LOL Sober

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I was at a good meeting the other day where people were talking about being a sober person in the workplace, and it was helpful. I didn’t really learn anything new, but man, it helps just to feel like you are one of many dealing with certain things.

The workplace is a big part of sobriety for so many people. In theory, I want to carry my spiritual principles into all of my affairs, and that includes the workplace. However, I have run into some issues with that part of my life because businesses are businesses, which means they can be impersonal sometimes. The goal of the company that I work for is to be financially successful, and that goes for pretty much every capitalistic endeavor that you might be a part of. Capitalism and spirituality don’t always go hand in hand, and that was a tough lesson for me to learn.

I’ll give you one specific example from my life. Right around the time I started to find my footing in sobriety, I began to have a lot of professional success, too. Shocking how that works, huh?

That meant that at about the same time I started getting asked to sponsor people in recovery, I was asked to manage people in the workplace. Most of the time, I was trying to do similar basic things—help others succeed, give guidance when possible, call people out on stuff when necessary.

But I ultimately realized after a few years that sponsoring someone and managing someone else is a totally different thing, and that I couldn’t duplicate some of my beliefs. For instance, I learned that you can’t make somebody stay sober… but sometimes you can make a coworker start showing up on time at the office. I learned that forcing suggestions onto newcomers in sobriety is usually pretty fruitless… but forcing suggestions to coworkers is often times why they pay you the money every day. I learned that if somebody relapses in sobriety, it usually doesn’t have much to do with me and that if my side of the street is clean as a sponsor, there’s not much else I can do… but in the workplace, if a colleague butchers something, I am often responsible in some way, too.

That may sound like some daunting distinctions, and sometimes they can be. But for the most part, I have found that many of the spiritual principles that matter the most to me are possible in all walks of life. I try to be kind, optimistic, calm, fair but firm, nonjudgmental, not gossipy and find the humor in most things. I can do that both in sobriety and also in the workplace.

Of course, I have caught myself crossing the streams a few times (that’s a Ghostbusters reference, for all the young people out there). Be careful of that. You don’t want to be in a conference room at the office and blurt out, “Let go and let God,” and you certainly don’t want to pester sponsees about getting their expense reports done on time.

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

HEARD AT MEETINGS: “You know what they say, ‘In AA there’s a wrench for every nut.’”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, February 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 mostly publishing free pieces right now, but paid subscribers do have access to monthly premium pieces—such as THIS comedy special about my 10 favorite addiction/sobriety jokes!

Over the years, I’ve heard many people share a similar conversation that they had when they were first trying to get sober. I didn’t have this exact scenario, but I know the thought pattern that they’re describing.

The conversation goes something like this. A newcomer voices concern over the idea of blowing up the life they’re living, of telling all their close friends and family that they’re an alcoholic or addict, of having to take a leave from their job, of not being able to sleep… basically, so many of us active alcoholics live messy, chaotic, dangerous lives that ultimately bring us great misery.

But it’s our misery. And if you’re not dead or in jail, it’s a life that you have managed to lead for a long time. To disrupt that and take away the biggest crutch we’ve ever known is terrifying. Absolutely terrifying.

If you’re not an alcoholic and you’re reading this and not understanding what I mean, I bet there have been situations in your life where you needed to make a change but were scared to go for it. For instance, have you ever had a bad relationship you wanted out of but were worried about what life would look like without that person? Or just scared about how to even tell that person? Ever had a job you really wanted to leave but don’t have the guts to pull the trigger on because the job is bad but the uncertainty of leaving is even more scary?

I bet most people have had some kind of scenario in life where the current situation is tough, but making a change and entering into the unknown feels like it might be worse. So we stay put. That’s how I thought for a long time as an active alcoholic, but ultimately life got so bad that I had no choice.

So now let me go back to that conversation of explaining to a sober person the trepidation of trying to get sober and what lays on the other side. Several of these conversations that I’ve heard of end up with the sober person saying some form of, What exactly are you giving up?

