LOL Sober

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I saw a story recently from the San Francisco Chronicle with the headline “Are ‘California Sober’ nuptials the latest wedding trend?’”

The definition of “California Sober” is apparently people who smoke weed and drink alcohol in moderation. There was actually a Demi Lovato song called “California Sober” a few years ago.

Mostly it seems like it is a sobriety plan centered on weed and harm reduction. In that San Francisco Chronicle story, a lot of the couples encourage guests at their weddings to not drink and smoke weed instead.

I laughed out loud as I read it. Not because I care what other people do—have your wedding any way you want. And I certainly support harm reduction—I know people who that has worked for. You do you, and if you ultimately need to get off drugs and alcohol completely and want help, hit me up!

I laughed just because I know that I tried about 37 different versions of “California Sober” in my life. I tried “Central Pennsylvania Sober,” which was pills and Skoal. Then I tried “Queens, NY, Sober,” which was drinking on the weekends and working out at the gym every other night. Then I tried “New Jersey Sober,” which was beer and Skoal and Ambien.

Then I tried “New York City Sober,” which is…. well, it was just getting s**t-faced any which way you can and then trying to sleep it off.

None of them worked. It turns out, I can’t drink or do drugs in any way, in any place. So I guess I should have been trying more for the “Entire Planet Earth Sober,” where I don’t do any kind of mood-altering substances whatsoever.

I certainly tried the strict definition of “California Sober.” I tried weed for awhile. But pretty soon I was smoking weed and taking pills and drinking alcohol and I was not sober in any geographical location on the planet.

I will admit, in the past few years, as marijuana legalization has swept the nation, I have occasionally wondered if maybe I could just smoke some weed sometimes. I know people that use it sometimes for chronic pain and it helps. I know people who just it on the weekends to unwind. I know people who use it every day to help with anxiety or other health issues.

The problem is, I can’t do that. So that thought usually comes into my brain and pulls up a chair and puts its feet up, but after a few minutes of hanging out with that thought, I remember how it always turned out, and I ask that thought to please get the f**k out of of my head.

One saying I really like is “Play the tape all the way through,” which means when those kinds of things pop into your brain, it’s always helpful to reach back into the archive and think of similar instances from earlier in life. Usually, if you rewind and play the tape through, you’ll see what a disaster some of these scenarios our addict brains float already happened—and they didn’t turn out well.

I moved to Connecticut in 2011 with three years sober, and I have not used alcohol or drugs ever since. So I might visit California or New Jersey but I am going to stick with “Connecticut Sober” for as long as I can!

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:

During one of my drunken geographics, my 8-year-old son became concerned when he learned that my wife and I would be driving two separate cars to our new town, several states away.

Anxiously, he asked me, "How will we keep from getting separated?"

"We'll drive slowly, so that one car can follow the other."

Not reassured, he persisted, "Yeah, but what if we do get separated?"

Becoming impatient, I said, "Well, then I guess we'll never see each other again."

"Okay," he said. "I'm riding with Mom."

(Credit: AA Grapevine, by Richard M. of Golden, Colorado, January 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!

A few years ago, I got to know a newly sober guy who was a big Green Bay Packers fan. I lived in New York City at the time, so you didn’t see a lot of Packers fans.

He was young, probably 25 years old, and new to recovery. I’ll call him Hank (that’s not his real name). But he was hustling. He did 90 meetings in 90 days, started on the steps and didn’t let up, and made phone calls constantly. He was going for it, and it was a beautiful thing to see. I like to sometimes draft off those people like a NASCAR driver, letting that energy pull me along a little bit. It was great.

One night in January of that year, the Packers had a big playoff game, and it was a back-and-forth game that came down to the last few minutes. It was pretty late at night and I started to text Hank, then I decided against it, then I reconsidered, then I reconsidered again… I ultimately texted him, he texted me back, and we had a long exchange down the stretch of the game and the Packers won. He was so happy, and his joy was my joy.

I love those moments outside the rooms where you see sober people succeed for the first time without drugs and alcohol dogging them every minute of every day. And as much as I like to say that I got sober to carry the message of recovery and do service and help the newcomer… I have to admit that I need to see my recovery work show up in joyous stuff outside of meetings.

Sometimes that’s seeing my kids get a great report card or my wife accomplish a life goal. But other times, it’s just enjoying a football game or a movie or a sandwich. I never try to diminish those things as small, because they’re not. Small things used to make me drink, which wrecked my entire life and the lives of everybody around me. So I am damn sure going to enjoy little things like sports and TV shows and whatever else can be a fun activity.

