LOL Sober

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I was at a very good meeting discussing anonymity the other day, and it got me thinking about how much I have bounced all over the place with that concept since I got sober in 2008.

Going back to my first few weeks of recovery, I remember being over the moon about how much better my life had gotten in such a short amount of time. It’s funny how NOT eating 50 painkillers and a six pack of Natty Ice can make you feel better pretty much overnight!

I wondered, Why didn’t the 12-step programs advertise? Why should I withhold this information from everybody I know? We should be screaming this from the rooftops and there should be billboards along every major highway! I’ll make the fliers!

I started to tell anybody who’d listen how I had gotten sober and how fantastic it was. That was all well and good for a little while. But then one day I was late for work and I said I’d hit traffic, and I caught some raised eyebrows looking back at me. Turns out, five years of coming up with increasingly preposterous reasons for my behavior had laid the groundwork for skepticism when I threw excuses at people. Looking back, I would have been a little dubious of me, too.

I also remember haggling with some trusted sober friends about how outdated the whole anonymity thing was. “Come on,” I’d say, “the stigma of addiction ain’t what it was 60 years ago. We should be talking about this publicly.”

I’m so glad my recovery mentors counseled me to calm down on breaking anonymity. I haven’t really had any experiences where I feel like people knowing about my sobriety hurt me… but I can’t think of many situations when it helped or was necessary, either. I caught myself occasionally throwing it out there in a clout-chasing way, and that’s not good—my recovery just cannot have any strings attached to public adoration.

So I stopped broadcasting it to people in my life about sobriety, and I’m glad I did. People just don’t need to know. And I have found that by protecting my anonymity, I may also be protecting yours, too. Because when I hug you at the grocery store or the mall, it doesn’t automatically broadcast, “Oh, that guy must be an alcoholic, too.”

That brings me to some nuances around anonymity that I have learned over the years. In my opinion—and this is just my take on things—I also owe people the courtesy of what is said in meetings stays in meetings, even if we are friends. By that, I mean that if you share at a meeting that your marriage isn’t great and you’re considering a divorce, that doesn’t mean next time I see you at the mall, I automatically say, “Hey, what’s new with the marriage?” Maybe you brought it up at one meeting and worked through it and didn’t want me to carry it with me as a conversation starter.

I also try to avoid at all costs talking about sober people with other sober people, even if we all know each other. For me—again, this is just my personal opinion—if Mickey asks me how Timmy is doing, it’s not really my place to say, “He’s doing okay but he said last night at the meeting he’s still struggling with his work situation.” In fact, I think I would try to avoid passing along that kind of thing even if it had been said outside of a meeting. If Timmy wants Mickey to know how he’s doing, he can tell him. (For the record, I sometimes use composite characters so as to not identify anybody specifically in my life. As you could have probably guessed, Timmy and Mickey are made-up people.)

I’ll end with a funny but educational story. Early on in my recovery, when I was still a little less conservative about my anonymity, I saw a friend at the grocery store from about 50 feet away. He was with a woman who was pushing a shopping cart beside him. I made eye contact with him, and he kind of gave me a wide-eyed look that acknowledged my existence and our friendship, but also indicated that I should maybe not approach him.

So I didn’t. The anonymity thing floated through my head but in all honesty, I was also thinking, “What’s this guy’s problem? I thought we were friends?”

A few hours later, he called me and said that he was sorry he couldn’t say hello, but that he had been on a first date with someone he’s really interested in. They decided they’d cook dinner together so they were there plotting out what they’d make. He said he wasn’t quite ready to hit her with the whole “Hey, I am an alcoholic” explainer just yet.

That interaction is mildly amusing but I took home an important message. Which is that our anonymity is valuable. You should be able to go on dates and maybe fall in love without some bozo like me informing your significant other that you have an alcohol or drug problem. Lesson learned!

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.

The drunk went to the police station to speak with the burglar who had broken into his house the night before.

“You’ll get your chance in court,” said the desk sergeant.

“It isn’t that,” said the drunk. “I want to know how he got into the house without waking my wife. I’ve been trying to do that for years.”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, April 2000, Shirlene H from Bountiful, Utah)

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 got in the car with my kids the other day and said, “Hold on, I gotta listen to this voicemail.”