There are a bunch of obvious tangible answers. First of all, no more overdoses, DUIs and stealing from your friends. Secondly, you probably will have more money than you have had in years. Thirdly, much less puking at your Uncle Jim Bob’s Thanksgiving dinner. Fourthly, you’ll probably remember where your car is parked every morning.

But then there are the things that really matter. No more putting your head down on the pillow feeling like a liar. No more telling yourself you’ll stop tomorrow, then feeling like a complete failure when you grab that first drink. No more ruined friendships or romantic relationships (well, hopefully—plenty of us have butchered relationships in sobriety by bad behavior, but sobriety gives you a better chance than drinking 20 beers every day).

There are also a bunch of myths we all convince ourselves of. One friend of mine told his sponsor that he was going to miss the parties, the rowdy golf outings with friends, the dates with new potential girlfriends, watching the Super Bowl with buddies and beer…. his sponsor interrupted him and went through that whole list with the guy. Turns out, none of that stuff had been happening during the end of his drinking. There were no dates. No golf outings. No awesome Super Bowl parties. Those were things of the distant past, and they weren’t going to happen ever again because of the way that we drink—alone, too much and too rowdy. Those were memories of a decade or two earlier, when drinking hadn’t yet become a problem.

So I will leave you with a question. If you’re thinking about sobriety or new to it, what are you REALLY giving up by trying for a life of recovery? And if you don’t have a problem with drinking and drugging, is there an issue in your life that you really need to address but haven’t yet because you’re too terrified of what life will be without it?

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

A sponsor and prospective sponsee meet to talk for the first time. After describing his many bouts with the bottle, the would-be sponsee finally asks, “So, what do you think?”

“I think you’re going to go far in this Fellowship,” the sponsor says.

“Wow!” his young charge replies. “Why do you think that?”

“Because you have such a long way to go,” the sponsor says.

(Credit: AA Grapevine, February 2001, Bob M. from Bellingham, Massachusetts)

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

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

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

Quick housekeeping note: I’m going to start doing two posts a week—one free, one behind a paywall. I’m not looking to get rich or anything. But I’ve been spending some money on maintaining my web site and on some social media platforms. So I am trying to cover my expenses. If you feel so inclined, please subscribe, even if it’s just $5 for one month.

I used to cringe about the word “fellowship,” because I’d only ever experienced it being said at churches that I never connected with. I didn’t want any shipping with any of those fellows.

But we use that word quite a bit in recovery, and I have grown to love both the term and what it means. When I think about my recovery, I need the meetings. I need the literature. I need a sponsor. I need to sponsor people. But I need fellowship more than anything else. For me, fellowship is the glue that holds all of the other things together. I need the connection to other recovering people, then that helps me tack on all the other parts. They’re all important in their own ways. But for me, fellowship is the sun that everything else orbits around. I think if I read literature for two hours a day, went to meetings twice a day, called my sponsor twice a day and talked to my sponsees for an hour every day, I’d be doing okay. But just ok. My recovery would be wobblier, that’s for sure. I need fellowship.

So what exactly is fellowship? Is it just shooting the breeze before and after meetings with people? I think that is the most commonly associated thing with the term fellowship. But my definition is more expansive. I think good fellowship means you talk to some people after the meeting in the parking lot AND you grab their phone number and follow up. I think it means having a rotation of 10 or so very solid recovery people who you connect with every week.

For me, these people can be friends but don’t have to be. What do I mean by that? I mean that I don’t necessarily need to go to the movies with my fellowship buddies. I don’t need to go on golf outings. I don’t need to talk politics with them. I don’t need them to housesit for me when I am away.

I certainly have crossed over into the friendship zone with my recovery fellows. In fact, I encourage it. I’ve found that the Venn diagram between my friends and my sober fellows has gotten smaller and smaller, meaning more and more sober people are the people that I want to hang out with, go on outings with, have barbecues with, everything that friends do together. But for me, the center of that universe is recovery at all times. I definitely talk about politics and sports and food and a million other topics with them, but the starting point with most of my sober friends is recovery, not golf trips or sporting events. I try to never lose focus on the roots of those relationships, which are the ways in which I want to try to find a new way of living.