I didn’t think much of that text exchange until a meeting a week or so later, when the guy shared. He started out by saying how grateful he was toward his Higher Power that the Packers had won their playoff game, and I started to groan a little bit. But he clarified what he meant quickly, saying that he wasn’t grateful that his favorite team had won. He was grateful that he had been sitting in the first apartment he’d ever paid the rent on time for, eating takeout food he didn’t have to put on a maxed-out credit card, watching his first sober football game. And he freaking loved every second of it.

But then he loved it even more. Because his phone started to buzz around halftime, and it didn’t stop buzzing for two hours. It was one new recovery friend after another, me included, checking in on him, cheering him on, celebrating with him. And he said it was a spiritual experience. It wasn’t quite one of those moments where God throws a lightning bolt and hits you in the head.

But it was close. He said that moment reinforced for him that he was taking the right path with his life, that in six months of sobriety he had built a network of people so invested in him that they thought to hit him up over and over again to celebrate a football game. He said he felt like he was a part of a sober army that would support him through big things and small things, good things and bad things. It brought a tear to my eye.

I thought of it a few months ago because I had an almost identical situation on a Saturday night with a new guy whose favorite team was playing in a big sports event. I watched the entire game, even though I don’t particularly like the sport or the team. But I wanted to be there with my friend, in spirit anyway, and either support him or console him. The game went late into the night and I again hesitated to text him… but I knew he was up, biting his nails, so I reached out. We proceeded to text back and forth as his team had a remarkable comeback, forced overtime, then won in overtime. It was freaking awesome.

He said something to me later similar to the Packers fan, that that night he’d been bombarded by a bunch of people who he knows really well despite not knowing their last names. It warmed his heart and it warmed mine.

So I wanted to throw that out there for the main purpose of encouraging everybody to send that extra text. Yeah, maybe you don’t need to. Maybe you’re like me and still like to isolate a little bit. Maybe you catch yourself saying “Ah, I’ll just call him tomorrow.” Or, “I’ll say something to him next time I see him at a meeting.” Maybe you’re old-school and don’t even like to text—I know I prefer to just talk on the phone.

But I think you can’t go wrong with an encouraging text… and hey, you could always call the guy tomorrow, too!

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

OVERHEARD AT MEETINGS:

"AA has no fixed address. You can take it with you."

(Credit: AA Grapevine, by Joe A., January of 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 was at a meeting a few months ago and someone mentioned they’d gotten into a romantic relationship at rehab with someone else who had only a few weeks sober. It did not turn out well for either one of them. He was making the point that he hadn’t been ready for a relationship, and yet… he couldn’t resist. And he mentioned the phrase, “Two sickies don’t make a welly.”

I started laughing because I thought the guy invented a brilliant new sober slogan on the spot, but then people kept sharing about that exact thought as it went around the room. Turns out, this is a phrase that people use quite a bit, and I somehow either never heard it or missed it when somebody else shared it over the years.

I certainly understand the original meaning about romantic relationships. I remember early on in sobriety hearing over and over again to not make any big decisions for the first year. That meant getting into or out of romantic relationships, quitting a job, moving five time zones, etc. But mostly, it seemed like the romantic relationship thing was the biggest tripwire for those in early sobriety. I was already married when I got sober, but I definitely understood how exciting and dangerous it would be to have a month sober and meet somebody new. Early sobriety was really tough for me, so I certainly could see how a new girlfriend or boyfriend would help make the days go a little faster for other people.

But like I said, I didn’t have the experience of trying to stay single and sober at the same time. What I can identify with is the idea of having a sick mind and then getting into any kind of relationship with other sick minds. It wasn’t romantic, but I latched onto a bunch of people at rehab and in the rooms who had the same amount of sobriety as me and I had two very different experiences.

One type of experience was awesome. There’s nothing quite like standing along side people as we all get one month sober, and then two months, and then three months. You feel like you’re on a scrappy underdog team of people fighting and clawing for the same goal.

On the other hand, it was also really risky to surround myself with people who were all rookies at this sobriety thing. I had a good friend who relapsed about two months in and it was devastating. I had been spending some time with him outside of meetings, and I wonder what would have happened if I’d gotten together with him and he sweet-talked me for awhile into having a drink or smoking a joint or popping a pill or two. I was still pretty impressionable.