The kids started dying laughing. “A VOICEMAIL?!?!” They couldn’t believe that someone would a) leave a voicemail or b) listen to one. It was like I told them I was going to get a Nickelback tattoo on my face.

The message was from a sober friend, just checking in. He gave me a quick rundown of how he was doing, something he’d heard at a meeting that he thought I might benefit from and said let’s talk soon. It made me smile because I did appreciate the thing he passed along. But more than that, I just always like voicemails from recovery friends—it’s a constant reminder that I am plugged into something bigger than me.

I know voicemails make kids these days gasp in horror. “Why wouldn’t you just text?” my kids say. I get it—it often does make sense to try calling someone and then just spell out quickly the purpose of the call in a text.

But those are often times calls where you’re asking got something. What time is the meeting? Are you going tonight? What’s your email address?

My recovery calls are usually about carrying the message, not completing a task. I often get a lot out of just hearing a sober friend’s voice.

And I get a lot out of leaving voicemails, too. I like hearing the message from whoever I’m calling, and then it helps me to leave messages sometimes. When I’m just saying hello and checking in, it’s nice to get that small feeling of connection. And when I am not in a great place, I often lay it out quickly on a sober friend’s voicemail and it is at least a little bit relieving. I know it sounds silly but I am constantly surprised at how often I am halfway through a rant about something causing me problems when I catch myself hearing it out loud for the first time.

I occasionally find myself taking a breath on the voicemail and saying, “You know what? Now I see why this is making me so mad,” and I laugh and say “Give me a call back later. Thanks for listening.”

It doesn’t seem like that would be any kind of breakthrough moment because nothing really changed. I just said it out loud to a recording of a sober friend’s voice. And yet, it works. I can think of multiple times over the years where I try three recovery buddies in the middle of the day, none of them pick up, and I still end up in a better headspace.

How awesome is that? It may very well be that in 10 years, nobody outside of the recovery world would dare leave messages. But I know in my network, you better brace yourself.

Even when cell phones have been replaced by something better, even when the aliens come and take over the planet, even when we destroy the aliens and take Earth back… I’m still going to be leaving you all messages, no matter how uncool my kids think it is.

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.

After a night of hard drinking, a drunk pulls out his cell phone and calls the police to report a robbery in his car. “They’ve stolen the dashboard, the steering wheel, the brake pedal, even the accelerator!” he cries.

But before the police can respond, they get another call, and the same voice comes on the line. “Never mind,” says the drunk. “I got into the back seat by mistake.”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, March 2003, Anthony F.)

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 traveled this week, and I have come to love hitting meetings in other areas.

I didn’t used to. In early sobriety, when I traveled, I thought, “I’ll just plug back in when I get back home. It’s only five days.” The problem is, by Day 3 or 4, I was usually starting to slide a bit. And on trips where I was by myself, eating crappy gas station snacks in lonely hotel rooms for long stretches, I really got squirrelly in a hurry.

So when I got to go to Wisconsin this past week on a work trip for four days, I knew I’d have a better stay if I got to a meeting. And so I did exactly that, and it was awesome!

I must still think I’m pretty special, though, because every single time I poke around the inter webs for recovery meetings in a new place, I always catch myself thinking, “Holy crap, they have a bunch of meetings out here, too?! Apparently, there are alcoholics and addicts in places other than the town I live in. Who knew?!”

But I find those meetings to be life savers. Over the years, I’ve been to the southernmost meeting in the U.S., when I was in Key West (first and only meeting where chickens were walking around!). I went to a meeting in western Pennsylvania once where they took a group conscience at the beginning to allow smoking at the meeting—I voted no but everybody else said yes, so I got a nice dose of recovery along with roughly 20 secondhand cigarettes. And I loved it!

I really enjoy the different brands and thought processes around recovery that you run into. It’s a little like trying out restaurants when you’re in a different place, or listening to different language dialects when you hear people share at meetings. I love all of it.

The meeting I went to in Wisconsin had about 20 people in an actual recovery club, which had a few meetings every day. They did all the normal preamble stuff at the beginning, except they had a spot in the meeting where people could get up and just say good news or bad news. One guy talked about a great book he was reading. Somebody else announced that a member’s wife had died and to maybe say a prayer or two for the family.

Then we did something I’d never seen at a meeting. We counted off by threes and then split into three smaller meetings, and we re-formed a few minutes later in each corner of the room. I asked about that, and somebody said they found it’s a good way to let newcomers work their way into recovery in smaller, less intimidating spaces.

On my way out, I noticed a big whiteboard in the front of the room. It had around five different statistics about the devastation of addiction. It showed how many people die every day, week and year from alcohol and drugs. At the bottom, I saw a bunch of pictures of people who’d died over the years of the disease. I wasn’t sure how I felt about putting up pictures of people we lost to the disease but nobody asked me for that opinion so I kept that in my head.

I can say that it impacted me in a positive spiritual way because it reminded me, for the millionth time, that I am just lucky to be alive. It’s always beneficial to remember that I am an alcoholic and addict who could have died every single day for 3-5 years before I got sober… and I didn’t. What a gift.

So I went back to my hotel room last night with a full spiritual gas tank. I made some new friends that I can come back and see next time I am in Wisconsin, and it was a beautiful evening.

Did I still maybe eat some shitty food from a gas station? Uh… no comment.

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.

One drunk says to another: “How many moons do you see tonight?”

And she replies, “In which row?”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, January 2002, Dave S. from Ithaca, 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.

At a meeting recently, someone shared this quote: “If you’re going through hell, don’t stop to take pictures.”

Whoa. It’s been like one of those ear worm songs that you nod along when you hear it, but then it continues to grow in your head. I think it’s haunting for me because I am so ready to do it on a regular basis.

First and foremost, let’s define hell. I haven’t had much of it recently. I’ve shared before that I got sick in college, spent a week in a coma, had multiple amputation procedures on my feet and had to relearn how to walk again. That was a brutal life experience for me.

Same with going to rehab and detoxing from opioids and alcohol. That was a terrible week of my life. I wanted to claw my skin off, and I wanted to claw yours off, too. I was miserable.

I’d say those are legit examples of hellish life experiences. Now let’s talk about what my brain tells me is hell. Because I can make hell out of heaven in a heartbeat.

I’ll give you a recent example. I live in Connecticut, and in Connecticut, we get a tax bill once a year on our cars. So I got the tax bill for my wife’s car and I paid it. I waited a few days but I never got a tax bill for my car.

So I investigated and was told that I did not get a tax bill for 2021 because… my car was not actually registered. Oops. And then I was informed that my car actually hadn’t been registered in 2020, either! I was told that it a not-so-great thing and that I should take care of that.

I started to wade into the DMV web site, which was about as fun as an actual DMV, and I discovered that I couldn’t just register my car because it hadn’t passed emissions tests for the past two years, either.

I then began the wonderful journey to secure an emissions test appointment, then get the actual test done. It was pouring down rain that day, but I got it done. Then I went to the DMV for help.

Except they couldn’t help. The DMV center I went to didn’t do registrations, only driver’s licenses. My teeth were gnashed together pretty damn hard in frustration as I began to leave the place.

But then I spotted a recovery friend who worked at the DMV, and he talked me through a way to register my car online. I went home and did it. Voila, I now have a legal car!

Later that day, I was on a rant about the chaos of getting my car registered and what a pain in the ass it was. The sober friend across from me listened patiently but at the end said, “So let me get this straight. You didn’t register your car for two years. Then you find out that by not registering your car, you also didn’t pay about $1,000 in taxes for the past two years that you don’t have to repay. Then you run into a recovery buddy at the DMV place who saves you a trip to another DMV location, and everything works out okay?”

I was laughing out loud by the time he wound down his recap, because it was spot on. I had balled up my fists, got way too bent out of shape about a sorta confusing web site and completely been swallowed up in a self pity stupor. Everything he said was right, but that isn’t the hellscape my brain had created. And yes, in this hellscape, I had stopped to take a lot of pictures.

Self pity is a crazy drug, though. I love self pity. I don’t love that I love self pity. But I do. I find it to be an intoxicating feeling, to think the weight of the world is on me. Deep down, it makes me feel important.

But for me—and I am just talking about myself here—self pity is also a form of selfishness. It’s me sliding into my own head, thinking I am overly important, overly burdened. As they say in the rooms, “Poor me, poor me, pour me another.”

I can’t stay in self pity for too long before I might be ready to reach for drugs and alcohol. So I’ll continue to think about the last part of that quote: “Don’t stop to take pictures.” That’s the lesson here.

Oh, also, register your freaking car!

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 woman in a bar spotted her friend, a heavy-hitter, drinking by herself at a table. Concerned, the woman went over and said, “Sally, you look terrible. What happened?”

“My mother died in June and left me $10,000. Then in July my father died and left me $50,000. And last month, my aunt died and left me $15,000,” Sally said.

“Three close family members lost in three months? That’s tragic,” the woman said.

“Yes,” Sally agreed, “and then this month, nothing!”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, September 2001, Melissa R. from Calgary, Alberta)

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

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 summer, I’ve been outside quite a bit and gotten some sun. I also have been lifting weights and running, so I feel good physically right now.

It made me think back to the last time I was in good shape… which was in 2008, when I was at my absolute bottom as an addict. I had lost a lot of weight, was doing some lifting and I was bronzed up because I’d been doing self-tanner like crazy.

I didn’t quite understand what was happening with me at the time. But looking back, it’s pretty easy to see that on the inside, I knew what I was—a raging alcoholic and addict who was living a giant lie and was probably going to die.

So to compensate for that, I tried to look as good as possible on the outside. But no amount of nice, new clothes or low body-fat could cover up what was really happening. I was rotting on the inside, and it was impossible to hide. I remember a work colleague who hadn’t seen me in a couple of weeks gave me an alarmed look in the office one day. “You look like you’ve lost weight,” she said. “Like, maybe too much.”

I blew her off in the moment but her comment stuck with me. But really, how much can nice triceps cover up for eating 50 Vicodin and six beers the night before?

When I was thinking about that period the other day, I specifically honed in on the self-tanning silliness. In that 2005-08 period, I got worse and worse every single day. Around the same time, I had two kids in three years and was able to take some time off. That meant long nights with crying babies, no work obligations, very little structure. I remember spending days in the house, blinds drawn, night and day blending together in a blur.

That’s when I started busting out the self-tanner. I’d never used it before. I never really cared about getting a good tan. But in my polluted addict brain at the time, I thought it would help hide the fact that I was sitting in a dark house high as s**t all day.

So when my wife and the kids were in bed, at around 11 p.m., I’d bust out containers of self-tanning lotion. I’d lather it on and stand in the living room until it dried. Then I’d cake on another layer. I was usually winding down after 10 hours of alcohol and drugs, too, so I think my accuracy wasn’t great. More than once, I remember spotting myself in the mirror and thinking, “Why does my stomach have one spot that is dark and looks like the outline of Arkansas? And what’s that weird bowling pin shape on my forearm?”

It was a mess. Literally and figuratively. I was embarrassed to be using self-tanner all night, so I hid the vats of tanning cream the same way I did my pills and empty beer cans.

My wife asked me one time, “Did you spill some kind of lotion on the couch?”

“Lotion? What kind of lotion? You think I’m just walking around with huge tubes of lotion?” I fired back. I did a lot of gaslighting back then, even with self tanner.

Let me be very clear, I have nothing against self tanner. If anybody out there uses self tanner, awesome. I could totally see myself using it again some day. But what I am digging into is that my motives were terrible for using it at the time. It had nothing to do with getting a tan. It was about trying to hide my addictions.

I didn’t understand what was really happening back then. It’s helpful in retrospect to look back and see how our disease thinks, how our brain tries to hang onto the life we’re living even though it is killing us.

I’m not here to say I no longer care about my appearance. Far from it. I do. But I care about it in a way that I hope is healthy. I try to make sure my insides and my outsides have a dialogue with each other, that they’re both in a decent place and play off each other, rather than trying to cover for the other.

I know that sounds kind of meta, but I just mean that I want to have a balanced, spiritual, contented life. For me—and I am only talking about myself here—I think that being spiritually fit helps me to eat better, and I think eating better feeds my spiritual fitness. I need a good balance.

Lately that means I have been purposely getting outside quite a bit. The sun and the clouds and the breeze and the rain… that stuff all helps me. Then I come home and sit down on the couch and I am glad that I will not be leaving any mysterious sunless tanner stains on there. For today, anyway.

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.

Three worldviews:

The pessimist’s: The cup is half empty.

The optimist’s: The cup is half full.

The alcoholic’s: Are you going to drink that?

(Credit: AA Grapevine, June 2001, Jana D. from Los Angeles, California)

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.

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

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.

I wanted to end this week on a positive note, and I thought of something from Wednesday. I was with a group of sober friends and we read the July 21 entry from Daily Reflections, titled “A Priceless Gift.”

I’ll summarize it quickly: The reading gets at the idea that the deeper we get into sobriety, the more likely it is that we got rid of our “devastating defects.” Maybe we still have lots of smaller issues. But the big stuff—lying, cheating, stealing—often times goes away once we start to work a program. The reading ends by saying, “This newfound peace is a priceless gift.”

That entry made me think about how bumpy things can get when you’ve been sober for awhile. It ain’t always easy to be accountable for actions, to work through resentments rather than stew over them, to call yourself out on character defects, to make amends promptly once you realize you messed up. That is a high bar!

And by having such a high bar for our new lives, it can get heavy. It sometimes feels like I am flagging constant errors that I make, nonstop nitpicking at the way I react to things, consistently pushing myself on bad thoughts.

The specific thing that has been tough for me lately is that I have been catching bad moods and behaviors from others. By that, I mean, I am doing fine on my own. Then somebody plops down in front of me and they’re grumpy and suddenly I’m grumpy too. Or somebody starts gossiping and s**t-talking and suddenly I’m right there with them. Basically, my spiritual tank must have dipped a bit because I have been picking up other peoples’ issues to throw on top of my own.

I’ve had a few times when I say to a trusted sober friend something like, “Work is crazy, and my kids have been grumpy, and my car needs work, and we don’t have enough money saved up for vacation, and I’m supposed to be driving our family home for the holidays, and now my cat who’s five pounds overweight hasn’t been cleaning his ass very well and there’s turds and litter laying around the house once a day…”

When I’m done ticking off all of the things from my very busy, full life, one friend of mine sometimes says, “Well first off, congratulations on all of that—even the cat turds.” And then… well, I don’t really remember what he says after that because that’s really all I need to hear. Congratulations. I mean, I should be dead, right?

When I think about where my life was at in 2008, in the throes of active addiction and almost daily brushes with overdose/death, nobody was counting on me for anything. Nobody really cared if I came to their house for Christmas or their wedding. Nobody at work was asking me to show up to meetings. None of my cats would even come near me. It was a pathetic disaster.

Contrast that with now. Is there pressure to be a grown up? There sure is. Do I wish I could get plow through life and say “F— you!” every time I feel like it. Yes, sometimes I do.

But I’ll come back to that phrase: This is a priceless gift we have. So if you’re sober today, pat yourself on the back. I don’t always remember to think about it this way, but I’m thinking of it right now—that every time my head hits the pillow at night without drugs or alcohol in my system, that is a win. I accomplished the most important thing in my life that day, and everything else is whipped cream on top of the sundae.

Now, I gotta go scan the hallway floor to make sure there’s nothing that any of my cats left behind for me to scoop up…

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.

The wife of a not-yet-recovering alcoholic visited the fortuneteller.

The mystic stared into her crystal ball and proclaimed, “I have some terrible news. In the near future, your husband will suffer a hideous, violent death.”

The poor woman was visibly shaken. “W-w-will I be acquitted?” she asked.

(Credit: AA Grapevine, March 2001, Bob M. from Cleveland Heights, Ohio)

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.

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

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.

I was at a meeting this week and I looked around and realized how many of my best friends were all sitting there. It was such a beautiful thing.

I didn’t always cross the streams of my life. When I first got sober, I treated recovery like doctor’s appointments. I went for an hour, waved goodbye and headed back to my “real life.” On nights, weekends and holidays, I hung out with friends and family. They were in a different compartment of my life than my sober network.

And then I remember going to my first party where it was only recovery people. Wow, they seemed like they were having a lot of fun. I can recall saying something to my sponsor about it and he laughed. “What’d you think, that a bunch of people who spent their whole lives partying wouldn’t know how to have a little fun sober?” he asked me.

“Uh, yes,” I said. I actually did think that.

But, as time went on, I found myself slowly gravitating toward wanting to hang out with sober people more than just an hour every other day. It wasn’t because I needed recovering alcoholics and addicts around me to protect me from picking up again. It was that I found myself happier and, frankly, more sober and better behaved.

To sum up what I’m saying: I am better off when sobriety is a lifestyle for me, not a small part of the day. When I was drinking, I was under the influence of booze and drugs. Now that I am sober, I love being influenced by recovery people.

I’ll give you a recent example. I went to a very fun, very rowdy party a few weekends ago with my kids. It was all sober people at the party, and we had a helluva time. But I had a moment where I got cooking on a rant about an airplane debacle I’d had the week before. At one point, I blurted out, “And on the plane ride home, I got stuck in a middle seat between two butterball dudes.”

The guy I was speaking with raised his eyebrow, which in recovery is the universal symbol for “You’re being an a*****e.” And just as I was translating that stink eye, someone else walked by and said, “Hey, that’s not very spiritual.”

I had to laugh. Years ago, I might have processed that as sober people being sticks in the mud. But now that I’ve been in recovery for awhile, I love that we look out for each other that way. Were those hairy, sweaty gentlemen on the airplane actually butterballs? Uh, well, that’s mean and not something a spiritual person such as myself would ever comment on!

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.

The defense attorney for a woman who had got her third DWI was cross-examining the arresting officer. The plea was not guilty, and he was trying to discredit the officer’s testimony. 

“Tell me, Officer, what made you think that my client was drunk?” the lawyer demanded.

“Well, for one thing,” said the trooper, “she fumbled around in the glove compartment for about five minutes looking for her car registration.”

“That doesn’t prove anything,” exclaimed the attorney. “It could easily take me ten minutes to find the registration in my glove compartment.

“She was in my car,” the officer responded.

(Credit: AA Grapevine, March 2001, Mike J. from The Woodlands, Texas)

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I watched a poignant TV show over the weekend and found myself crying at the end. And it reminded me of the first time I cried in sobriety, and what a new, beautiful part of my life opened up that day. Because I really believe that I wouldn’t be able to laugh the way that I do now if I didn’t cry the way I do in sobriety, too.

About three months into sobriety, we woke up to find one of our cats, Cricket, appearing to be very sick. We had four cats at the time—two we’d adopted from shelters, and two wild cats we’d brought inside during a brutal stretch of winter. When she was outside, Cricket always was skittish when I’d put food out but she’d eventually come close to eat. Then I trapped her and her running mate and brought them inside, thinking she’d warm up to us.

She never did. In fact, she ran away every time anybody ever got close to her, and only one of us—me—ever had physical contact with her before that fateful day. And that physical contact consisted of me waking up in the middle of the night once and finding her, inexplicably, sleeping on my ass. As soon as I woke up, she scurried off. That was my one time of getting close with her, and it only involved a surprise encounter with my butt.

So that morning, she was moaning in a horrific way that indicated significant discomfort. I was able to get close to her and touch her, and I found that she’d peed on the floor and seemed to be in agony. I scooped her up and took her to the vet’s office.

Within five minutes, they came in and said she was dying. They couldn’t say exactly what was going on with her but she wasn’t going to make it. We had to make that awful decision to put her to sleep.

I cried like I’d never cried before. I just sobbed uncontrollably in a way I don’t remember doing in my entire life. In fact, I bet if you didn’t know any details, it probably looked pretty funny. I remember feeling like I didn’t even really know how to do it. I was almost like a robot trying to mimic human tears because I had never quite encountered an explosion like that, so I am pretty sure I got tears and snot everywhere.

I’m not going to lie and say I didn’t cry during active addiction—I did. But I hid it from others, or numbed it out with alcohol and drugs. If someone asked me if I had been crying, the answer was no. I just wasn’t comfortable crying, or acknowledging crying. I’ll spare you any pseudo-psycho babble on why that might be. That’s a different conversation.

I remember in the minutes after Cricket had died, the vet asked me if I wanted to stay with her for a bit. So I sat there beside her, my hand on her little body. I must have stayed in there by myself, crying, for 30 minutes or so. That’s more than I remember crying in the 20 years before that.

It hurt so bad. Just deep, deep sadness, with no real “look on the bright side” spin to put on it. And for the first time I could remember, I had to completely sit with sadness and process it. I cried a few more times the rest of that day, and then once or twice the next day, and then I officially had grieved her.

But I ultimately felt it, in its entirety, and was able to work through it and feel every sharp edge. What a beautiful thing. It’s not fun, that’s for sure. I still don’t want to feel sadness at its lowest depths. I’d rather numb it somehow, take the edge off, maybe not cry actual tears.

I’ll take this version of feeling feelings, though. The truth of my active addiction was that I didn’t really feel anything—good, bad or ugly—and ended up living a life of self-medication and avoiding the stuff that makes life life. I don’t remember any tears of joy, either, like I felt after watching that TV show.

This is a long way of saying that I love crying now. I feel no shame about it. I don’t do it too often—I mean, I kind of am still a little bit of a cold-hearted robot when it comes to acknowledging sad feelings. But when I do cry, I feel a weird sense of gratitude to be alive, truly alive, feeling everything life throws at me.

And as I put this together, I also had a funny moment of gratitude for that one night when Cricket hung out with my ass. I’m grateful that I will always have that to remember her with!

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.

The police officer had just handed him a drunk driving ticket, but the drunk was belligerent.

“What am I supposed to do with this?” he demanded.

“Keep it,” the police officer said. “When you collect four of them, you get a bicycle.”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, March 2001, Jay C.)

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.

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

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.

I was at a meeting on Tuesday night and we read from a very prominent piece of recovery literature in which the Fourth Step is discussed. Here’s the exact passage: “Resentment is the ‘number one’ offender. It destroys more alcoholics than anything else.”

I’ve read that passage 100 times—maybe more than 100 times. And it never quite dawned on me the directness and power of that statement. Our literature is specifically saying that resentments are at the very top of the heap of potholes alcoholics and addicts step in.

Okay, okay, okay, I know, you’re probably thinking, “Um… duh.” And I get that. But it didn’t ever completely sink in that our literature was so blunt, so specific, about the No. 1 thing impacting our addictions. I’ve found most recovery literature to be gentle, with more talk of suggestions and possible solutions than flat-out direct statements.

But not in this case, and I love that. It really helped me that night. I can work on 1,000 different things in my life, but I need to have my radar constantly zeroed in on resentments first and foremost.

Maybe that’s why I love the Fourth Step so much. In my recovery—and I am only speaking of my own recovery here—I think the First Step is the most important thing I’ve ever done. But the Fourth Step has been my MVP for the past 12 years. I find it relieves so much pressure to sit with why I am mad or frustrated about something, what it’s really tapping into deep within me, and what my role in that resentment is.

I’ll give you a common example from my life. I often will end up barking at my kids in the evening for something trivial, and I usually spot right away that I am overreacting to my 6-year-old being, you know, a 6-year-old. When I spend a minute with it, I’ll often find that I could trace my current aggravation back to a work email from earlier in the night, and then my irritation came out sideways and in the direction of my 6-year-old. My part in that? I gotta spot that immediately and try to avoid the barking—it’s misdirected and not fair.

I always think about one specific tough stretch in my life, maybe five years ago. I was butting heads with some colleagues, and it wasn’t a one-time deal. I had built up resentments over a few months and it was getting to be real anger and self-inflicted pain. So I ducked out for an hour one day at lunchtime, and I thought I’d go smash some Taco Bell. Don’t four soft tacos and a quesadilla always make everything better?

On my way, though, I called a close recovery friend, and he suggested I do a mini Fourth Step. And by mini, he meant, spend two minutes with pen and paper and write out what was going on.

I got my tacos and sat down, and I realized I was riled up enough about the work situation that I actually didn’t have an appetite at all. So I flipped over the Taco Bell receipt and did that mini Fourth Step that had been recommended. It took me about five minutes to run through everything, but at the end, I felt like maybe 75 percent of the pressure had dissipated. It really helped to see where I was at fault, where I was taking a minor thing and making it a major thing, where I was justifiably bothered by others’ bad behaviors but was responding with bad behaviors of my own. That is a big one for me—if someone acts like a jerk, I sometimes think I have the freedom to be a jerk, too. I don’t. That is not a good solution.