The cool thing about having lots of sober friends is that I don’t have to worry about too many things that I don’t want in my life any more. By that, I mean that when I get together with old high school or college buddies, there’s often boozing, weed, ridiculously late nights, dumb s**t-talking and mean gossiping. I’ve been invited to casinos and strip clubs to hang out and reminisce, and I have to pass on those invites. I have yet to have a sober friend ask me to hit the craps table or get 100 $1 bills for the ladies over at Tootsie’s.

One other important note that I have learned from fellowship—how to actually be a friend. I never really developed good friend skills before I got sober and even a few years into sobriety. My opinion these days is that a friend will tell you something you don’t want to hear but need to hear. A friend doesn’t dare you to pull the fire alarm at the hotel you’re at because it would be funny. A friend doesn’t let you rail against your ex-husband or ex-wife in a self-pity rage without telling you that that’s not helping anybody. Basically, a real friend who cares about you will call you on your b******t. I used to not want that. I wanted people who “had my back”—a phrase that I corrupted into meaning that they covered for all my b******t. Yes, I want people who have my back… but I don’t want anybody who’s going to co-sign on bad behaviors for me any more. No thank you.

And if you’re reading or listening to this newsletter, you know that I still have a lot of bad behaviors. So I will keep trying to find good friends!

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 skeptical newcomer just couldn’t see how the first drink could get her drunk. A seasoned old-timer helped out. “When you get run over by a train, which kills you—the locomotive or the caboose?”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, January 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 mostly publishing free pieces right now, but paid subscribers do have access to monthly premium pieces—such as THIS comedy special about my 10 favorite addiction/sobriety jokes!

Let me just say right off the top today that I still haven’t figured out the whole God thing. I just know that I need to keep seeking, and to be open-minded. I have what I think is a pretty strong higher power that works for me in sobriety, which is a key part of the recovery process.

But I did want to talk about a God-related topic, not as an expert but as someone who has trudged the same path that so many people do—how do you go from atheist to agnostic, and maybe even beyond agnostic and into a deep spirituality or religious belief?

I’m thinking about this topic a lot this week because I read We Agnostics at a meeting last week, and there’s a section in it that discusses how often many of us have had a God without even knowing it. The specific section is on Page 54 in the second paragraph, where it mentions that many of us have worshipped lots of stuff over the years.

Think about what your definition of a God is. Mine is roughly this: something I rely upon, something I center my life around, something that I worship, something that goes beyond logic into the mysterious realm of the mind and heart. When I first got sober, I told a friend in recovery that I didn’t see myself ever being a God person because I had never been before, and he calmly laid out the case for how many things I have worshipped in my life with complete abandon.

He was right. When I applied my definition to my own life, I realized I have had roughly, oh, 600 Gods. The list would include drugs and alcohol, for sure—I worshipped at the altar of opioids and booze. I’d probably include cigarettes and food at various points. Work has been a higher power many, many times. And I would definitely throw in about 50 different girlfriends or crushes who at various times became the only things on earth that mattered to me.

One of the key parts of spirituality for me is that some of it isn’t logical. God is mysterious. Not all of it makes sense. That’s why we use the word “faith,” because faith is often a belief that is not rooted in math or science. You just believe. You just trust. These things are not items you can purchase on Amazon.

The romance comparison is a great one. Ever date anybody who you are way into… and then you aren’t? Ever have somebody dump you and you can’t get over that person… and then one day you do? Ever gotten obsessed with somebody that you wished you could date? Why? What the hell is love, anyway? It’s not like there is a 5-part process to complete so that you know you love somebody. But there is some amount of trust, faith and attraction that isn’t quantifiable, and nobody else might feel it, but you do.