Luckily that didn’t happen, and I’ve put together some time. Now I see the mix of sickies and wellys that work the best for my sobriety. I always need to be working with newcomers but I need about a 5-to-1 ratio of longterm sober people and newly-sober people. I am still a sickie some days and need a welly or five to help me turn it around. And some days, I am the welly and it’s good to work with a sickie.

It all reminds me of the first time I ever got asked to drive somebody to rehab. I immediately said yes, but then I called a few guys who’d driven people to treatment before. And each one of them said, “Whatever you do, don’t take him alone.” I was confused by that, and luckily somebody explained that it can be a brutal sight and a brutal car ride that can go a lot of different ways, and that it can suck the sobriety right out of you to be that close to the sun by yourself. One guy told me, “You probably won’t relapse yourself. But you’ll want backup.”

Sure enough, I buddied up and we took the guy. It was pretty good, but driving there was tough. I heard a lot of sick thinking about how this guy ended up where he was (a hint: almost none of it was his fault). And dropping him off and walking out the door brought some tears to my eyes—hearing the door lock behind me was daunting.

On the way home, I found great comfort in having another sober guy there. And as polluted as my brain had felt at the midpoint of our trip, my head felt a lot better talking it all through on the way home. So even though I didn’t know the old phrase “two sickies doesn’t equal a welly” back then, I had sort of experienced it.

That day, I think it was one sicky and two wellys, which ended up equaling about 1.5 wellys!

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:

“They got me for a DUI last night," a drunk raged to his friends. "But I think I'll win this case. They were profiling!"

"Profiling?" questioned his buddies.

"Yeah, last night the cops were stopping everyone driving on the sidewalk."

(Credit: AA Grapevine, by Richard M. of Golden, Colorado, March 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!

When I first got sober, I went to a 12-step meeting in New York City four days a week that did not allow swearing. Pause for one moment, and reflect upon the mixture of New York City people who are alcoholics and addicts… and are not allowed to whip out any four-letter words.

Make no mistake, it happened every meeting, anyway. But the chairperson would always gently said, “No cursing, please,” and point to a laminated sign that said “No cursing, please.”

I adjusted pretty quickly because I liked the meeting more than I liked swearing, and I happen to like swearing quite a bit. I even had about a six-month stretch where I took that no-swearing rule and incorporated it into my life and I ended up not using much bad language for a long time.

And you know what? It helped. It really did. It helped my serenity just a bit. It helped me do a little less gossiping and bad-mouthing people, and when I did need to unload about something, I generally found my fastballs were being thrown about 10 mph slower.

I’ve been thinking about that meeting and the no cursing suggestion quite a bit lately because I’ve been swearing a lot. I don’t have anything against bad language. I personally don’t believe it’s on the list of most important things to avoid in this world.

But I’ve caught myself multiple times chucking around f-bombs and other R-rated words all day and then having a hard time shutting it off in the afternoon, when my kids get home. That’s a really bad sign. It means I’m just a tad adrift, just a bit off with my spiritual gas tank, if I am barely catching terrible words before my 7-year-old hears them. I don’t really want to be that dad.

I actually saw what that looks like the other day when I had my first-grader down at the school playground. There was a kid there who was maybe 8 or 9 years old, just walking around from the swings to the jungle gym to the slide yelling “What the hell is going on?!?!” over and over again. It was clear he’d heard that somewhere, knew it was something he shouldn’t be saying, and he just couldn’t stop saying it. I’ll never forget him just careening around, screaming at everything, “What the hell is going on?” I don’t really want to spawn any small humans doing that, or anything worse than “What the hell is going on?”

I noticed myself swearing at meetings a little more than usual over the past six months or so, and during that time period, I’ve again spotted how newly sober people take their cues from people who’ve been going to meetings for awhile. I forget sometimes that there is a good chance that somebody in a room of alcoholics and addicts might be pretty new and not know how meetings are supposed to look and feel. So when I rail about my kids or my boss and I am swearing like a pissed-off truck driver, well, that has an impact.

I say all of that and I am realizing that I am actually not quite ready to not swear. It’d probably be a healthy, fun challenge to at least try. So I am a little closer to trying to pull that off in my own life. But for now, I am just going to happy that I made it through this whole goddamn newsletter without swearing.

Oh s**t, maybe not.

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 goes to the pub and orders, "A glass of the best 'less,' please."

'"Less?"' says the bartender. "I've never heard of it. What is it? Beer? Whiskey?"

"Well, I'm not sure," answers the drunk, "but the doctor recommended it—he said I should drink 'less'."

