LOL Sober

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I went to a wedding this weekend, and it struck me how much weddings used to be one of my fears about getting sober.

How could I stay sober for such a big party day? And how could I not drink when everybody else is? Won’t I be a boring downer the whole time?

I really believed that about weddings, Super Bowls, family reunions, Christmas… what about Christmas without having a few drinks in me?!?! Won’t it be ruined?

I got sober in early November of 2008, so that concern was put to the test almost immediately at Thanksgiving, followed by Christmas. And guess what? All of the concern was a total b******t concoction in my brain.

The truth was shocking. First of all, I had this idea in my head that at previous birthdays and weddings and holidays, when I got a few pops in me, I was the life of the party and everybody loved it. Uh, that was not true. For the five years or so before I got sober, I had been getting plastered and either disappearing, getting sick or becoming obnoxious. Shocker, but nobody missed that person attending an event at their house.

Secondly, I also was deludedly thinking that for me personally these events would now suck without the booze. Holy crap, it’s the complete opposite! My 12 best Christmases as a parent all happened in recovery because I was sober in the run-up to the event and could think about others in a deeper way, and then at the events, I wasn’t puking in between gift openings.

I’ve only been to a few weddings in the past 12 years, but it has been beautiful to be present in a sober way. I cried at the wedding this past weekend as the dad walked the daughter down the aisle and it hit me as both a wonderful moment for them. I also couldn’t help but think how special it will be for me to walk my daughters down the aisle some day and not be stumbling down drunk.

Third, that worry about everybody drinking except for me? More b******t. In sobriety, I have noticed there are plenty of people not getting drunk at these events, and even the ones who are don’t give a s**t about me. I’ve only been asked once or twice over the past 12 years why I wasn’t drinking, and nobody ever has pressed the issue. The reality is, drunk people are drunk and haven’t paid much attention to what is in my hand!

Last but not least, at the right dosage, I find it pretty amusing to watch drunk people and know I don’t have to be one of them. I still always think about Saint Patrick’s Day of 2009. I went to a 12-step meeting and walked outside of the church in New York City and the St. Patty’s Day parade was coming by. It was my first big rowdy drinking event since I’d been in recovery. There were people screaming, throwing up, spilling drinks, falling down, hanging off floats… it was total chaos on the street. I was alarmed at first but then an old-timer with a cigarette in his mouth sidled up beside me, took a big drag and sighed. “The amateurs are out today, huh?” he said.

I laughed really hard and crossed the street in between people dressed in green, barfing up green stuff, and I went back to work. I was—and remain—so glad I’m a retired professional drinker these days!

ALCOHOLIC/ADDICT JOKE OF THE 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: 

On the first day of college, the dean addressed the students, pointing out some of the rules: "Drinking in the dormitory will be out-of-bounds for all students. Anybody caught breaking this rule will be fined twenty dollars the first time. Anybody caught breaking this rule a second time will be fined sixty dollars. Being caught a third time will incur a hefty fine of one hundred and eighty dollars. Are there any questions?"

At this point, a student in the crowd piped up: "How much for a season pass?"

(Credit: AA Grapevine, May 2004, Linda S. from Bonita Springs, 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. It’s free! If you’d like to contribute anyway, many thanks.

A little housekeeping first: Just a heads up that next week I’m going to start publishing on Tuesdays and Thursdays rather than Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Fall gets crazy at my house so I may be strapped for time more than usual.

I wanted to talk about something I heard recently at a Saturday morning meeting. It was one of those things that I just hadn’t taken a step back and thought about in awhile. But now it’s still landing for me, a few weeks later.

A woman shared that she had a hectic week… stress at work… financial struggles… arguments with her kids… all the normal stuff that happens in life, sober or not.

But at the end she said, “Geez, at least it’s Saturday morning, I can take a breath and I am not waking up hung over or still drunk.”

That seems so straight forward, doesn’t it? It’s the kind of statement that is so obvious I wouldn’t have thought about it. But now that I do, I feel a lot of gratitude.

Because Saturday mornings used to be a dumpster fire for me when I was drinking. I was drinking and drugging every day, but I REALLY would let it fly on Friday nights knowing we were at the end of the week and the beginning of the weekend. It felt like work was far off in the distance and I could just wing it.

So I would. I would eat dinner on Friday nights and then wind down from all the pills I’d taken during the day. I’d start cracking beers—with 30-plus painkillers already in my system, mind you—and stay up well past midnight. My whole family would go to bed and I would just be getting rolling. I’d usually get to 4-6 beers and then take an Ambien or two. I’d then try to stay up as late as possible so I could experience the booze and Ambien mixing together.

I’d often end up vomiting, or passing out, or both. When I look back on my drinking and drugging, I could have easily died many, many nights, and if I had, it probably would have happened at 2 a.m. on Friday night/Saturday morning.

OK, let me stop with the drunk-o-logue and get to my point—what I’m grateful for now. When my Friday nights used to be like that, my Saturdays usually were me waking up at noon, dehydrated, sick, hung over, miserable. My wife and kids had usually already gone to a park or done something without me. My wife would say, “Everything OK?” and I would say something like, “Oh yeah, my feet are just bothering me and kept me up too late last night.” I’d have to smuggle beer cans and pill bottles over to the gas station near my house without anybody noticing—I always think about the cleaning crew over there and how they must have thought Pablo Escobar lived in the neighborhood because of the number of pill and alcohol bottles getting dropped off every week at Pump No. 11.

So to summarize what my s**t-show life used to be like: I would try to wind down on Friday nights from a week at my full-time job… with a part-time job of trying to manage, hide and continue my drug and alcohol problem. It was terrible.

The real Saturday sadness for me was all the important moments from my two oldest kids’ lives that I missed or was foggy for. I vaguely remember first steps, first words, first Halloween costumes, etc. I was never the kind of drunk who disappeared for a week in a hotel room in Las Vegas. I was always around but I was never truly present. It was like having a stuffed animal that the family carried around wherever they went.

So back to that original thought: That’s not what sober Saturdays look like any more. I usually get up early and get to a 12-step meeting. Then I come home and my kids usually have some stuff going on. Last weekend, I went to a meeting, grabbed Dunkin breakfast for everybody and then went to my youngest daughter’s soccer game. She scored eight goals, by the way. Then we had some other family stuff to do, I watched a bunch of college football games, we had a nice family dinner, then a chill Saturday evening.

I’m going to try to remember that every Saturday for awhile. I forget just how ugly it was when I used to throw away what might be the best day of the week. My Saturdays now are serene and family-oriented, usually with some recovery and spiritual nourishment to get me started, and I love thinking at the contrast of how much better that is than the alternative. Sometimes the most basic sober message is the best: “Holy s**t, I am not hung over and I don’t have to lie about anything this morning! Yay!”

Oh, and it’s also pretty nice that I usually have zero cans or bottles to get rid of the next day!

ALCOHOLIC/ADDICT JOKE OF THE 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 drunk strolled into a bank, presented the teller with a check, and asked him to cash it. The teller explained to the woman that she would have to identify herself before he could cash it.

So the woman pulled a mirror from her purse, looked at it closely, and confirmed, "Yes, sir. It's me all right."

(Credit: AA Grapevine, February 2004, Alexander from Greenbelt, Maryland)

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 not putting anything behind the paywall for a little while longer, so if you choose the free option, you’ll receive everything without paying. If you’d like to contribute anyway, many thanks.

Football season kicked off a few weeks ago, and I found myself more excited than ever. I spent some time contemplating why that might be, and then I got to the recovery part of it: Is that a good thing? Am I addicted to TV in a problematic way?

Because—shocking news here!—I am capable of getting addicted to almost anything that is good. I always love the line, “One is too many and 1,000 is never enough.” I think my favorite recovery joke is the one about how during a meeting, a doctor in a lab coat comes running in and announces that she’d discovered a cure for addiction.

“All you have to do is take this pill once a day!” she tells all the addicts and alcoholics.

Then, in the back of the room, a guy raises his hand and says, “Uh, what happens if you take six of them?”

I mean, that’s me.

One donut is good, five must be better.

One football game is great, how about three days of them.

My wife won $10 of a scratch off lottery ticket. I bet I’d be good at scratch offs, maybe I can win a lot of money doing that!

But back to the sports thing. I love sports. I always have. Before addiction. During addiction. After addiction. Sports is a through line through every chapter of my life.

I love movies and TV shows, too. So I do end up piling up lots of hours of TV, especially during the pandemic. There have been times when I am binging a show or an eight-hour block of sports and I catch myself pushing actual important stuff off to the side. That’s not great, I admit that.

And to answer the why part of it, I definitely think the pandemic played a big role in that. I used to do a lot more stuff outside our house with my family but we’ve slowed down, as has most of the country over the past two years. I’m OK with that part of it.

The tricky thing is, am I relying upon TV to fill a void in me that I could be using a spiritual solution for? That’s key—I can’t replace meetings and working with other sober guys with Better Call Saul and UFC pay-per-views. I can say for sure that that does not work for me, and that does not work for anybody around me. Nobody wants that version of me.

This all came to a head the first week of the NFL season. I found myself very excited for the season to kick off last week, and then I thought the Week 1 games were fantastic and a very fun addition to every day.

The recovery part of my brain fired up to ask, am I leaning on football a little too much? I’m not going to unpack the idea of football as a whole being a dangerous game, with concussions and tremendous toll on the athletes. I wrestle with that, too—should I be watching this sport AT ALL? That’s a fair question and one that I think about quite a bit but I’ll leave that for another time and place.

In this case, I spent some time pondering whether I am starting to make football my higher power. As of right now, my answer is no, I don’t think I am, but I want to be mindful of that.

The thing I try to apply—and would encourage others to do—is to contemplate things through the Step 1 lens. Is it making my life unmanageable? Am I powerless over it?

For me, the answer to both parts of Step 1 right now is no. I do think there is a version of me that can go overboard, staying up all night for West Coast football games and skipping my daughters’ dance recitals or field hockey games the next day to accommodate my desire to watch Utah play Utah State in a meaningless game. I don’t want to do that, and I haven’t been doing that.

So I ultimately landed on this. When there is a good game coming up on Thursday night and I find that popping up in the back of head as a thing I am looking forward to, I am not going to get too crazy beating myself up for that. I didn’t get sober to be miserable. I got sober to live life, love my family, follow through on responsibilities (like work and paying bills on time and being a good friend) and to enjoy some of the things that happen on earth.

So that’s what I am going to do… but geez, I can’t wait for Thursday night.

ALCOHOLIC/ADDICT JOKE OF THE 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 drunk comes to after a blackout and can’t remember a thing about the night before. Terrified that he might have done something awful, he calls a buddy he’d seen before he’d started his heavy hitting, hoping to learn that he’d behaved himself.

The friend’s greeting was cordial. Then he exclaimed, “That was some blackout last night.”

“It sure was,” the drunk admitted. “It really scared me.”

“Did you know the whole northeastern United States, from Ohio to New York, was blacked out?”

“Whew,” says the drunk. “I thought it was just me.”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, November 2003, Steve H., Brewster, 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 not putting anything behind the paywall for a little while longer, so if you choose the free option, you’ll receive everything without paying. If you’d like to contribute anyway, many thanks.

I’ve been reading quite a bit the past few days about September being Recovery Month, and I found myself gravitating toward some of the grim statistics about overdose deaths and alcohol sales the past two years.

And I did spend some time thinking about the beautiful people I’ve loved over the years who we lost to addiction. I went to a meeting once where a guy closed the meeting by saying to think about all those who today picked up their first drink, and those who drank their last drink. It was haunting then and remains haunting that every day people start their career as alcoholics… and others end their careers.

But I also had to snap back to what I think the larger message of this month should be for me—which is focusing on the word recovery, not addiction itself.

I often think about the many ways my active addiction could have ended. One is that I overdosed and died. Another is that I got arrested and went to prison or an institution. Another is what has happened so far, which is that I went to rehab, fell in love with 12-step programs and have stayed in the rooms for my entire sobriety.

But there’s also a scary version of my life where I went to rehab, sobered up… and then stopped participating in recovery. So I’d have been abstinent from drugs and alcohol—which is an awesome thing!—but I wouldn’t be getting any better. I wouldn’t be spiritually fit. I wouldn’t be recovering. I’d just be a dry drunk.

That is a miserable proposition. Nobody wants that, believe me. I know that because even on the path I’m on, I still have moments where I don’t do any work, miss some meetings, retreat from my sober network and start to become a jerk. It only takes about a week for me to be 50% more argumentative, combative, difficult, gossipy, judgmental, godless, angry and sure of myself. I often think about how much the recovery phrase of “contempt prior to investigation” begins to come true when I am drifting a bit from the program.

So I am going to try to celebrate Recovery Month, not “I didn’t drink or drug” month. It’s just better.

I’ll give you a funny recent example from my life that comes to mind when I think about not drinking vs. recovering. I was home with my 6-year-old one weekend day, and I decided to clean out the refrigerator. It takes about 10 minutes, and my daughter popped in just when I was winding down and asked me to come out and see her do a cartwheel in the backyard. I said, “I would love that, but give me like 10 seconds.”

So she stood beside me as I cleaned out weird green s**t from the refrigerator that used to be food, and she counted down from 10.

10, 9, 8, 7…

I wasn’t done yet, so she started over again.

10, 9, 8, 7… as I am dry-heaving at stuff from three Halloweens ago. I felt my head starting to explode a little bit.

The dry version of me barks at her in a way that I will feel bad about later.

The sober version of me that I wish exists would have had a nice, calm conversation with her about being patient, that I am excited to see the cartwheel but need to finish what I am doing.

The sober version of me that actually exists sensed that I was about 83% too annoyed at the nagging to have that ideal conversation. But I also know that it’s perfectly acceptable to walk out of the room and take 10 deep breaths and come back.

When I did that, I realized I could take a look at the cartwheel, breath in some fresh air instead of the moldy food I had been huffing from the back of the fridge, and come back and finish five minutes later.

So that’s what I did. That’s recovery to me—as a friend once described it to me, “Recovery is the pause between thought and action.” That’s what I will be celebrating this month!

ALCOHOLIC/ADDICT JOKE OF THE 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. I found this one amusing because it is a time capsule back to 2001, when the digital world was a new frontier. For most of us Zoomers, online recovery has been a regular part of our lives, especially the past two years:

After sharing my experience, strength and hope at an online meeting for the first time, I felt very much a part of the growing online world and proudly declared myself an official “cyber-drunk.”

“That’s fine,” an oldtimer responded, “as long as you remember you’re not a virtual alcoholic.”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, August 2001, Anonymous from New York, New York)

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 not putting anything behind the paywall for a little while longer, so if you choose the free option, you’ll receive everything without paying. If you’d like to contribute anyway, many thanks.

It’s Friday and I feel lazy. So I’m going to keep this one short and sweet. I just wanted to pass along something I heard this week that I found quite helpful.

I was at a meeting a few days ago and a guy told his recovery journey story, and he kept using the phrase “Troubled mind, sensitive heart” to describe himself.

Wow, that hit home. It describes me through most of my life—definitely during my drinking and drugging days, and even in sobriety some weeks. The day I heard that guy say it, it helped just to be at a meeting and hear somebody say something relatable, something I can identify with, something that reminds me I am not unique. It’s not like those four words add up to an incredible piece of advice that will change my life too much. Those words sure helped me the day I heard them, though.

Let me unpack that phrase a bit. I do have a troubled mind. It’s not that I think I have horrific thought patterns that are dangerous or anything, but my brain is toxic sometimes. I can get super judgmental, or gossipy, and I definitely can rack up resentments in a hurry. I think about this all the time, but I’ll say it again: The most seductive, potentially dangerous voice I have ever heard is my own. I can convince myself of just about anything. That falls under the definition of a troubled mind, in my humble opinion.

Now for the sensitive heart part… I do have a sensitive heart, which I interpret as being empathetic but also thin-skinned. As the old saying goes, I have a big ego and low self-esteem some days, and that is a bad mix. I try to work really hard in recovery to not take life so damn seriously, to let things roll off my back and be able to laugh at myself when I goof up.

That ain’t always easy. I don’t have a dog, and I found a mound of dog crap in my yard the other day and was ready to go try to buy a dog DNA kit to try to trace this tremendous insult back to whoever dared allow something like that. I took it as a deep insult that someone would let their dog drop a deuce in my yard. Don’t they know who I am?!?!

A few hours later, after it had rained pretty hard for awhile, I walked down my driveway and, voila, the dog bomb was gone! And so was my sensitive heart’s irate reaction to it.

ALCOHOLIC/ADDICT JOKE OF THE 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: 

HEARD AT MEETINGS:

“When I go to one AA meeting a week, I can stay sober. When I go to two meetings a week, I start to like myself. When I go to at least three meetings a week, other people begin to like me.”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, June 2001, Thomas W. from Missoula, Montana)

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 not putting anything behind the paywall for a little while longer, so if you choose the free option, you’ll receive everything without paying. If you’d like to contribute anyway, many thanks.

A few weeks ago, I went to a P.F. Chang’s for lunch in Cincinnati, Ohio. I needed a quick bite to eat on a business trip and before you can goof on me for settling on P.F. Chang’s… hey, what can I say, I like P.F. Chang’s?!

I sat down for a half hour, ate my lunch and was five minutes from heading out when a husband and wife, maybe 35-40 years old sat down 10 feet away in a pretty empty restaurant. I didn’t know it, but I was about to have perhaps the most awkward conversation I’ve had as a sober person.

I noticed the guy immediately because he was a big, boisterous guy. He didn’t strike me as a jerk—just outgoing, talking to everybody in a very loud voice. Again, I didn’t think he was an a*****e.

He sat down with his wife and immediately ordered two beers and a shot. I try not to be judgmental about that stuff but I did catch myself going, “Oh, it’s 11:30 am on a Tuesday morning. That’s how I used to drink and I am an alcoholic!”

Anyway, he smoked down the drinks and started asking other people in the restaurant what’s good at P.F. Chang’s. It made me chuckle a bit because I like P.F. Chang’s but… it’s also not a super exotic, mysterious place. The menu is pretty approachable.

So I admit, I was paying a little too much attention to a table that was not mine. I noticed again that the guy was pretty funny and he had a commanding presence as he talked to people. My first thought was that he’d probably do pretty well on a comedy stage. Like I said, the guy wasn’t obnoxious and people seemed to respond to him. Those are all good ingredients for a standup.

The server dropped off my check on her way to that couple’s table and I was looking at the check when I heard him say to me, “Hey man, you ever have the lettuce wraps?”

The server was at his table, and the guy and his wife were ordering. I said yes, I like the lettuce wraps, and so he ordered them—along with two more beers. His wife ordered after him, and the floodgates of conversation had apparently opened.

He started asking me about my P.F. Chang’s experience, what I was doing in Cincinnati, etc. Small talk. He was an amusing guy, firing off hot takes and goofing around. His wife didn’t say much but was in the conversation. Then, my God, I really opened a door I wish had stayed shut.

He asked me if I had kids. I said yes, and asked them if they had kids. They both nodded and he explained that yes, they had three kids. He jokingly said something about how they like the two oldest ones a little better right now because the youngest had been pretty bratty lately. He gave a big ol’ belly laugh and said he was just joking, that he might actually be the biggest brat in the house.

I laughed and made eye contact with his wife and said, “Seriously, how do you put up with this guy?”

He laughed. But she stared at me and said, “I won’t have to much longer. We’re getting divorced. This is our last lunch together. This is the worst day of my life.” Then she broke down crying.

I was like, “Uhhhhhhhhhh… What. The. F—. Just. Happened?” He tried playing it off with a joke that I don’t quite remember, but I calmly stood up and said, “I’m so sorry to hear that. Nice meeting you. I wish you both well,” and I headed for the door.

It was uncomfortable but I noticed that I didn’t panic like I used to. In recovery, the 12 steps have helped me walk toward uncomfortable situations when they’re necessary, and to accept that those things happen in life sometimes, that everything will be all right, and I’ll be able to move on. I have faith that I can get through uncomfortableness now in a way I didn’t back when I came into the rooms.

I think when I was still an active addict, I would have stayed at that restaurant all day pounding down drinks with the guy. And I think even 10 years ago, in recovery, I might have stayed at that P.F. Chang’s for an hour, trying to be a marriage counselor or an impromptu sober coach for the guy.

But I’m not a marriage counselor or a sober coach. I probably shouldn’t have been in that conversation to begin with, and I really think the time to go was when I left. I felt for both of them, for different reasons—any time I see somebody on their fourth beer before noon, it hits my heart a bit. I’ve been there.

And honestly, as I left, I thought back on the previous 30 minutes and couldn’t believe how cold the guy’s behaviors were with the context of going out for a final lunch with your wife. I caught myself thinking, “Geez, maybe she’s better off not being married to somebody who’s having that much fun as you’re sitting there with a broken heart.”

This may just seem like a wild life story that’s unrelated to recovery, but in my head, it is related. I’ve said this before, but one of the biggest reasons I think I fell in love with drugs and alcohol was because I always felt uncomfortable a lot. I ran from stuff that wasn’t pleasant.

That didn’t just go away when I stopped drinking, so I had to work through it and that conversation was a good reminder that I’ve made a lot of progress. I don’t see the progress every day. But I did that day.

And a good sober life also has uncomfortable moments. I’ve come a long way in sobriety toward being able to process unpleasant things. Uncomfortable stuff knocks on the door every day. Sometimes it’s a bad day at work, or an inappropriate comment from somebody at a store, or saying no to something my kids want. And, as I found out, sometimes it happens in a P.F. Chang’s dining room!

ALCOHOLIC/ADDICT JOKE OF THE 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: 

Walking up to his friend’s house, a fellow noticed his buddy’s dog lying in the driveway, whining. So when his pal answered the door, he asked, “What’s wrong with your dog?”

“Nothing,” explained the buddy, “he’s just lying on a sharp rock.”

“Why doesn’t he move then?” asked the fellow.

“I guess he’s more like me than I realized,” the friend answered. “The rock doesn’t hurt enough yet to make him move, just enough to make him whine.”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, June 2001, Larry M. from Spoke, Washington)

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 not putting anything behind the paywall for a little while longer, so if you choose the free option, you’ll receive everything without paying. If you’d like to contribute anyway, many thanks.

The other day, somebody told me I did an awesome job on something… and I cringed. Like, a guttural “Oh, no!” feeling came over me.

Those don’t last long any more, because I have gotten much better at accepting compliments. I still have a weird uncomfortable feeling every time I get one, though.

And yet, I want them. Ask me if I’d like to receive 25 compliments this week, and the answer is yes. And why stop at 25 this week? Let’s do 25 per day, okay?

But then the compliments arrive and I try to bat them away because they make my skin crawl. What a bizarre thing.

Why do I bristle at compliments? I’ve asked myself that many times, and I think the reason why is pretty simple: I think it’s because deep down, I’m so conditioned to think that I am not worthy of praise that I still can’t believe when it actually happens.

Let me explain. I spent about 10 years of my life spiraling out of control into addiction. I knew as early as 2000 or so that I really struggled to just do one of anything that was good. I hadn’t heard the phrase “1 is too many, 1,000 is never enough” yet but I was starting to understand that concept deep in my soul.

I felt ashamed of that in 2000, and didn’t tell anybody. Then it got worse basically every day till I went to rehab. And by 2005, things were really bleak. I was hiding, stealing, lying, abusing pills and booze, driving when I shouldn’t have been and coming up with b******t excuses and rationalizations for all of my bad behaviors.

Most people didn’t know how bad it was. But I did. I felt like a failure deep down, and I kept making goals for myself that I couldn’t live up to. I started out telling myself I would only drink on weekends, then I threw in holidays and weekends, and then I started to include Thursday as a weekend day. Then, once I was drinking or drugging every day, I would set times for myself—no booze “until it’s dark out,” then “not till dinner time,” then “not till 5 p.m. because some people eat dinner then.” It went on and on and on.

The whole thing added up to an endless string of goals that I was failing to achieve. Not only that, but to chase those goals, I had to live a fake life, full of lies and half-truths. It’s one thing to tell yourself you’re going to go for a run and then not do it. It’s another to tell your spouse you’re running to the grocery store but you go to the bar instead for one beer, which becomes four beers and two shots and then some drunk driving on the way home. It’s a more epic fail than skipping a jog—the kind of epic fail that punctures a hole in whatever self-esteem is left in the tank.

I think I’ve gotten a little better over the years, especially now that I am not trying desperately every day to not get wasted… and then getting wasted anyway. That is a big help!

And when it come to accepting compliments, I learned the most important thing when somebody says something nice: Just say “thank you” like you mean it. I don’t need to say, “Well, you did a great job, too” just to downplay anything. I do say that sometimes. But I often start by smiling and expressing appreciation for the kind words.

So yeah, I am doing a phenomenal job. Just terrific work by me…. okay, Im exaggerating. I wanted to see how it felt to compliment myself, and I didn’t love that, either!

ALCOHOLIC/ADDICT JOKE OF THE 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. 

OVERHEARD IN A BAR:

“My mother lived to be 98 and never needed glasses.”

“She reached 98 and never needed glasses?”

“Nope. She drank right out of the bottle.”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, May 2001, Frank C. from Bronxville, New York)

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 not putting anything behind the paywall for a little while longer, so if you choose the free option, you’ll receive everything without paying. If you’d like to contribute anyway, many thanks.

For the second time this month, my house got overwhelmed with water from a hurricane passing through Connecticut. I went downstairs at midnight and the water had begun to creep in.

For the next five hours, I baled water almost without stopping. Bucket after bucket, gallon after gallon, till 5 a.m. And yet… it just kept coming. I was probably scooping nine pounds of water out for every 10 pounds pouring in. I felt like I was trying to fight the ocean.

The whole time, I kept praying for God to make the rain stop. And it didn’t stop, all night. I got a little frustrated with my higher power as the rain just kept coming, but the whole time, I also realized that that’s not really how prayer is supposed to work. “Hey God, I need something. Give it to me, ok?”

By 5 am, I was exhausted and I couldn’t keep going. By then, I’d figured out I just needed to let it go. My basement was completely flooded and I really couldn’t control it. So I walked upstairs and climbed into bed.

I had this weird feeling in my stomach. I couldn’t quite figure out at first what it was. I thought maybe it was just a normal thing that any person would feel as their basement filled up with water and you feel powerless and defeated watching it happen. There was definitely some of that for me.

But there was something else going on with me, and it wasn’t till I laid down in bed that I finally was able to put my finger on what was underneath that feeling. I think it was that scooping that water reminded me, deep down of how I lived for 10 years as an active addict and alcoholic—total chaos, trying to keep the lies and addictions going, barely keeping my nose above the water, hanging on for dear life knowing that the end result was inevitable. In that case, it was go to rehab or die. In this case, it was that the clouds either keep pouring rain down, or the rain stops. I was powerless and the situation was unmanageable.

So I actually fell right asleep and I rested easy. My wife took over for me early in the morning. I slept peacefully for a few hours, woke up, and we finished cleaning up the water and dragging ruined carpet and boxes out of the house. It sucked. But it is what it is.

I ended spending the second half of today feeling a strange sense of gratitude. I’m just so glad that that feeling of panic, of barely staying ahead of a storm, is something I rarely experience any more.

OK, twice in two weeks is a little less rare than I would like. But it’s an infrequent feeling these days, and I used to spend roughly 20 hours a day, every day for 8-10 years of active addiction, doggypaddling to try to survive. That’s no way to go through life, and I am glad I don’t have to live like that.

Now I am taking my beaten-down, sore, old-ass body and going to bed early!

ALCOHOLIC/ADDICT JOKE OF THE 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 guy goes into a bar, takes a seat and orders five pints. The bartender gives him an odd look since the guy’s all by himself, but he lines up five pints on the bar.

The guy downs them. One, two, three, four, five. He finishes the last one, and calls to the bartender. “Four pints, please, mate!” The bartender serves up four pints and lines them on the bar.

The guy downs them. One, two, three, four. Then he belches, sways on the barstool, and orders two more. He quickly knocks them back. One, two, three.

“Two pints, mate!” he calls, and when the bartender places two pints in front of him, down they go. One, two.

The guy slams the last one down, puts the empty glass on the bar, and says, “One pint, mate.” So the bartender fills the glass.

The guy sits there, staring at it for a moment, trying to focus. Then he looks at the bartender: “Y’know, it’sh a funny thing, but the less I drink, the drunker I get.”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, May 2001, 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

If you want to subscribe to LOL Sober, hit the purple button below. I’m not putting anything behind the paywall for a little while longer, so if you choose the free option, you’ll receive everything without paying. If you’d like to contribute anyway, many thanks.

I’m in the middle of a rough stretch. There’s nothing hugely problematic going on at home or at work. I haven’t skipped a bunch of meetings. I’m doing service work, making calls, all of the things you’re supposed to do. Family is fine. Cats are fine. I can pay my bills.

And yet… I am salty and mopey and way more ready to rumble than I should be. I don’t handle those days well, because I feel like that guy in the movie who clips the blue wire on the ticking bomb, and the bomb just keeps ticking down anyway. “I did everything right! What the hell? Make it stop!” is sort of the voice in my head.

So I did a few things that always help.

* Breath and remember, this is a normal thing that happens all the time: That’s the truth. Addicts and non-addicts, monks and non-monks, we all have those days. Beat yourself up with a feather, not a baseball bat.

* Went to a meeting: Duh, that’s Recovery 101.

* Prayed for help: Do I know exactly what I am praying to and when the help will arrive? Nope. But it still adds up to something.

* Did something—anything!: I usually laugh at the whole “Move a muscle, change a thought” because I move around a lot all the time, and it never feels like a magical cure. However… when I am in a dark place, I do find that I slow down. I sit in chairs and stare at my phone or TV shows. So moving a little bit gets me out of the self-pity swamp, even for a little while. That helps. It really does.

* Eat something shitty: I’m sorry, this is not the most spiritually sound solution. But I do find that, when I am really gritting my teeth and scuffling, eating two peanut butter cups or three peanut butter cups or six peanut butter cups or seven peanut butter cups… but never eight, that would be disgusting… I do get some relief. It isn’t physically healthy but it does boost my spirits a little bit. I never forget that the awesome recovery book Living Sober has a chapter titled, “Eating or drinking something—usually, sweet” that talks about how sometimes you can pound a candy bar if you’re in a bad place. Of course… I am reading that the way that I want to read it, not necessarily how the authors intended it. The chapter does not recommend a foundation of your sobriety be based on cleaning out the Walgreens candy aisle. Far from it. It’s mostly recommending that you only push that button if the situation is truly dire. However… I’m smashing some peanut butter cups if I am having an ugly day.

So I did all those things. I had some junk food and watched some sports, cut myself some slack and felt a little better. And that’s ok. I went to bed and woke up in a better place. All because of my miraculous peanut butter cup method!

Just kidding. The answer is a spiritual solution, blah blah blah… fine, I get it.

ALCOHOLIC/ADDICT JOKE OF THE 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 true story: I recently attended an AA picnic in my home town. We were joking and having a good time, when the five-year-old daughter of a fellow home-group member won a prize in the sack race. “That’s mine!” I told her playfully. “Give it here.”

“I’ll tell my Mommy,” she replied, clutching it to her chest.

“I don’t care,” I said, tugging at it. “I want it.”

“I’ll tell my Daddy,” she threatened.

“I don’t care. I want it,” I replied.

“Who’s your sponsor?” she shot back. She’d won our little battle.

(Credit: AA Grapevine, November 2000, Joe)

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 not putting anything behind the paywall for a little while longer, so if you choose the free option, you’ll receive everything without paying. If you’d like to contribute anyway, many thanks.

I’ve been catching myself overly frustrated with my kids sometimes recently. As usual, it wasn’t really that anything changed with them. I was the one who changed.

I have two teenagers and a 6-year-old and… they act like teenagers and a 6-year-old many days. So that means my littlest one walks into a room where I’m on the phone with a work colleague and she pulls on my arm and says, “Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad?” until I acknowledge her and immediately get her whatever she’s asking about. My teenagers are moody and impulsive and self-centered.

I usually get extremely frustrated and bark at them for whatever transgression they dared throw at me.

As I think about that it’s like… Uh, so they act exactly as you would think a person that age would? And also, um, they want what they want when they want it… can’t think about anybody but themselves sometimes… can go from sad to mad to laughing to sad again in 30 seconds? Hmm, does that sound like anybody I know? Maybe the fact that those are some of my worst character defects these days has something to do with it.

Here’s the other thing that has been striking to me: I’ve been catching myself being overly kind and forgiving of strangers at the same time. I was at a chaotic grocery store the other day and waited 10 minutes in the self-checkout line before, finally, it was my turn. And—some old dude swooped right in front of me and started ringing up items.

I shook my head and stewed to myself for a few seconds, but then he noticed that he’d skipped right past the line. He stopped scanning items and made eye contact with me and began to profusely apologize. I of course went from shaking my head in disgust to being like, “Oh no, sir, you go ahead. I’m in no rush. No big deal. Don’t worry about it.” I was two seconds away from offering to pay the guy’s bill when he got done.

Have I been as forgiving of my own loved ones recently? No way. You jump in front of me when I’m heading into the bathroom or trying to get to the fridge? Not happening. You’re going to get a very grumpy father.

Part of the problem here is beyond me. I’m not built for spending basically 24 hours a day, for a year-and-a-half, cooped up in the house with anybody, even loved ones. I guarantee you a few months into a pandemic with that old dude at the grocery store, I’d be sick of him and overreacting, too. So I want to make sure I’m not beating myself up too bad. Seems pretty normal right now for people to be getting irritated with their loved ones after so much time together.

The other part of this that it’s good to identify is the buildup of gunk in longterm relationships. A kid getting too pushy about something shouldn’t be a huge ordeal, but the fact that it’s Too Pushy Incident No. 3,491 matters. My patience wears out pretty quickly in general, and patience can also be something that erodes over time, too. That causes me to go to a high level of annoyance in a hurry.

What’s the solution for that? Well, I might need to do a Fourth Step and work through where some of the resentments are coming from and what my role in each of them is. I have a feeling I know what I am going to find—that I am responsible for getting five times more aggravated than I should, and that I need to find a way to inject more spirituality into the situation. That could be praying. That could be an extra meeting or two per week. It could mean praying for my kids—I love that tool in recovery where for 14 days in a row, you pray for somebody on your shitlist and wish them well. It has worked almost every single time I have ever done it.

I might even throw in a prayer for that old dude who had the audacity to jump the grocery store line!

ALCOHOLIC/ADDICT JOKE OF THE 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. 

At a recent AA meeting, a long-winded speaker began describing every detail of his drinking. After an hour, when the meeting was supposed to end, half the audience got up and left. However, the speaker just kept talking. So half an hour later, several more people left. The speaker kept right on talking. Half an hour later, everyone else in the audience got up and left—everyone except one woman.

At last, the speaker wrapped it up. “Oh my gosh!” he said, looking at his audience. “Where did everybody go?”

“You talked so long they left,” the woman replied.

“That’s terrible! I had no idea I was going on so long,” the speaker exclaimed. “But tell me, why did you stay?”

“I’m the next speaker,” she replied.

(Credit: AA Grapevine, October 2000, Anonymous from Manhatten, New York)

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