I called my recovery friend and ran through the big takeaways from my scribbled-in-tiny-letters-on-the-back-of-a-receipt work, we had a good chuckle, I felt better and suddenly my appetite was back.

So, Rest In Peace, four tacos and quesadillas. I crushed them and went back to the office feeling like a new man… who was disgustingly overstuffed, with fire sauce on his chin. But less resentful!

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.

One night, a newcomer took his daughter to dinner at a downtown restaurant. As they walked in the door, the first thing they saw was an enormous sign advertising what used to be his favorite beer. The man’s eyes immediately widened and he began remembering just how good the old brew tasted. Then his daughter interrupted.

“Oh, look, Daddy,” she said, pointing to the sign. “They have Your-Life’s-in-the-Toilet on tap.”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, January 2001, Doug R. from Manhattan, Virginia)

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.

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

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 weekend was a UFC mega-event featuring Conor McGregor vs. Dustin Poirier. As I watched, I couldn’t help but flash back to the first few months of my sobriety, when I was struggling with what it meant to truly surrender.

Part of the problem for me in early sobriety was around bad masculinity habits I’d picked up. By that, I mean… feeling feelings, admitting fear, crying, even just talking to other men on a regular basis. Some of it was silly societal stuff that I had latched onto; some was of my own making. All of it was my choice to buy into.

My sports background certainly played a part. A good 95 percent of what sports did for me was awesome and beneficial to me. Stuff like: Losing and then trying to come back, pushing through difficult physical circumstances, competition, literally getting knocked down over and over again and having to get back up… when those parts of me are aimed in the right direction, it’s fantastic. But there’s also part of jock culture that doesn't age well in the real world. Try motivating people in an office culture by screaming and threatening them and telling them “second place is first loser” and let me know how that works out for you.

So in recovery, I had to retrain my brain about the concept of surrender, trusting a higher power and relying on a sober community. I didn’t really want to do that. I didn’t want to be vulnerable, to admit I didn’t know how to live life, that I needed lots of help. Looking back now, it makes more sense. As I sunk deeper and deeper into addiction, I made sure to shrink my world smaller and smaller. Almost nobody really knew anything about me, and that was a purposeful decision.

So when I went to rehab and started going to meetings, I had about a decade of terrible contributions to most of my relationships. Even though I wasn’t drinking, I didn’t want to truly overhaul my patterns, and I didn’t know how to do that, either. For most of early sobriety, I really thought the only problem I had was drugs and alcohol. Me? I was pretty great!

I had a breakthrough plopped down in front of me one day when I read a story about the UFC, and how the image of cagefighting—no holds barred, brutal violence, etc.—actually didn’t line up with the reality of the sport. Which is that many MMA fighters have a deep appreciation for martial arts, and the concept of using violence only when necessary, and—most importantly—that it’s okay to tap out.

That hit me hard, because UFC fighters are among the baddest men and women on the planet. And yet they all find no shame in submitting to a dangerous move if they’re caught. One fighter I really liked said, “Why get your arm snapped and not be able to fight again for six months if you’re trapped? You tap out, you learn from a tough loss, and you come back the next week and try to get better.”

Right after I read that, I felt a lot better about fully committing to recovery. Any shame I felt about being weak began to fizzle out. And that’s when I started to understand that beautiful, contradictory concept of surrendering to win.

The more I leaned on others, the more I could stand on my own. The more I let people in, the more I could let myself out. It was a real spiritual experience that altered the trajectory of my recovery—I really don’t know how long I could have stayed sober if I hadn’t truly surrendered to the suggestion of getting real with people.

I still chuckle at one of the UFC’s old slogans, “As real as it gets,” because that’s how sobriety has been for me, too. The sober people I look up to most are the ones that are as real as it gets. I’ve never enjoyed tapping out more in my life!

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 group of animals go into a bar but don’t know who will pay for the drinks.

“I’ve only got a cent,” says the skunk.

“I don’t have a buck,” says the doe.

“I’m broke,” says the horse.

“My pocket is empty,” says the kangaroo.

“That’s all right,” says the giraffe. “The highballs are on me!”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, September 2000, Tom W.)

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.

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