had been sober for.

“Eight days,” the third guy says.

“Oh my god, how the hell did you freaking do it?!?!?!?!?!” the newcomer yelled.

I love that joke because I identify with the idea that it can be easier to imagine 10 years sober than 10 days. Sobriety can be a real grind, no matter how much time you have.

To go back at what that principal said, I think she was right. How many standing ovations do most people get outside of the rooms of recovery? For me personally, it’s not many. It’s not like I take my kids to Chuck E. Cheese and everybody stands up to cheer, and when my window opens up on work Zoom calls, there’s no uproarious applause. Maybe an awkward wave or two. But no cheers.

So I clap my ass off when people celebrate sober anniversaries. They earned it, and I want them to hear the power of a sober group.

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

A drunk and annoyed passenger called for the plane's flight attendant and demanded that the three children loudly cavorting in the row in front of his be told to play outside.

(Credit: AA Grapevine, by Richard M. of Golden, Colorado, from February 2007)

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 decided to do something a little different today. This is a story that’s not about how to get sober or stay sober. This is a story about why it’s worth it to get sober and stay sober.

I’ve written a few times about how for the past few months, my 16-year-old daughter has been learning to drive. I’ve done most of the driving with her, and we’ve had some significant ups and downs. As I have said before, if you want to talk about powerlessness and realizing your place in the world and the importance of praying to something bigger than yourself… hop in the passenger seat along side somebody who has been driving for 45 minutes in their entire life. You realize real quick that you are one wrong pedal push away from saying farewell to earth.

That might sound like a specific thing to that specific situation, but driving with her really helped me realize my place in the world. What control do I really have? Maybe I’m driving instead of my daughter, and maybe I am the best driver in the world… and somebody could barrel through an intersection and hit my car, anyway. It sounds depressing, but I always end up benefitting a lot from those moments when you stop trying to control everything and do what you can and let the rest go. When it comes to driving specifically, what else can you do other than to drive carefully and follow the rules and hope for the best? That means I control about 5% of every drive to the grocery store.

So back to my daughter driving. I was excited at first to drive with her. It felt like a real good opportunity to spend time together and to help her achieve a goal of hers. But oof, it was 40 hours of driving. That may not sound like too much. But it became very difficult for this self-centered person to have a long work day, then drive kids around to activities till 8 pm, then hop in the car with my 16-year-old at 9 pm to drive for 90 minutes up and down the streets of my town.

That was the thing that was brutal. It’s not like you can take a new driver and be like, “Hey, let’s go to New York City and burn off five hours of driving.” You have to build up slowly how to navigate neighborhoods and back roads and parking lots, and it takes awhile. We must have spent two hours just backing in and out of our driveway, parking on the street in front of our house, making K turns right out front… it got so monotonous and I just wanted to go watch the NBA Finals instead.

But we stuck with it, and chipped away and chipped away. It reminded me so much of early recovery, because when I had four days clean and sober, I wanted 30 days, and when I had 30 days, I wanted 90 days. But when I had four days, I had to get to five days first, and then six days. Same with driving—it was one-hour chunks at a time.

We also had some sadness along the way. One night we were driving and out of nowhere, three baby raccoons came barreling out onto the road and my daughter had no chance to avoid them. She hit them, and it was devastating. She started crying and I teared up a bit, too. She asked me if I thought any of them died and I immediately said, “No, I think they’re fine. One just bounced off the side of the car a little bit.” The raccoons were not fine, sadly, and I think she knew that.

As we kept driving, we had a good conversation about driving and doing the best you can and being careful of animals. It was a terrible moment, for sure, but my daughter was probably going to hit an animal in her car at some point and if it was going to happen, I was glad to be sitting beside her to help her work through it.

Okay, so let me get to the entire point of this rambling story. So we got to the 40 hours necessary to take the Connecticut driver’s test, and on Friday afternoon, we drove up to the DMV. She pulled into the spot and we went inside to check in. Then they called her name and she went out with a guy to take her driver’s test. I gotta tell you, I had some serious feels. We’d talked about how she was responsible for the effort, not the outcome, so she put in the work and if she didn’t pass, oh well, we’d come back and try again soon.

But as she walked away, it was one of those moments with your kids where you’re both incredibly happy and incredibly sad. I felt some sadness just because it was one of those times where you see, in a very blatant way, that they are growing up, that they won’t need you the same way some time very soon. I mean, she might have been going off for 10 minutes and then coming back with the ability to just get in a car and drive away! Holy. S**t.

The happy part is… I was there for the ride. Literally—I was there for 40 hours of bumpy rides, full of forgotten turn signals, with her. Ultimately, my goal as a parent is to give my kids a good life, try to fill their heads with good morals and decision-making skills, and then wave to them as they go out into the world to live their lives. It’s all stuff I learned in sobriety, and that includes living in the present, even if it’s at a DMV.

I didn’t last long sitting inside the DMV. I stood outside and walked up and down in front of the building. Finally I saw her turn back into the lot and pull around the side. I walked over toward her car and the guy got out and started walking back into the DMV. My daughter walked toward me with a good poker face. I couldn’t tell if she was about to cry in joy or sadness, and when she got near me, she quietly said, “I got almost a perfect score.”

I let out a yell. I almost yelled “F**k yeah!” because I was so proud of her. There was some ego involved, for sure, because she obviously could have never gotten her driver’s license without an incredible instructor such as myself. But I was mostly just happy for her. She set her mind to something and needed some help to get there, and she did it. She freaking did it.

Later that night, she asked if she could meet a friend at the movies. And so around 7 pm, I watched her slowly back her car out of the driveway to drive off by herself. It was not an impressive back out, let me tell you. She went a little sideways and had to pull forward and then back out again, so I wouldn’t say I was overflowing with confidence.

She said she’d be home around 10:10. I’d love to say that as the clock got to 10:12 pm, then 10:15, then 10:20, then 10:25, I was calm and collected and had learned from the beginning of this story about turning things over to the universe. But no, at 10:28, I put my shoes on and grabbed my car keys and stood looking out the window. I was ready to… well, I have no freaking idea what I was ready to do. Drive around randomly looking for her car? Drive over and listen in on 911 dispatch calls?

But at 10:29, I saw car lights turning into our driveway. She was home. I quickly ran over and took my shoes off and hung up my car keys and acted like I knew she had it under control the whole time.

The point of this entire story is that the benefits of sobriety don’t show up in obvious ways every single day. They’re there, of course—I just don’t pay attention to them. But then a big moment comes along and reiterates that it is so worth it.

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

A drunk, fired because he loafed on the job, sought a letter of recommendation from his ex-boss. The employer, though eager to be honest, didn't want to hurt the worker's reputation. Having given it a good deal of though, he finally wrote the following:

"Dear Sir, You will be lucky if you can get this man to work for you."

(Credit: AA Grapevine, by Anonymous, from February 2007)

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, L…

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!

Do you remember the limo scene from the movie “Big”?

In case you don’t, or have never seen the movie, here’s a quick synopsis. Tom Hanks is a little kid who makes a wish at a carnival that he could be big. Voila, he wakes up the next morning and is a grownass man. He runs away from home and tries to figure out how to exist as a little kid in a big person’s body.

And yes, I am aware that that could be the summary of my own existence at this point.

Anyway, there is a scene in the movie where he goes out on the town with Elizabeth Perkins and they have access to a limousine. They open up the sun roof and hang out the top of the car and have a good old time.

I am writing about this because I recently had COVID and had to quarantine in a room for five-plus days. At first, I thought hey, no big deal, I’ll watch a bunch of TV and lay in bed and have meals delivered and it will be a blast.

Well, it wasn’t a blast. After about 12 hours, I wanted to be break out of Shawshank and go sand down Andy Dufresne’s boat on the beach somewhere. But I stayed put, and it was a grind. Isolation ain’t fun. I made phone calls to sober friends and got to virtual meetings, but I was not spiritually fit.

So when Day Six rolled around and I could leave my underground lair, my daughter asked me to come with her to continue her driving practice. She has her permit and needs to drive for 40 hours with a parent. She’s the one who gave me COVID, so we were COVID safe to be in a car together.

And on Day Six, it was a beautiful 75-degree day with the sun out, and we went driving. She actually has a sun roof on her car, and we put the windows down, opened up the sun roof and played some music.

Let me tell you, I felt like standing up and screaming out the top of the car. I felt free! I was smiling, feeling the wind in my hair, singing Justin Bieber songs… yes, I will sing a Justin Bieber song, especially if I have been in a cave for a week.

So it was an awesome drive. I felt very alive, and I had a moment where I had a corny thought, which was: Why can’t every day bring this out in me? I know that’s a little preposterous to be dancing out of the sun roof of a car every day on the way to work.

But what if my mindset could even be 10 percent as grateful as I felt? Why can’t I think a little bit about all the good things in my life every time I get in the car?

Like, I have a car. I have three amazing kids and an amazing wife. I am healthy. If I am hungry at lunch time, I have the money to buy myself lunch. I don’t feel overwhelming craving for drugs and alcohol any more. I haven’t passed out and woken up the next day not knowing where all that puke came from, or where my car was parked.

Is that actually kind of delusional to be that overjoyed every single morning? Yeah, it probably is. In some ways, I don’t want to be thinking that I deserve to feel so good every morning that I am yelling from the rafters.

But for today, and maybe tomorrow, I am going to enjoy it. It’s good to be alive. It’s good to have the sun shining down on me. And it’s good to feel like a little kid in a big dude’s body once in a while.

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 old drunk, out fishing one day, stumbled across a talking frog.

The frog said, "I'll turn into a ravishing beauty and fulfill your every desire, if only you'll kiss me." The fisherman scooped up the frog and put it in his pocket.

Later on, at a bar, he pulled out the frog and set it next to his beer. The bartender overheard the frog repeat the offer. Amazed, he asked the drunk, what he was waiting for.

The old alkie replied, "At my age, I'd rather have a talking frog."

(Credit: AA Grapevine, January 2007, from Bob M. of Rochester, Minnesota)

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!

Let me ask an existential question: How do you define cool? Who is cool? What makes them cool? Is it not even cool to use the word cool any more?!?!

I ask because I was thinking back recently on a conversation I had maybe two or three years ago on the playground at my kids’ school. I remember some parents were talking about another mom and dad and oohing and aching about how cool they were. At first, I thought they were all saying that the kid was cool, but no, they were talking about the mom and dad, not the kid.

I know the people they were talking about, and I realized two important things. One is that I hadn’t ever even thought about who the coolest parents were at the school. And secondly, if I had, well, let’s just say they wouldn’t have been my picks.

Regarding the first thought, it struck me as the first time in my life that I hadn’t already carefully come up with cool rankings. And that meant for the first time, it dawned on me that I hadn’t curated a cool list and then gone out of my way to cozy up with the cool kids. What a gift. I don’t miss keeping that list AT ALL. I’ll come back to that in a minute.

Regarding the second point, about these particular parents, they’re not my cup of tea. I don’t dislike them. I say hi to them. They say hi to me. They seem perfectly fine. Just not for me. There’s a lot of bragging and gossiping and clout chasing that I just choose not to be a part of. They know they’re the cool parents and they’re trying to live up to the hype. You do you. But for me… no thanks. I’m not rooting against them. It’s just not what I am looking for.

So what am I looking for? Who is cool to me these days? I hadn’t ever thought about it like that before, but I flashed back to early recovery. Because even without drugs and alcohol in the picture, I was looking to be among the coolest kids in recovery when I first got clean and sober. I went to rehab when I was 32, and I remember meeting a group of mid-20s who were young and sober and smoking cigarettes and going to movies together and doing social media. I remember thinking I wanted to hang out with them.

Even when I was looking for my first sponsor, I asked the guy in really expensive looking clothes who was chairing the meeting. I thought he must be the most popular guy in sobriety, so obviously we should work together. Luckily, that dude was an awesome sponsor, and he wasn’t the Prom King of recovery and wasn’t trying to be.

He really emphasized to me that when I build a network of sober people, it should be people who have what I want. That quote has stuck with me for a long time—who are the people who have what I want? I was a married 32-year-old who didn’t smoke… did I really want what those single 20s people had?

So for the first time, I re-evaluated what “cool” is and my relationship to it. What I discovered was, I had been chasing cool people my whole life. And usually, they weren’t people that I thought were cool. They were people who other people thought were cool. It’s a little like dating someone who you are not attracted to but everybody else thinks is attractive, or taking a job that everybody else loves and you want to be able to have that social currency. How does that usually work out?

I’m proud to say, I now have a good definition of what cool is. It has nothing to do with the surface level stuff. I have friends who have money and friends who don’t. I have friends who seem popular and some who might not be. I don’t really freaking care. They’re beautiful people, inside and out. (That used to be a big one for me, always looking to hang out with the hotties because I didn’t feel like one myself.)

Most of my friends these days are all trying to stay sober. They all live by principles that I want to live by, too. They’re people who look at their side of the street on a daily basis. They’re people who are trying to understand rather than be understood. They’re people who lean toward love as much as humanly possible.

Are they cool by society’s standards? I think so. Are they cool by my standards? They absolutely are.

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 doctor advertises brain transplants. A man goes to see what kinds of brains he has to offer. The doctor says, "I have a lawyer's brain for $100,000; a doctor's brain for $200,000; and an alcoholic's brain for $500,000."

The fellow asks, "What makes the alcoholic's brain cost so much?"

The doctor replies, "Look at it! It's like new—hardly used!"

(Credit: AA Grapevine, by Earl T. of Buhl, Idaho, June 2006)

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 25-second video recently where Tom Hanks was asked what advice he would give to a younger version of himself. And he said, “This too shall pass.”

But then he explained when he would give that advice, and I expected him to say some moment when he was struggling in his personal life, or when he lost a loved one, or a low point in his Hollywood career.

But instead, he talked about how he would tell his younger self “This too shall pass” when he was getting Oscar nominations and making millions every time he signed a contract. He explained how he would tell himself “This too shall pass” so that he could live more in gratitude during those great moments.

Wow, that hit home for me. I always forget that I handle success about as badly as I handle failure, and I need a program during both good times and bad.

I recently had a great run of professional and personal success where I did an okay job of staying present, being grateful and not setting expectations that my winning streak was going to continue forever. But I said okay for a reason—I think I did just okay.

One of the things that creeps into my mind a lot during good times is, “Well, this is great… but I bet it will end soon, and that will suck.” I don’t get it, because I never think that when the going gets rough. When I am in the middle of a tough situation, my brain tells me it’s going to last forever and we’re doomed and what can I do RIGHT NOW to make it stop.

My guess is, that’s not just an addict’s brain. I bet lots of non-alcoholics and non-addicts have that mindset, too. But I do think my addictive brain makes it worse. I desperately want the good times to continue every single second of every single day, and I want the bad times to reverse instantly. I used to grab drugs and alcohol to make a good party or football game great, or a bad day to be over as soon as possible.

So sure enough, my winning streak ended. I had a tough road trip where I spent three days by myself in airports and hotel rooms, which is a bad recipe for somebody like me. Then I got home and tested positive for COVID. So now I am in solitary confinement in my own house, and can hear my little 7-year-old buddy on the other side of the door laughing and getting ready for school, and it is pretty agonizing.

Last night, while I swam around in a warm bathtub of self-pity in my basement, I thought, “You know what would help right now? Cookies and peanut butter cups. I deserve that, anyway. Poor me.” It was the same seductive voice that used to whisper that a beer or two at dinner wasn’t enough, that maybe I should take some pills and vodka and more beer and also some more pills, because it was a long day at the office.

I did put in an order via text message for six Oreos and four peanut butter cups, and somebody put them on the top step of the basement and then closed me back in my cell.

Then I had second thoughts, so I called some sober people, meditated and said some prayers to my Higher Power, and I left that plate at the top of the steps.

Ah s**t, who am I kidding here, I ate all six Oreos and four peanut butter cups, and they were delicious, and I loved every second of it while I was crushing them.

Did they really change anything? Nope.

Did they make me feel a little gross? Yep.

Would I still probably do it again? Uh, probably?

But then I thought of that Tom Hanks quote, and I said to myself, “These Oreos and peanut butter cups shall pass, too,” and I went to bed. I’ll try to do a little better the next 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:

A heavy drinker finished his meal and was offered grapes for dessert.

"No, thank you," he said and pushed back his plate. "I don't take my wine in pills."

(Credit: AA Grapevine, by Marvin D. of Regina, Saskatchewan, August 2006)

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

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

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

I was traveling last week and I arrived at one of my airline gates early. So I pulled up a chair, and man, I noticed there were a lot of people who were very mad that day. One guy got to his gate two minutes too late, and was pissed that they closed the gate and the flight was pulling out for Newark without him. I thought he might end up going to jail after the way he yelled at the airline people.

Then an older couple showed up and they quickly realized they had walked to the end of the airport… to the wrong gate. The guy hustled off in a huff to see where they were supposed to be, and his poor wife looked mortified. When he came back, I couldn’t quite hear what he was saying. He was whisper-yelling, with his teeth grit, and as he raged I couldn’t help but see a giant glob of spit shoot out of his mouth and land on the floor. It reminded me of Cujo, the rabid dog from the Stephen King book and movie with all the spit flying out of his mouth in the 1980s.

I was about 61 percent of the way to puking myself when they got up and left. I took a few deep breaths and tried to block out the fact that some random old dude just splatter-bombed half of the floor with a ginormous loogie.

As soon as they left, and the likelihood of me barfing subsided, I took a moment to be grateful. Back when I was drinking, I spent about 95 percent of my time numbing all of my uncomfortable feelings, including anger. I would just stuff it down, and get blasted on pills or booze. I guess you could say it worked, but it didn’t really. None of those resentments really went anywhere, I just packed them into a bag.

And so that other 5 percent of the time, I would occasionally erupt. I think most people would agree I was always pretty chill, so it wasn’t that I was getting into fistfights. But I got right up to the edge of fistfights a few times, and when my anger boiled over, I would sometimes be literally spitting mad like the old dude at the airport. I definitely damaged some relationships when I would suddenly lose my s**t.

I remember one morning almost 20 years ago, I was extremely hung over and potentially still high and drunk from the night before when I drove into New York City. Going through the Lincoln Tunnel, I half dozed off and rear-ended another car. It was a very minor accident, and the guy in front of me didn’t even get out of the car.

Terrible, right? Well, hold on, the story’s not over.

About 15 minutes later, I rear-ended ANOTHER car on a Manhattan side street. It was a big SUV, and the guy put his car in park and got out and walked around to look at his bumper. It was, luckily, another very minor fender bender, so he just raised his arms in anger and went to get back in his car. I put down my window and sheepishly said I was sorry, and tried to blame a delivery guy that had walked out onto the street and distracted me. That wasn’t true, of course.

I don’t know what happened, but the guy seemed to get extremely angry right as he was about to pull out. So he walked back toward my car and started yelling at me. He was a smallish, older guy, and I nodded my head and said sorry for a good 30 seconds.

But then something exploded out of me. He just kept barking at me and standing outside my window in a pretty threatening way. I got to a point where I switched over from feeling apologetic to feeling like this guy needed an ass-whipping. So I threw open my car door in the middle of the street and went after him.

He seemed to realize, “Uh-oh, this guy isn’t just going to take my s**t,” and he started backing away quickly toward his car. But I was enraged and engaged already so I chased him to his door. When I grabbed the handle, it was locked and the guy looked sufficiently scared so that I could feel like I had somehow won the encounter without throwing a punch. For about 10 seconds there, I was spitting mad like the airport guy.

Let me say, I do not live like that any more. Someone asked me recently what the maddest I had been in the past year, and I couldn’t come up with an answer right away. I feel so blessed to be alive and to be sober, to be able to work through all the anger that used to get stuffed in a box and packed away in my brain, to not have explosions like that any more. I told the guy I couldn’t think of one.

An hour or so later, I remembered one, though. I had an important work meeting once a few months ago, and I tried clicking on the Zoom roughly 2,000 times as the clock ticked down to the meeting. But my computer kept giving me a hard time, and I couldn’t figure out the problem. I was walking from room to room in my house, just simmering and smashing my teeth together in frustration.

Luckily nobody was home because I let out some real animalistic growls and grunts that I wasn’t proud of. Eventually the Zoom worked and I got into the meeting at the last possible moment, and everything was okay.

That wasn’t the first time I have gotten extremely frustrated about technology stuff, so maybe that’s something I need to take a look. What specifically makes my head about computer and gadget stuff?

Oh, and wow, just in the nick of time, I am being told I need to change my company password in the next few days on this laptop, which I screw up every time.

Uh, perhaps a computer-heavy Fourth Step is in my future!

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 oldie but a goodie:

Q: What's the difference between a Grapevine joke and the AA Preamble?

A: A moment of silence is observed BEFORE the Preamble.

(Credit: AA Grapevine, by David M. of Tyngsboro, Massachusetts, August 2006)

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 funny cartoon the other day from the artist Will McPhail and am including it in the written version of this newsletter. For those listening, it’s a drawing of a couple on the beach in nice chairs, with drinks in their hands. It’s the perfect setting, or so it seems. The quote at the bottom from one of them says, “Oh no. We’re still us.”

That reminded me of the common recovery phrase about how wherever I go, there I am, which of course is intended to convey the idea that I can’t escape me. I need to change. There’s no place I can move to, there’s no place I can go on vacation to, and there’s no new thing I can buy that will change the fact that it will still be me sitting there.

I liked that cartoon because it adds a little twist to the old saying. It has an undercurrent of TWO people in a relationship thinking they can go somewhere and be different, and that got me thinking about that old saying two different ways.

One is that I tried moving many times when I was still drinking and drugging. The reason that phrase is a cliche is because many, many people thought a move would help them start fresh, too, and that’s certainly what was going through my head.

I gotta say, there is some logic in that concept. New surroundings do sometimes seem to help people start fresh. I have a little bit of positive experience with that before and after my active addiction years.

The problem is, that new house in that new town always included a person living there named ME, and it was only a matter of time—usually a few days—before I was the same old lying, cheating addict that I’d been in the old house.

Then I got sober, though, and I started to really go to work on myself. As I always hear in sobriety, alcohol is but a symptom of my disease—I still had to root out as much as possible all the stuff that pushed me to drink and drug.

I feel like I have done a pretty good job of that, and so I’ve actually found the concept of fresh starts to be mostly true since I have been in recovery. My family and I rented a small house for seven years, from 2011-18, and the house was kind of a dump. There were constant issues with plumbing and heating, and we had to constantly nag the owner of the house to make the repairs. Sometimes if we had done something that may have contributed to the issue, he’d ask us to contribute to the repair and we’d end up haggling about that. The house just wasn’t a good fit for us anymore, especially after we had our third kid.

So we moved to a bigger house four years ago, and one of the things my wife kept saying was that it was going to be nice to have a lot more light that poured in through the windows. I kind of blew her off…. but damn, if she wasn’t right. I remember a few weeks into moving there, I did actually feel like we had a fresh start, and more sunshine was one reason why!

Let me get into the second thing that cartoon brought up for me, which is that when I got sober, I had a lot of important, existing relationships that had gotten sicker as I got sicker and sicker. And just because I went to rehab and got a 30-day sober chip didn’t make those relationships healthy overnight. That cartoon references a couple sitting on a beach, not just one person, and they’re realizing whatever they have between them, it didn’t disappear because they flew down to a nice beach. It was still just them sitting there looking at each other.

This comes up for me sometimes these days because I got a program and started changing a lot. It was abrupt, and not easy for people around me. So even now, with over a decade of sobriety under my belt, I think I need a regular reminder that just because I got sober doesn’t mean all the stuff I did, all the character defects that I brought into my life, all the resentments I had and also caused… they still need unpacking. I can’t really have the same thinking as the guy I the cartoon that maybe if this one thing changes, everything will be great.

So I’m glad I stumbled upon that cartoon because it gave me a lot to think about. I think tomorrow morning I am going to go into the bathroom, brush my teeth, put in my contacts and just say with a smile, “Oh no, I’m still me.”

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:

Q: WHY IS THERE NO AA SOFTBALL TEAM?

A: Because we'd all be out in left field.

(Credit: AA Grapevine, by David E. of Gaylord, Michigan, from August 2006)

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