(Credit: AA Grapevine, by Paul J. of Henderson, Nevada, May 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 was watching an action movie from the 1980s the other day, and some people got stuck in quicksand and I thought, “Geez, quicksand was in like 40 percent of all movies in the 80s. What happened? Where is all the quicksand these days?!?!”

So I actually looked it up, and it turns out at one point quicksand may have actually been in 3 percent of all movies, and most scientists say it’s usually ridiculously portrayed. It’s not possible to drown in quicksand like we see in movies.

But it is possible to get stuck in quicksand and panic and not be able to get out for awhile. I noticed on the Wikipedia page that the faster you flail around, the more you sink. If you are calm and methodical, it’s apparently pretty easy to pull yourself out.

I am writing about this on a sobriety newsletter because I got sucked into some really bad self-pity recently, and I definitely panicked and kicked around a lot and found myself sinking deeper and deeper into it.

Just to clarify what I am talking about when it comes to self-pity: It’s the times when I am thinking, “Why me? Why me? Why?” and I often catch myself telling at least five people how tough I’ve had it. I had an ugly bout of it the other day when I had to drive my kids all around from 3:15 pm on a Friday afternoon until 10 pm that night. Just shuttling from one place to another, back home, then to another place. It was a bonkers amount of driving up and down the same streets, hustling from one activity to another, and it would have tired anybody out.

So I ended up getting more and more aggravated, telling myself a story about how tough I’ve had it, thinking about all the stuff I wanted or needed to do instead and how I should be dad of the year after all this b******t of being, you know, A DAD. I did end up letting each kid know what a brutal afternoon I had had of chauffeuring. I can laugh about it now but it was pretty dopey, and it was like quicksand. I got myself whipped into a frenzy and it was very hard to pull out.

I did find a way to get to a meeting quick during that stretch, and that just let the air out of all of that self-pity. There was somebody at a 12-step meeting for the first time in her life, and you could see the emotion of finally seeking help and saying her name out loud and saying she is an alcoholic. I mean, how can you feel sorry for yourself for being a sober Uber dad when you see both pain and hope in a moment like that?

So my solution when I get into that self-pity place is to not kick my feet and not make it worse. I can’t. It will swallow me up. I’ve had days where something I don’t like happens, and I call two or three people I know will listen and jump in the quick sand with me, and that just extends my stay. I need to do the opposite and I’m going to continue to try to do that.

But back to my original question…. how do we get more quicksand in movies? I miss 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 dies. He had $20,000 in savings. After his wife pays all the costs of burial, she tells her closest friend that there is no money left.

The friend says, "How can that be? You told me he had $20,000 a few days before he died. How could you be broke?"

The widow says, "Well, the funeral cost $6,500. Then, I spent $500 in a donation to the church and to pay the organist. I spent another $500 on the food and drinks for the wake. The rest of the money paid for the memorial stone."

The friend says, "$12,500 for the memorial stone? My goodness, how big is it?"

The widow replies, "Three carats!"

(Credit: AA Grapevine, November 2004, from Richard M. of Golden, Colorado)

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

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

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

I just finished up Season 4 of Ozark. Woo boy, what a ride.

As a refresher, I do these reviews from time to time. (Here is a link to my Euphoria: Season 1 review). I break these into three categories: addiction, recovery, overall grade. There are a few mild spoilers but nothing that I think would ruin the show.

I’ll first give you a quick synopsis of the show. It stars Jason Bateman, Laura Linney and Julia Garner, and it’s a show that revolves around a money laundering operation run by Bateman’s character. He moves the family to the Ozark and starts working for a Mexican drug cartel. It is four seasons long, about 45 hours of total TV, and it is darkkkkkkkk. It’s a frantic whirlwind tour of a world filled with drugs, murder, money, greed and lots of broken laws—and broken people, too.

ADDICTION

As weird as this may sound, the show centers on drugs… and yet doesn’t deal much with actual usage. We stay with the power players of the cartel and the money laundering operation, so we don’t often see where all the opium harvest ends up and all the damage that is done.

There is an overdose from one minor character in the middle of a casino, and I found the run-up to his overdose to be quite convincing. You see him sneaking into bathroom stalls and hiding the amount of his use from everybody around him in a way that I could certainly identify with.

The main example of addiction came in Season 3, when we got introduced to a private investigator trying to stay sober. He eventually has a bad slip in a police evidence bunker, and he literally ends up with the evidence up his nose. It was a pretty jarring visual.

So there wasn’t a ton of addiction in the traditional sense of drugs, alcohol, gambling, etc. But I will say that I ended up identifying a lot with some of the characters because of the addictive nature of more. Everybody in the show wanted more—power, money, revenge, and on and on. My addiction is a disease of more, and it just so happens to be that I turned to drugs and alcohol. But it could have easily been other things that sucked out my soul instead of alcohol and drugs, and that is on full display in Ozark. Bateman and Linney, who play Marty and Wendy Byrde, don’t seem to have drug and alcohol issues, but “more is better” in everything they do.

I especially identified with the way their morals changed constantly to fit whatever they needed them to be. I certainly said I would never do about 100 things that I ended up doing, and that’s how the Byrde family operated. From episode to episode, you could see them doing gymnastics to try to bend their morals to fit their behaviors, and I shuddered a little bit watching a familiar story arc for me of slowly and steadily corrupting what the right thing to do is.

RECOVERY

The one big showcase of recovery is the PI who’s trying to get sober and stay sober, and the writing is pretty good for his character’s plot line. It’s pretty easy to tell when a show has a writer or two in the writers room who is in recovery or studied up hardcore on sobriety and how we talk. As anybody in sobriety can attest, there is a language we have that only other sober people can pick up on, and I found that to be the case with Ozark.

I did laugh out loud, though, at a crucial scene involving the sober PI guy calling his sponsor. I have sponsored many people over the years, and had a sponsor for the entire 13 years that I have been sober. I’ve heard some tricky issues that sponsees try to navigate with the help of their sponsor, but the one in Ozark is perhaps the most dreaded call you could ever get from somebody new to sobriety. I’m hoping I never get a call like this guy did.

The PI is in a seedy hotel room, after months investigating Bateman’s family for money laundering and killing multiple people. He knows the truth—that the Byrde family is capable of anything. Terrible, terrible people with a moral code that changed every 12 minutes. But they make him an offer for a full-time police job as long as he looks the other way on some truly horrific things that they did.

So the phone call from the PI to his sponsor laid it all out and asked what he should do. Imagine that call for a second. “Hey man, it’s me. I discovered a couple of murders that this family committed… but they got me a pretty good job offer to ignore it all. What do you think I should do?”

Uhhh, holy s**t, I’ve had a few calls over the years about whether somebody should get a new job or break up with their girlfriend, and those were hard to figure out what to say to the person on the other end. I can’t fathom throwing in a drug cartel and some death to the equation.

I won’t tell you what the sponsor says, other than to say he gave some feedback that I think 0% of current sponsors in the world would give about what the next right thing might be.

OVERALL GRADE

I loved the show. The actors are incredible in it, and the show is one of the most propulsive things I have ever watched. The characters are constantly being boxed into corners where you think they can never get out of… and then they do somehow, in ways that were always surprising.

I never could quite get my arms around where the show was heading, and I loved that about it. I also am very impressed by TV shows that are able to introduce you to bad people doing bad things, and then you end up rooting for them. As a writer, that’s really hard to do. That’s why most TV has good guys and bad guys, and there isn’t much nuance to them. They’re cardboard cutouts because that’s what they think the audience needs to understand motivations and actions.

That wasn’t the case with Ozark. The Byrdes do roughly 500 horrific things, some of the worst things people have ever done on TV, and yet I was rooting for them down the homestretch of what is an incredibly violent and cynical series finale. Bravo to the writers for that. It ain’t easy.

I’m giving the show an overall grade of 93. I took off a point or two for the laughable sponsor-sponsee conversation, and I also took off a few points because I don’t know what the show really has to say that is important for the world to see.

I think the finale takes a few swings at trying to give us a message that the world is corrupting and the bad guys always win. I don’t necessarily disagree with that idea, but it is a very cynical take and one that I think the show didn’t really lay enough breadcrumbs for. It felt like a show that is what it is—a nonstop dark, violent punch in the face that you can’t help but binge. If Ozark was a food, it’d be Sour Patch Kids: quite tasty, and you end up eating the entire bag… but don’t look at the nutrition information, because there’s not much nutritional value to it.

But that’s a pretty minor toe stub at the very end. Ozark was wild and worthwhile, in my opinion, and that’s why it’s in my top 10 of best shows ever on TV.

It also made me grateful for never having had to call my sponsor about what I should do regarding all the drug cartel murders and money laundering that I am investigating!

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:

Two eggs, a sausage and an English muffin walk into a local bar for a drink. The bartender looks up and says, “Sorry, we don’t serve breakfast here.”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, September 2000, Trina W. from Elizabeth, Pennsylvania)

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!

Last week was the one-year birthday of LOL Sober, my sober newsletter. I thought it’d be nice to say thank you to all my subscribers. This isn’t a giant million-subscriber newsletter, but I feel like we have a nice little community here of people trying to stay sober and smile while doing it. So thank you.

I thought it’d also be worth talking about what I’ve learned in the year of doing it. So I’ll mention a few things.

First, let me discuss the anonymity part. I wrestled with this for awhile before I started LOL Sober, and I still am. I’ve read sober literature and talked to lots of respected sober friends, and I still find varying opinions. I try to be very respectful of the programs I participate in and not mention them specifically. But what is the right answer? Can you write an anonymous newsletter? Can you post o Facebook when it is your sober anniversary? I don’t know.

I am comfortable with the way I have been doing things, which involves general discussion of specific programs and also not using my real name. But if you wonder about doing a sober newsletter at all… I sometimes do, too! It’s a tricky topic.

The second thing I wanted to bring up is what the newsletter has helped me with, which is that I spend a lot of time thinking about it. When I hear something at a meeting that makes me think, or I read an interesting passage in literature, or I have a life experience that relates to sobriety, I will often type it into my notes app on my phone. That’s a trick I learned when I started doing standup a few years ago—it’s so important to quickly jot down a good idea when it floats into my brain so it doesn’t float back out. So I am constantly latching onto things and thinking about them and trying to form them into ideas that I didn’t necessarily do a year ago.

I also spend quite a bit of time writing and voicing these newsletters. I publish twice a week right now, and I probably spend about an hour or an hour-and-a-half working on each one. So that’s three hours of actual work every week. And then I spend probably another hour or two thinking about and playing around with other ideas, gathering up jokes to include on the newsletters and then posting on various forms of social media when I do publish something.

So all told, I spend about five hours a week working on this newsletter. And that is five more hours devoted to recovery than I would if I didn’t do the newsletter. I’d love to say that if I stopped doing the newsletter I would take that time and start reading Bill Wilson’s letters to Dr. Bob or some other recovery book. But the truth is, I’d probably watch another two or three basketball games or MMA fights.

I guess that would be my main message one year in—that adding in recovery to other corners of a sober life is really beneficial. I honestly would be pissing away those five hours on TV or resentments or some other activity that has no real value to my life. I think those five hours have helped me inject 10 percent more recovery into my life, and that’s been a big deal. My gentle suggestion would be to maybe try to add in something fresh that keeps you thinking about sobriety more than usual—it could be reading a recovery book but it could also be a podcast or two, finding a good sobriety person who has a YouTube channel you like, or just hanging out with sober people outside of meetings for an hour or two every week, anything else that just keeps sobriety plugged into your life. It’s certainly helped me a lot.

So thanks to all my readers and listeners for coming along for the ride. It’s helped me, and I hope it’s helped you, too.

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

Heard at meetings:

“I think alcoholism is contagious. I know I caught it after going to a few AA meetings.”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, June 2000, Alan M. from Melbourne, 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 was driving across town the other day and I saw a sign hanging up that advertised a "Prescription Drug Drop-off Day.” It allowed residents to bring in old pills and bottles, no questions asked.

As much as I hate to admit this, my first thought was, “Oh my god, who’d give up their drugs for something like that?” It’s similar to how I first react when I see somebody at a restaurant get up to leave and there’s a half beer or mixed drink on the table. I’ve never done that in my entire life, even early on in my drinking days.

My second thought was even worse. It was a five-second contemplation of what a great robbery option it would have been back in the day to steal everything that got dropped off at a community drug drop-off day.

Again, I am not proud of my brain sometimes… but it’s the truth. I have the same addict brain sometimes when it comes to immediate reactions. An important thing that I’ve come to realize in recent years is that I need to accept that I am Pavlovian when it comes to seeing beer commercials and walking through a pharmacy—just like Pavlov’s dogs, my lizard brain associates alcohol and drugs with something I need to have. I’ve begun to just accept that that is my first thought and I am powerless over it. I am, however, responsible for the next thought.

And for that next thought, luckily my lizard brain has added on a sober brain that usually ends up with veto power over the addict part. And my sober brain kicked into gear with some more productive thoughts. Such as:

—That’s awesome that we have options for people to safely drop off their prescription drugs, no questions asked!

—Maybe, just maybe, if every town has these, one or two addicts out there won’t overdose because of a bunch of stray prescription drugs in somebody’s medicine cabinet.

—And last but not least… I am so glad I don’t have to actually plan out prescription drug drop-off day heists any more. I never did anything like that during my active addiction days… but I can’t say I never would have. I often hear stories about people who have an opiate addiction and eventually turn toward heroin because it can sometimes be cheaper than opiates, and I have no choice but to nod my head and think, “I never did that, but it is a ‘yet’ for me because I could totally have seen myself eventually going that way.”

Same with robbing people or places to sustain my drinking and drugging problem. I didn’t actually do it while I was active. But was I capable of it? Well, I had about a thousand things I said I would never do… then I did them. So I am not going to lie and say I could have never driven off with the town’s prescription drug drop-off truck or whatever they use.

I don’t have any prescription drugs to drop off, and I don’t really want to. So I am going to stay far the hell away from prescription drug drop-off day, even while applauding that it exists.

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:

I was invited to a fight the other night, and an AA business meeting broke out.

(Credit: AA Grapevine, Feb. 2000, Michael S. from Massachusetts)

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 stumbled upon a statistic the other day that really got me thinking. A human breaths in and out about 22,000 times per day. That’s 916 breaths per hour. That’s about 16 breaths per minute, which is about one breath every four seconds.

That sounds about right to me. But I am fascinated by the relationship between the act of physically breathing, and my spiritual state. When I am aggravated or fearful, my breathing speeds up, and when my breathing speeds up, whether I realize it or not, I am a little bit off. I am a little more likely to say or do something based on my mood, not how I actually wish I had behaved. So I feel like there is a direct relationship between my breathing and my behavior.

I noticed this recently with my oldest daughter, who’s learning to drive. She likes to drive in silence so she can really, really concentrate. And I can sometimes hear her breathing speed up when she gets near a tricky intersection. She’s been on the highway once so far, for about one mile, and during that stretch of road, it sounded like Darth Vadar had joined us.

I get it. Since I read the thing about 22,000 breaths, I’ve noticed that my body tends to match my brain in tense situations. I was on an airplane the other day landing in Chicago during a thunderstorm, and the Windy City lived up to its name. I found myself gripping the arm rest like I was attempting a submission in a UFC fight, and my breathing was fast and short, and my heart rate was very high.

But I noticed it in the moment, and I decided to slow my breathing down. I tried breathing as slowly as possible, and I think instead of the normal 16 times per minute, I bet I breathed about five times per minute for awhile. And guess what? My heart rate seemed to slow down, and I stopped choking out my arm rests.

This probably doesn’t come as breaking news to most people. Breathing, of course, is a huge part of my daily meditation routine, too. Maybe that’s why meditation seems to help me and so many other alcoholics and addicts? Who knew?!?!?

So I have an action plan going forward. I am going to try to trim off 500 breaths a day, and I am going to pay particular attention to slowing down my lungs during potentially tense moments. I have three kids, including two teenagers, so there are plenty of times every day when there is some butting of heads happening around me. Those times will be great practice!

By my math, I think I breath about five times per minute when I am meditating, which is 11 fewer per minute than a normal breathing minute. So 20 minutes of meditation, times 11 fewer breaths, saves me about 220 breaths. That means I need to find about 25 other minutes where I am cognizant of my breathing and try to go down to about one breath every 12 seconds. Boom, that gets me near 500 fewer breaths.

I think to do this, I am going to need to find some ritualistic spots to do it. Perhaps it’s something like every time I walk into my bathroom, I remember to purposely slow down my breaths while I am in there. Or maybe it’s before I open the refrigerator every time, I take two or three long, slow breaths, instead of panting as I get ready to crush some snack I probably don’t need to be eating.

All right, I got a little lost in the weeds just now of statistically figuring out something my body does without prompting all day every day. I guess the broader point is, slowing down my breathing will help slow me down, which will slow down bad thinking, bad speaking and bad acting.

Will it cause a big change? I don’t know. But if I can have even a little less Darth Vadar in my life, that’s probably a good thing.

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:

Before a meeting was about to start, the young chairperson asked the older newcomer to read, “How It Works,” giving him a photocopied sheet from Chapter Five of the Big Book. A few minutes later, the newcomer politely handed the sheet back to the chairperson.

“You’re supposed to read this,” explained the chair.

“I just did,” said the elderly beginner.

(Credit: AA Grapevine, Jan. 2000, by Ernie S. and Doug R., 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’ve been thinking a lot recently about the recovery acronym “H.A.L.T.” which stands for Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired.

It’s been on my mind because I often spend a lot of time looking for answers about my thoughts and actions.

Why am I arguing with everybody today?

Why did that one email make me soooooo pissed off?

When that guy on the highway merged in front of me and didn’t wave his hand to show appreciation for the great deed I just did, why did I immediately think I needed to follow him home and yell at him?

When I spend all that time trying to find out what’s wrong with me, sometimes I neglect to consider the more obvious possibilities. Am I hungry, angry, lonely or tired? Because the truth is, if you didn’t sleep last night and overreact to something your teenager or neighbor says to you… maybe the problem isn’t that you have a terrible character defect that requires you to go back to rehab or enroll in a month-long retreat to spiritually heal. Maybe you need a nap.

I bring all of this up because as I shared earlier this week, I went to Disney recently with my family. And as I have discussed many times, I had the ends of both feet amputated 15 years ago, so chronic pain is a big part of my addiction and recovery story.

In the leadup to the trip, I spent a lot of time contemplating how much HALT was going to be an issue for me and my entire family. Because guess what, a hungry and over-tired 7-year-old is no picnic and neither is her hungry and over-tired 44-year-old dad!

So I had my radar up throughout the trip for the two possibilities every time we hit a speed bump.

One possibility was that there was a program issue to consider. Did I need to make amends? Was I holding onto a resentment? Did I need to get a little sharper with restraint of pen and tongue? (An absolute yes to that last one).

The other possibility was maybe I was just having a human problem. Maybe I needed a nap or a sandwich. I sometimes forget that we’re all just animals, with physical wants and needs that are beyond anything a therapist or a sponsor can help you with. There’s no step work that I know of that will take care of lunch for me, or let me stop sleeping because I am so spiritually fit. Those are human body needs.

I’d actually like to add onto HALT with the letter P, because I can say with 100 percent certainty that pain and spiritual fitness do not play well in the sandbox together. When my feet hurt, it causes disruptions to everything I am trying to do. I am more agitated, impatient, fearful and negative. I just am. Same goes for if I have a bad headache or got stung by a bee. It drains the spirituality right out of anybody.

Pain is actually a significant issue for more people than I ever realized. Something like 20 million Americans have some form of disability, including me. When I share my story at a speaker meeting, I often specifically mention that chronic pain is something us alcoholics and addicts don’t often talk about much. But it’s a real thing. It can be a trigger to drink and drug to numb the actual pain. Or, for people who aren’t craving alcohol and drugs any more, it can be a trigger to just lose it sometimes. Again, it’s hard to be a spiritual superstar if you have three herniated discs. My sobriety and my pain levels have to work together.

So I am going with PHALT from now on, and I love what the contrast is between that acronym and what my takeaway from it is. In these cases, I like that being hungry or tired or in pain is often not my fault. It’s not some glaring sickness within me that I should feel shameful about.

Now, the addict in me wants to just leave it at that. “Yay, when I ranted at my kids in the minivan it was because I was lonely, which is a normal human occurrence and therefore I am not responsible!”

That’s not really true, either. Now that I have awareness of these things, it’s my freaking job to make sure I do eat a sandwich when I need to, and I do go to bed at a reasonable hour, and I do aggressively seek out connection if I am lonely, and so on. There are solutions for all five letters in my PHALT acronym, and if I don’t immediately pursue those solutions, then it’s on me.

So I need to own the idea that I only slept two hours some night and THAT’S why I am arguing with people too much or taking that snippy email too personally or getting mad because the merging driver didn’t say thank you according to my standards… actually, screw that guy. He still needs to know he owes me a wave.

Ah, I guess maybe I need another nap and a sandwich.

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 stranger wandered into the bar one afternoon and ordered a Manhattan for himself and a round for the house. Upon being presented with the tab, he realized he'd skipped the pool players and several card players in the game room, and insisted that they have one also.

The barman said, "That'll be $37.80."

"Have-one yourself," the stranger said.

So he did and made it $40 even.

The stranger then assured the barman that he didn't have a red cent, whereupon he was dispatched from the bar by the seat of his pants.

Sure enough, the next day he showed up again, ordered a double Scotch and drinks for the house. The same barman replied, "Sure pal, and I suppose you'd like to buy me one, too!"

To which the stranger said, "Not on your life, my friend. You get violent when you drink!"

(Credit: AA Grapevine, January 1989)

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