So with all that in mind, I realized that I do have a muscle for spirituality. I also have learned along the way in recovery that saying, “No way, that’s not possible” about any topic whatsoever indicates my mind being more closed than I want to. I think it’s actually a big reason why my recovery has been so enjoyable—I stopped debating with myself and just trusted in the idea of continuing to seek and be open-minded.

That would be my advice to anybody who has a hard-and-fast atheistic lean when it comes to God and religion. Think about your capacity to love and trust and center your life around stuff, sometimes in an obsessive, illogical way, and then revisit the question of whether you could ever believe in a God. And if you need to get on Facebook and find out what that first puppy-love person from your life’s history is up to, go for it!

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

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)

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

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

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

I heard a cool phrase today: What I do today is what I will be tomorrow.

My first reaction to seeing that quote was that it didn’t quite make sense. It sounded like mumbo jumbo nonsense masquerading as something profound.

But then it sank in what that means to me, which is, what I do today feeds what I will wake up as tomorrow. I’ll give you an example.

I had a work frustration a few days ago that started in the evening. It devoured my whole night. I did the thing where I was thinking, “I will say a, and if they say b, I’ll tell them c. And if they say that, holy s**t, I am going to be so pissed, and then I’ll do d, e and f.” Needless to say, I got to z on all of the imaginary arguments I was about to have.

The next morning, I rolled out of bed agitated. I found myself a little jittery, even when I was running on the treadmill. The truth was, I spent a good chunk of the day agitated and getting ready for a fight. And, shocker, I woke up agitated and ready to rumble.

That sounds so obvious, doesn’t it? But think about yourself in your life. Are you like me, in that you have ideals for yourself and you kind of just hope they happen? Right now, I want to eat better, be serene and kind in all my affairs, and be of maximum service to others. But how many of those things are going to just happen? Am I going to fall asleep one night and the Eat Better Fairy has sprinkled No Donut dust all over my stomach? Will I be driving and a lightning bolt will just hit me with service opportunities? No way. And yet, I sometimes behave like that.

To go back to that phrase, I need to do actions today so that it feeds me better nutrients to be that tomorrow. In the case of my evening of resentment a few nights ago, did I go to a meeting? No. Did I meditate for 15 extra minutes? No. Did I do a quick fourth step to see what my role was? No. Did I pray about it and ask the universe for guidance? No. I could keep going, but the point is, I went to bed with a late-night snack of pissy-ness in my belly, and I woke up pretty pissy.

This is not anything revolutionary. The concept of good actions leading to better thoughts is a tentpole of recovery literature and the spirit of sobriety. I just thought that phrase was an interesting way to summarize it, and I hope you found it helpful, too. Now I gotta run… I am still waiting for the Donut Fairy to show up.

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: The trouble with staying home alone and isolating is you get a lot of bad advice.

(Credit: AA Grapevine, December 2000, David F. from Manhattan, NY)

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

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

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

I recently wrote on this very newsletter that I don’t pay much attention to The Doctor’s Opinion any more because I don’t really need to. By that, I meant that the opinions expressed in that crucial piece of 12-step recovery literature made complete sense to me. So I had tremendous respect for what was written there and also its impact on the world. But I accept it without any sort of debate or further thought. It’s a little like somebody trying to tell me that it is important to breath and drink water every day—I know. No arguments here.

Soooooooo… I obviously deserved a kick to the groin to remind me again to never forget The Doctor’s Opinion. Never forget that alcohol is an allergy that I am highly allergic to. Never forget that I am an alcoholic and will never have a different reaction to alcohol other than that I can’t stop drinking and it makes my life unmanageable.

I got that kick to the crotch this weekend. My wife and oldest daughter went away, and I woke up Saturday with significant foot pain. As avid readers of this newsletter know, I had the ends of both feet amputated 20 years ago and deal with chronic pain. So waking up with foot pain is pretty normal for me.

But this one was a little more persistent, and chronic pain can really start to grind you to a pulp. My pain is often nonstop, for hours on end and sometimes days and weeks straight. I never forget that my feet hurt during those stretches, so every walk, every meal, every waking moment includes pain rearing its ugly head.

So my foot was bothering me as I made dinner and then cleaned up the kitchen. I opened up one of the cabinets to put some dishes away and boom, there sat a bottle of painkillers. My daughter had had her wisdom teeth out a few weeks ago, and apparently she was given some painkillers. My wife hadn’t exactly been Penn & Teller in making them disappear.

I’m to the point in sobriety where I can walk past somebody smoking weed, or hang out a bar, or go to a pharmacy, without using drugs or alcohol. I don’t hang out at any of those places because, as the old sober saying goes, if you hang out a barber shop for long enough, you will end up with a haircut.

So I didn’t want to take the painkillers. But boy, I kept remembering they were in there. I never opened the cabinet door again, and told my wife to take care of them the next day when she got home. But they popped into my head probably 10 times in those 24 hours, and I was disturbed by that.

But then I remembered what a good friend of mine always says: “Alcoholics think and drink alcoholically. If you have fantasies of drinking again, congratulations, it’s confirmed, you’re definitely an alcoholic.”

So I accepted my thoughts and stopped being disappointed by them—it’s just part of my factory settings. I asked my wife to stash the pills somewhere or throw them away, and I left it at that. I found that helped my brain a little bit, to just know they’re not available to me. And I couldn’t help but smile a bit at me being too dismissive of The Doctor’s Opinion—turns out, I still need the ol’ doc!

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 man goes to a party and has too much to drink. His friends plead with him to let them take him home. But he refuses, explaining that he lives only a mile away.

Five blocks from the party, the police pull him over and ask him to get out of the car to walk the line. Just as he’s about to give it a try, the police receive a call on their radio about a robbery taking place down the street. “Stay put,” one of the officers tells him. “We’ll be right back,” and off they run up the street toward the robbery.

Well, the guy waits and waits, but since the police don’t show up, he decides to drive home. When he gets there, he tells his wife he’s going to bed. “Tell anyone who might come looking for me,” he instructs her,” that I’ve been in bed with the flu all day.”

A few hours later, the police knock on the door and ask to see Mr. X. “I’m sorry,” says the wife. “He went to bed with the flu and has been there all day.” Without blinking, the police produce the guy’s driver’s license and ask to see his car. So she shows them the way to the garage, opens the door and… there’s the police car, lights still flashing.

(Credit: AA Grapevine, December 2000, Manning P. from Richmond, Virginia)

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

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

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

I was in the other room recently when my wife called her mom and they started talking. Her mom is weighing a big life change, which my wife supports and has been a part of for some time.

But her mom is reluctant. She keeps saying she is leaning that way but not quite ready. My wife has been steady and persistent in a reasonable way, in my humble opinion. But they keep having the same conversation over and over again and it’s not going anywhere. I think the conversation gets them both pretty riled up.

I was listening in on the conversation not because of the conversation itself, but because of how it applied to me and my life. I have always been a passionate person who thinks they’re right about most things. That can be big life changes, or a food item, or whether a sports team will win or lose. My opinions are very, very good—according to me!—and you should hear them. All of them.

That obviously has been an issue for me in recovery. When I first got sober, I’d meet someone new to 12-step programs who was still not convinced they had a problem, and I decided I would try to talk them into realizing that. Guess how that usually turned out? It took years before I truly came to believe that unless you think you have a problem, you can’t really get sober. It’s why I don’t know of too many interventions that ever worked—they usually involve loved ones trying to persuade people that they need help.

But even setting aside the recovery angle on talking people into things, when does that actually work? I hear people try to talk people into or out of voting for political candidates, and I remain fairly certain that happens about 0 percent of the time. Same with movies, TV shows, cars, floor tile, pants, you name it… we all like what we like, and most of us don’t really budge.

That’d be fine if there weren’t so many resentments caused by people trying to talk someone else into something. I’ve gotten into some unbelievably ridiculous arguments that put real strain on relationships over the years. I’ve picked fights with friends in the past about whether one athlete is better than another, and gotten bent out of shape at that person for not agreeing with me.

Well, I don’t want to live like that any more. It’s so silly. Most of my opinions do not matter to anybody other than me. And most of your opinions don’t really matter to me. So why try to stuff things down peoples’ throats?

I say this as someone who got pissed at his 10-year-old daughter last night for not trying a new kind of queso that I bought. She said she didn’t want queso, and I proceeded to give her a hard time for 10 straight minutes. So I still have some work to do, and I will keep an eye out if any meetings for Talking People Into Stuff Anonymous pop up in my area.

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:

Nervous about hearing his first Fifth Step, a young priest asked an older priest to sit in on the session. After the AA member had described a few of his experiences, the older priest motioned the young one to step out into the hall.

“Cross your arms over your chest and rub your chin with one hand, like this,” the older priest directed him. The young priest tried it.

“Good,” said the older priest. “Try saying, ‘I see. Yes, go on.’ And, ‘I understand. How did you feel about that?’”

The young priest complied. “Now don’t you think that’s a little better than slapping your knee and saying, ‘No way! What happened next?”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, November 2000, Shirlene H. from Bountfiful, New Hampshire)

Please spread the word to a sober friend! Find me on Substack… or Twitter… or Facebook… or Instagram… or YouTube.

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

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

I caught myself the other day telling someone I don’t post much on social media because I don’t really like it.

OK, that’s true—I don’t do much on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter or anywhere else. And I don’t love what it does for me—as an addict, I would notice myself counting likes and retweets and positive comments and getting a little out of whack relying upon the feedback to make myself feel better.

But there’s some b******t wrapped up in that stance, too. Because if I were being 100 percent honest, I would make sure to add the disclaimer that I don’t post very often, but I do watch hours and hours of nonsense on there every week. And I get sucked into reading lots of political and sports arguments that I don’t directly participate in.

And when I am being really honest about social media, I am able to admit that my consumption of it isn’t really helpful. Does it hurt me? I don’t know if I’d go that far. But I do think I end up consuming mostly brain rot, useless crap that may be fine for mindless stimulation—and not much else.

One area that I definitely see an impact on is my impulsivity. I mostly do a good job these days of not doing every idiotic idea that pops into my head. But I do find that social media is very good at targeting the parts of my brain—all of our brains, really—that can lead to impulsive thoughts. I can’t tell you how many weird little items I buy online, and my wife goes, “Let me guess—you saw a sponsored reel on Instagram and bought this cup that makes a loud noise when you blow into it from there?” (That is an actual example, by the way. I have something called a Loud Cup that is hilarious but scares the life out of my cats every time I honk it.)

I also have found that my attention span is a little shorter than it used to be. I don’t entirely blame social media… but I know it ain’t helping. It’s not helping my attempts to avoid wasting time with nonsense, either—our iPhone algorithms know us better than we know ourselves, so trying to avoid stuff is very hard. I found myself watching a few old clips from the show Jackass before I realized that I had better things to be doing than watching a guy get hit in the groin by a paintball—which I had seen many times before. And yet, the next 10 times I got on Facebook or Instagram, guess what was waiting for me? More Jackass clips to waste the day away.

I’d love to tell you that I have now deleted a bunch of apps from my phone. But I haven’t. I think there is an amount of nonsense social media stuff that is just fun entertainment, and I am trying to figure that out. I’d say right now my consumption is above where I’ll ultimately land. But it’s not a huge problem, so for now, cue up those Jackass videos, and hopefully I won’t need to go to rehab for being addicted to Johnny Knoxville.

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, by Joe)

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I was at a meeting the other day and someone said, “Every time I say to myself, ‘I need a meeting,’ it means I needed a meeting two days earlier.”

I was a little slow on the uptake that evening so I scrunched up my eyebrow for a minute and contemplated that phrase. I say it all the time: “I need a meeting.” It signifies to me that I have a good internal radar for when I am getting a little wobbly. