LOL Sober

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

I went to Disney with my family last week, and I made sure to get to meetings every day for five straight days before we left. I really wanted to top off the sobriety tank.

And if I am being rigorously honest, I had very mixed feelings about the trip.

On one hand, I was overjoyed to be able to take my wife and kids there. The hype leading up to the trip was incredible. Everybody was so amped up, and I just kept thinking about how there is no way this is happening if I am still drinking and drugging. So that part of it was awesome.

But I also felt some dread about the trip. We hadn’t gotten on an airplane and gone on a big trip in five years, and I have three kids at such different ages that they usually end up screaming at each other on the way to the mall, let alone 1,500 miles in an airplane. So I kept picturing the bickering, the heat, the long lines, the physical pain I was going to feel, the big dinner bills… and I almost started to lose my patience and drain out every ounce of spirituality before we even boarded the plane.

Luckily. on Sunday afternoon, the evening before we flew out, I got to a meeting and I put it out there in a room of 20 sober men. Holy crap does that help. It doesn’t seem like it would help. But it does. Even now, with quite a bit of recovery time under my belt, I forget the power of naming your problem to somebody else and asking for help.

In this case, the help that I got was a string of text messages the following day from guys saying stuff like, “Have a great trip. You got this. You’re really freaking sober right now.”

I gotta tell you… they were right. The trip was fantastic. Everything I thought could pop up did actually pop up, but I was able to navigate it and we had an absolute blast. Seeing my kids’ faces as they got to do all of these things they’ve been dreaming of for years… honestly, it’s right up there with any accomplishment I’ve ever had in my life.

When I got sober, it was for stuff like this. I have stayed sober because I want to be sober—I have found that it is really important that I am sober because I want to be sober, not because my boss or my friend or my wife or anybody else wants me to be.

But I went to rehab because I thought I was going to die and I didn’t want to die. I wanted to live and I wanted to give my wife and kids the best life possible. I wanted to be able to take them to Disney and New York City and put them through college and whatever else they might dream of.

And for six days last week, we did it. One thing that hit me a little bit is that I found out I was doing a little better than I thought I was. Working a strong recovery program requires constantly pushing yourself, working through resentments, calling out your character defects, and that can get a little heavy. I often end up thinking, “Damn, shouldn’t I be further along than this? How am I still resentful and gossiping and argumentative and impatient and on and on and on?”

What I found out was, I am doing just fine. I would say I realized I’m doing better than I thought, and it wouldn’t surprise me if you’re reading this or listening to this, that you might be doing better than you feel, too.

So my suggestion to you would be to grab a couple of kids and take them to Disney for a week and see what happens!

Just kidding, don’t do that.

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

A $1 bill met a $20 bill and said, "Hey, where have you been lately?"

The $20 answered, "I was on a cruise ship for a while and hung out in the casinos, then I came back to the States and flew out to L.A., went to a couple of baseball games, out to dinner, took in some of the new movies, that sort of thing. How about you?"

The $1 bill said, "Oh, you know, the same old thing—meetings, meetings, meetings."

(Credit: AA Grapevine, September 1999)

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 something the other day that I had never heard before despite being sober since 2008: In the famous section of 12-step programs known as “The Promises,” there are apparently 12 promises. I’m not sure if the founders intended for that, but my guess is, it’s a beautiful coincidence.

Either way, I found it cool… and it gave me a chance to look at them individually and examine how true they’ve been for me. I always say they’ve come true for me, but I never took them one at a time and deeply contemplated them. It was a pretty fun exercise, so maybe listen and tally up your own results as I go through them.

So here goes:

1. If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are half way through.

So true. I got done with my first step, and I already had begun to feel an incredible sense of acceptance about who I am and what I want to be. It felt like the biggest mystery of my life had been solved—I’d gotten familiar with the problem and the solution.

2. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness.

Again, this came true for me. I’d never felt so free and happy as I have since I got sober.

3. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it.

This one is mostly true for me, but it’s also been a slippery one to get my arms around. It’s pretty easy to swing too far the other way and try to forget the pain I caused. Think about the last thing you did that you were truly apologetic about. Did you not regret it but also not shut the door on it? If so, good for you. It’s hard to find that perfect landing spot. I’d give myself a 75 percent on this one.

4. We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace.

Haha, well, this is an interesting one. I comprehend the word serenity and I know peace. Do I practice them? Uh, it depends on the day. Actually, it depends on the hour. This is one of those recovery things that I think about, I understand, I love… and yet it is not easy. I’m going to give myself another 75 percent on this one.

5. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others.

Love this one. Totally true. I do think my experience can benefit others, and it’s perhaps the most valuable promise because I get so much return on investment from this.

6. That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear.

I have absolutely found that this promise came true… and then it became not true… and then true again. Of all the promises, this might be the one that’s the most fleeting. Those feelings disappear, then come back, then disappear again.

7. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows.

I’ll give myself two-thirds credit here. I’ve gained a lot of interest in my fellows, for sure. But I’ve only lost SOME interest in selfish things. I still think about myself, what I want, and what I need, on an hourly basis.

8. Self-seeking will slip away.

Um, sure? It slips away but then I usually pick it up again.

9. Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change.

This might contradict some of the things I already said earlier, but on a big-picture scale, my whole attitude and outlook have changed. There are still remnants of some shitty stuff that sneak back into the picture. But I haven’t lose focus of the grand scheme of things since 2008.

10. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us.

Hmm, I think I’ll go with an 80 percent on this one. It’s gotten much, much better, but I’d say I still feel those things almost every single day. It’s just not debilitating any more.

11. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us.

Yeah, I can see this. I definitely have watched as my instincts get better and better, but I am still kind of George Costanza in a lot of moments every day—where my first thought is the opposite of what I should do.

12. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.

I’m spotty on this one, too. I definitely realize that relying upon a higher power is better for me than being a higher power myself. Do I actually do that every day? Nope, not even close. I’ll give myself a 90 percent on this one.

So that is the 12 promises. The end of the promises is:

Are these extravagant promises? We think not. They are being fulfilled among us—sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them.

That last line is crucial. I 100 percent believe that and have seen that—they materialize if I work for them. I believe in the 12 promises. I have seen all 12 promises come true. I’ve also apparently seen about 1.63 promises become untrue then, though. According to my math, I got a 10.37 out of the 12 promises, which is around 86 percent.

86 percent? I’ve been a solid B student who tries for As on pretty much everything in my life up to this point. So I will take it!

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

Tolerance is based on courtesy, respect and… a sneaking suspicion that the other person may be right.

(Credit: AA Grapevine, June 1993)

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 once where a guy shared his story of experience, strength and hope for about 45 minutes. During his story, he mentioned that most of his early drinking happened in the woods near a local golf course, and that he often times thinks about how him and his friends would just lob their cans, bottles and other trash out onto the course for somebody else to clean up.

When he got done sharing his story, the chairperson opened it up for other people to share. An older dude raised his hand and said that he’d been working as the head groundskeeper at that course for 40 years now, and he always wondered who the a******s were who had left all those beer cans and bottles behind without any thought of who had to clean them up.

The guy was telling the truth, but he laughed and said he could never be mad at another alcoholic for leaving behind a bunch of trash because he thinks all of us probably have done the same thing.

I know I have. When I think about the wreckage of my past, I usually mean it in the figurative sense—the unhealthy romantic relationships, the bad behaviors at work, the toxic friendships, etc.

But I left behind a whole lot of actual trash, too. I definitely puked roughly 1,000 times in all sorts of places, but I think I usually got to the bathroom first. It’s still a pretty gross thing to constantly have happen at other peoples’ houses, though.

I also know I would eat and leave behind food and used dishes, without ever offering to clean up after myself. Your house was my house.

I also played a lot of very messy drinking games, usually beer pong. I don’t ever remember once cleaning up the table or the floor or anything else. I remember once getting invited to a house party that had about 30 people there, and it got out of control. I did 50 percent of the stuff that made the party go off the rails, and encouraged others to do the other 50 percent. We were throwing half-full beer cans across the room, and there was a huge tub of a mystery concoction of liquor and juice. People were scooping up cups full of the liquor, and when it got down near the bottom, a few people started lighting up cigarettes and ashing them right into the backwash at the bottom.

I may or may not have dared a guy to drink the last half inch of fluid and cigarette butts at the bottom, and he did it. He started swallowing as much as he could, and then the rest poured out around his mouth and all over the counter and floor of the apartment. Now, this was a regular old college apartment, with five people who lived there. It must have been repulsive in that place the next day.

Did I offer to clean anything up? Nope. I laughed my ass off and went home and didn’t think twice about it. Ugh, I can’t even imagine if somebody exactly like me showed up at my house these days and behaved like I did when I was in active addiction.

But hey, the one thing I can say as I look back is that I never left behind a bunch of trash at any golf courses. Well, not that I remember, anyway. Maybe I do owe a golf course superintendent or two an apology!

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:

NEWCOMER: My wife told me I have two major character defects.

SPONSOR: Really? What are they?

NEWCOMER: She says I don't listen and something else.

(Credit: AA Grapevine, from J.D., Big Lake, 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!

My daughter got her learner’s permit recently, so she has been legally on the roads. Let me just tell you, it’s kind of terrifying. She’s doing great, and she is going to be a very good, safe, courteous driver—probably more so than her father.

But when we get in the car and she turns the key, it’s truly out of my hands what happens when we pull out on the road. I am pretty much powerless. I wish I had one of those old-school driver’s instructor cars with the extra steering wheel and brakes, but I just have a regular old Honda CRV.

It really got me thinking… what do I actually have power over? I always say out loud that life is unmanageable and I am powerless. I know there is nuance to that. I can’t just pray that somebody does my job for me and that a pay check will arrive. I need to do the work, to the best of my abilities, and let go of the rest. But I do need to get off my ass and do something. I try to think about the serenity prayer—what can I change? What can’t I? Do I have the wisdom to know the difference?

But deep down—really, really deep down—there’s a part of me that thinks I am pretty smart, pretty resourceful, pretty hard-working and pretty efficient… so yes, in lots of situations, I have a voice inside my head propelling me to do too much, to be too aggressive, to set expectations and then hold grudges afterward. I always try to remember that expectations are resentment seeds that I am burying and allowing to grow into full-grown resentments.

In regard to my daughter’s driving, I had very little control over what was going to happen. I could coach her up and communicate with her as she drove. But we were at some pretty busy intersections, and if she hit the wrong pedal by accident, this newsletter entry ain’t happening.

It again reminded me how little I actually have any power over. Take the human body, for instance. I can eat healthy and work out, but I’m not really responsible for whether my heart keeps beating, or if I have a brain aneurism.

I also don’t really have any control over other drivers. I could be driving and somebody else plows into me and that’s it.

I have an awesome job and I think I do it well. But what role do most of us truly have in whether our company made a bad decision or two, and goes out of business tomorrow?

Or think about the solar system for a minute. Did you know about 500 meteorites land on Earth every year? Guess what, no matter how carefully I orchestrate my life, no matter how much money I make, I could get clipped by a goddamn meteorite at any time!

And what about the sun? We need the sun, right? What role did I play in the sun coming up every day for the past few thousand years?

OK, I am going to stop there. I found that list of things to be pretty scary at first. But when I make lists of things I am powerless over, I usually end up feeling a sense of relief. I heard somebody say at a meeting the other day that we’re all just bozos on the bus, and I nodded along.

But do I actually think I am just a bozo on the bus? Nah, my inner voice thinks I am VERY special, which means a significant part of me thinks I should be driving the bus and you all can sit in the back.

The more I think about the things that I can’t control, the more I find relief. I can let go of the rest. It’s an odd way of getting to the point where I get to trusting the universe, but it works.

Well, it worked right up until a rabbit ran across the road in front of my daughter last night and I yelled, “Watch out for that rabbit!” But hey, I’ll keep driving with her and keep working on 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:

Maybe there is no fountain of youth, but a couple of drinks sure do make almost everybody act a lot less mature.

(Credit: AA Grapevine, November 1994)

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 love the TV show Survivor, and on the newest season, there is a young woman named Tori who says she is a therapist. She’s 25 years old and seems very smart and she is a good athlete, which serves her well in the physical challenges. But she is very aggressive in applying her psychology background to other contestants. She has been making an instant diagnosis on practically everybody in the game.

And guess what? It’s not going well. She has constantly been on the chopping block to get voted out from her peers, and it sure seems like nobody can stand her. We’ll see if she rallies.

What struck me personally is how much I can fall victim to the same kind of thinking—that my experience with something is very valuable to others and should be given to them by me, as I see fit.

I’ve been sober now since 2008, went to rehab, worked the steps, I’ve had a sponsor and been sponsoring people myself for the whole time, and I also have gone to both individual and couples therapy. So I have days where I seem to have certified myself as Nelson H., MD, ready to treat you. “Here, just lay down on this couch and I will teach you how to live your life.”

It’s b******t. It’s reminiscent of those Holiday Inn commercials where someone professes expertise, and somebody else says, “Wow, are you a lawyer?” Then the guy has to say, “No, but I stayed at a Holiday Inn once.”

I’m sober. My life has turned around. I’ve worked with other people who have gotten sober and seen their lives have turned around. But I am not a doctor. I am not a certified treatment counselor. I am not an addiction specialist. I did stay at a Holiday Inn recently, though, so I have that going for me.

My point is, the beauty of working a sober program has been that I have not used drugs and alcohol in a very long time. I’ve also gotten a lot better at working through resentments, learning how to say sorry and mean it, figured out game plans for getting out of self-pity, worked with others in a way that is of service to them and me, learned what being selfless and NOT selfish truly means… all the extra credit stuff that comes with putting down drugs and alcohol.

But that’s for me. I shouldn’t be diagnosing other people. Nobody asked me for that. When I heard that Survivor contestant saying, “Oh, he’s a classic narcissist that comes from x, y and z,” I could hear my internal voice sometimes, where I put labels on people and want to let them know what they need to do to improve themselves. It’s obnoxious.

The good news is, that’s usually just my internal voice, and a healthy sober program has also taught me how to get better at restraint of pen and tongue. I am, thankfully, not on national TV teaching people lessons.

I’ll be interested to see how Tori fares on Survivor. She’s a perfect reality TV character, which means she is fun to watch because of her outspokenness and willingness to get involved in turmoil. My guess is, she will make out about as well as I do when I start armchair diagnosing people.

Which is that everybody says get the hell out of here, jerk.

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

HEARD AT MEETINGS:

“When I get to my wit’s end, I find God lives there.”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, July 2007, by BR)

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 about the phrase, “My ego is not my amigo”lately. It’s something I’ve heard from time to time in the rooms of recovery, but it seems like it would be a helpful phrase for almost everybody, whether they’re addicts or not.

It’s such a funny saying because on one hand, it sounds silly, like it’s a new Dr. Seuss book or something.

On the other hand, the more I contemplate it, the more it feels incredibly profound.

I talk about my ego quite a bit because it’s the source of lots of problems these days. One of my other favorite phrases in recovery is the idea that I have a huge ego and low self-esteem, and sometimes I can go back and forth from thinking “I should be President of the World” to “I suck at everything” in a span of about two minutes.

My ego is usually in the middle of everything. I do believe that I need to have an ego. How much? Should it be the same sized ego all the time? Do I have control over my ego? Those are complex questions that I don’t have the answers to. That’s way beyond my pay grade.

While I was contemplating those thoughts, I found a definition that said ego is the part of the mind that mediates between the conscious and the unconscious, and it is responsible for reality testing and a sense of personal identity.

Whew. I don’t even know how to unpack all of that stuff. So I am not even going to try. But I think it’s a very interesting concept that my ego has an impact on the way I see both the world and myself. If I see myself as the most brilliant man on Earth, I’m probably going to end up viewing everything that happens around me through that lens.

Or when I think the opposite, that I should be launched into space on an interplanetary garbage hauler, I am probably going to be oozing self-pity and negativity to everybody and everything around me.

Which all brings me back to the original saying, that my ego is not my amigo. That’s an important thing for me to remember. My ego is a part of me. It’s important. I care about it. But it’s not my friend. It has its own goals and fears and insecurities, and they don’t always line up with mine.

That might sound so simplistic, and it kind of is. But in practical everyday life, it can really be hard to distinguish between me and my ego. When I think about it like one of many voices in my head and in my soul, it’s actually so much easier to treat my ego like something to consider, but maybe not something that has veto power over everything I think and do.

So if my ego isn’t my amigo, what is it? My first thought was, maybe it’s in the friends with benefits category but then it hit me how weird it would be to be hooking up with my own ego with no strings attached. So that doesn’t quite work.

I ultimately settled on the idea that my ego is not my ego… but I will consider it a close acquaintance and see how that goes.

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

The optimist says, "My glass is half full."

The pessimist says, "My glass is half empty."

The alcoholic says, "Are you going to drink that?"

(Credit: AA Grapevine, July 2007, by Bill E. of Sitka, Alaska)

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 watched the Oscars live on Sunday night, and as you may have heard, Will Smith didn’t like one of Chris Rock’s jokes, so he walked on stage and slapped the comedian in the face.

I gotta say, I watch almost every UFC, lots of boxing and I spent my late teens and early 20s in constant fights myself. I have a reasonable threshold for watching violent stuff on TV.

But I still found the Oscars moment to be pretty jarring and unsettling. I mean, it was just shocking, and I couldn’t help but find myself hoping—really, really hoping—that it was a bit, not real.

I have a half-hour’s worth of thoughts but I’ll just give you one: You can’t slap people like that. You just can’t. As someone who does standup on a regular basis, it’s not cool. I’ve seen a lot of genuinely uncomfortable, mean, inappropriate jokes told on stage, and even the drunk people five feet away in the basement of dive bars don’t start swinging on people.

But this is a sober newsletter, and I wanted to call out one thing that spoke to me through that lens, which is what Denzel Washington told Will Smith afterward. I am paraphrasing a bit, but Denzel apparently told him, “At your highest moment, be careful, because that’s when the devil comes for you.”

That statement really hit me because I find it to be so true. I’m going to throw out the devil thing—my definition of devil in this instance isn’t the biblical definition. For me, it’s the idea that we all have that bad voice in our heads that feeds off resentments and character defects and snide comments and tries to talk us into drinking or drugging or bad behaviors. That’s the devil in me.

The general idea of being on guard at your best moments in life really hits home for me. The single most dangerous moments in sobriety for me have been when things are really good. When I have a big problem, I know I need to stay very close to meetings and sober men. When I have little problems, I still know that. Even when things are okay, or pretty good, I seem to not forget that I need to keep the recovery momentum going.

But when things are awesome… I tend to drift. The more money I have, the healthier my home life is, the better my job is—those are dangerous, because you start to think, “I got this. I’ve worked a really good program, I know the 12 steps, I’m using them in my life, I’m killing it. Maybe I can back off a bit.”

When I get pretty full of myself and I throttle down, that is very risky behavior.

I think I’ve been to about 2,500 meetings since I got sober, and I’d say I have probably heard a few hundred people say they’re coming back. Of those people, I have heard quite a few say they had something really bad happen in their life, they started to struggle and they went back out.

But I think about 90 percent have said the opposite—that things were going pretty well and they got too complacent, or they slowed down on meetings, or they didn’t have a sponsor for awhile, and boom, they’re out drinking and drugging again and before they knew it, they were on stage at the Oscars, slapping the s**t out of people.

Okay, maybe no one ever said that last part. But my point is that I want to have the same kind of program, through thick and thin and everything in between. The truth is, when my life gets really good, it’s because of my recovery program. So if I want to keep that momentum going, logically, I need to keep doing what led to it—and that hopefully keeps me from slapping people.

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:

Most Sundays, my wife, kids, and I get together with other AA members for breakfast. At breakfast a few weeks ago, my wife wore a shirt with "Serenity" printed across the front.

One of the kids admired the shirt, read the word out loud, and asked, "What is that--Serenity?"

My AA friend had a quick reply and answered, "We don't know."

(Credit: AA Grapevine, January 2006, by Jeff W. of Concordia, Kansas)

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 got done watching the new movie Deep Water, and woo boy, let me tell you, it is a wild ride. In case you’re unfamiliar, it’s the new Ben Affleck/Ana de Armas movie on Hulu right now. It is an R-rated erotic thriller. I will give you a brief plot summary and I don’t think it is a spoiler because it is in the trailer. Here goes:

Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas play a married couple. They have an unorthodox marital relationship because she openly flirts and seems to have affairs with men, right in front of him and all of their friends. And then the men start disappearing, and the movie gets even crazier from there.

I am writing about this on my sober newsletter because it reminded me a lot of rehab, and what I learned about dysfunctional relationships once I got sober. It was my experience that as raging addict, I created lots of dysfunction myself, but that dysfunction can be an infectious disease. People around me got swept up in the dysfunction themselves sometimes, and pretty soon, many dynamics were a disaster.

The weird thing is, lots of my relationships bent toward the dysfunction, and the dysfunction became functional. I stayed married. I stayed employed. I stayed welcome at family gatherings. In retrospect, it’s really strange and unhealthy how many people in my life ended up adjusting to my dysfunction, often times with some dysfunction of their own.

What do I mean by that? Let me give you one example. When I was hardcore using drugs and alcohol from about 2005-08, my financial situation turned into a disaster. I was married, and suddenly all of our money is disappearing, I’m transferring balances from credit card to credit card, trying to take out loans with banks and then getting loans from family and friends instead. And my wife was experiencing all of this without the key to the whole puzzle—that I was spending probably $1000 a week on painkillers and booze—and she was getting alarmed… but ultimately she just adjusted and it became the norm.

What happened to last week’s pay check? Why is this collection agency hounding us? How are we both working and we’re spending so much more than is showing up in our bank accounts?

She just got used to that being a part of our life. My dysfunction had spread like water on a sidewalk, finding the cracks to keep running. I would show her some credit card bills and not others, and have all sorts of explanations for what I thought was going on. It was all lies and fake noise. But it’s amazing how functional that dysfunction became.

In Deep Water, Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas just kind of get used to having a mess of a relationship. It becomes normal. And then you see everybody else around them sort of start to get used to it. The dysfunction had become functional.

I guess that concept translates into sobriety, too. I’m occasionally a little chaotic to be around, and pretty soon the chaos spreads. But it’s mostly harmless when I have a good recovery program going. The kind of dysfunctional I am these days tends to happen around 8:30 in the evening, when my 7-year-old is laying down to go to bed and I decide to start a jiujitsu match that spirals out of control. My wife lovvvvvvvvvvvvves that.

But hey, that’s better than one of us having to murder all the people we are cheating on the other with!

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:

At an AA meeting the other day, a woman said she wanted a husband. Seven of the next eight women who spoke offered theirs.

(Credit: AA Grapevine, January 2006, by Richard M. of Golden, Colorado)

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

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

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

Have you heard of an app called “We Croak?”

I hadn’t until a friend described it to me. It’s an app that exists to remind you, five times every day, that you’re going to die. You get an alert at unexpected times, at unexpected intervals, that simply tells you in different ways that some day you will die.

My first thought was, “Oh my god, who the hell wants THAT in their life?” Then I read a little about the impact it has had on people, and I have to say… I kind of get it.

The app says its goal is to remind you of your mortality, to take deep breaths, meditate, contemplate the beauty of NOT being dead, and be present in your life right here, right now.

I still was thinking I did not need to sign up to be reminded of that, that it is so morbid that I couldn’t see how that could possibly be beneficial. It’s the ultimate Debbie Downer, five times per day, where you’re cruising through your lunch break when your phone buzzes to tell you that you will be worm food some day.

But a little later in the day, my 7-year-old was doing what 7-year-olds do sometimes, which is stand outside the bathroom while I was taking a shower and yell “Dad, dad, dad, dad, dad!” until I stopped the shower and get out to make sure the house wasn’t on fire.

Then she asked, “Hey, can you get me a cup of chocolate milk?”

I felt my lips squeeze together and I wanted to yell at her… then I remembered the We Croak thing and it had a weirdly helpful impact on me.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized what the concept of “You know you’re doing to die some day?” has on me: perspective. It gives me perspective. At this stage in my sobriety, I rarely crave drugs and alcohol. It’s not an obsession for me any more.

But I do lose perspective on a regular basis. Think about the last three times you’ve been really, really irritated. How many of those times can you look back and think maybe you overreacted a bit? Maybe you took that email or off-handed comment or the dog s**t in your yard a little bit too personally?

I know that’s the case with me. It doesn’t take much for me to be cruising along having a nice day and then be totally distracted and obsessed with something else. It happens a lot with kids. I have two teenagers, and they routinely will get really mad about something and stomp out of the room.

Is my first thought, “Hey, teenagers have it pretty tough in the world, and my teenagers are actually amazing kids who are kind and get good grades and treat people well”? No, it is not.

So perspective can go right out the window with the smallest nudge. I get to about four meetings a week right now, and I always have good perspective coming out of meetings. I always heard the saying that if you went to a big recovery meeting and everybody put their problems in the middle of the room, you’d usually end up taking yours back and being happy about it. That’s how I often feel.

I thought long and hard about whether to get the We Croak app and whether it would help me. I think it probably would… but I’m going to hold off for now. I have teenagers who yell at me enough. I think I can live without my phone yelling at me that I am going to die five times every day!

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 young newcomer attended an AA meeting where the topic was "to practice these principles in all our affairs."

When the discussion came around to her, she said, "I have never had an affair, so I am going to pass."

(Credit: AA Grapevine, November 2007, by Lee S. of Phoenix, Arizona)

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!

One of the biggest differences between me when I was drinking and me when I’m sober is how serious I take appointments. I’m not just talking doctor’s appointments. I mean, 12-step meetings, work meetings, get-togethers at your house, movie start times… all of it. If I say I am going to meet you somewhere at 6 p.m., I make damn sure that I am there before 6 p.m.

That isn’t how it was when I was active. I was a sloppy mess with just about everything back then, but one of my most insulting behaviors was telling you I’d meet you for lunch at 1 p.m. and then show up at 1:31 pm. I used to think, “Hey, if I say 1 and then I get there at a time that has the number 1 at the front of it… that’s close enough.”

Listen, I don’t want to blow it out of proportion. I think it was definitely worse that I was driving around with my kids after eating 30 Vicodin, and that I might have stolen those 30 Vicodin from your medicine cabinet.

But the time thing has become really important to me because it’s a blatant example of me being selfish in my opinion, and it is one that can be a really good litmus test on my sobriety. Why? Because often times people let it slide, or they do it themselves. And those character defects that make you wonder “Hey, what’s the big deal?” feel like the kind of little slips that could begin the slide toward a big slip.

I know that probably seems like I am being overly dramatic, and perhaps I am. But I think when I tell you I will be at your house at 5:30, I made you a promise. It’s a commitment. And keeping commitments is an important principle in my program. I’m really proud of the progress I made, and I think my friends and family would say that they noticed it and that it matters to them now when I make a time commitment to them.

But you may still be asking, what’s the big deal if I leave my house at 5:27 and get to yours at 5:39? It’s a fair question. I don’t want to take myself too seriously. If you’re late for stuff sometimes and it doesn’t feel like an issue, I totally get that. It isn’t a terrible thing for everybody; it’s just something I try to avoid.

When I am late, what is actually happening for me is that I made a commitment, shrugged my shoulders about it and watched TV, then left at the last minute because you’ll get over it. That is not something I want to do a lot of, because I know where that path could lead.

Pretty soon, I leave at 5:29 and get to your house late, and you ask why, and I immediately say, “Oh, there was an accident on the way.” Now I’m making up stuff to cover my ass… I just don’t want to be doing that. Plus, I think it’s really unfair to you. I think when I do stuff like I just described, deep down, I’m saying to myself, “Ah, it’s just so-and-so.” Again, not something I want to be doing a lot of.

If I go back to the headline on this newsletter, it’s “Time is precious… but calm the f**k down.” Let me talk about the “calm down” part of this. I also notice me taking time a little too seriously. On family trips, my wife and I talk the night before about how we’re going to pack up now and try to leave at about 10 a.m. Then it’s 10:03 and I look like a vampire who needs to drain some blood out of somebody’s neck asap.

That’s when I find stuff coming out sideways. A few weeks ago, that exact scenario happened when we were packing up to drive to Pennsylvania to see family. It was a four-hour drive and we were a few minutes late getting on the road.

But we weren’t going to a wedding or funeral that started at a specific time. So the launch time was kind of a made-up aspiration, and yet I was treating it like the takeoff time for a private jet I paid for.

So that’s where my commitment to following through on commitments got a little out of control. I found myself leaning on my wife and kids pretty hard, using aggravated tones and a heaping helping of sighs and muttering around my breath. That’s not cool. My whole principle of being on time is great, but who cares if I am on time if I am an a*****e? Like, get some perspective, dude!

One thing that I have found helpful is to go in the bathroom down the home stretch of loading up the gang, right about when it becomes obvious we are not going to meet our goal, and saying a quick prayer that’s along the lines of, “God, please walk with me right now. Please help me to remember it’s the people I am traveling with that matter, not when we pull out of the driveway. Please help me to be calm and patient, calm and patient, calm and patient. Amen.”

Then I walk out of the bathroom and scream, “Hurry up or I am getting a new family!!!!”

Just kidding.

I’m usually in 10% better place. Then I buckle in and try to enjoy the ride.

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 POSTCARD FROM A DRUNK:

Having a wonderful time. Where am I?

(Credit: AA Grapevine, November 2007, from Anonymous)

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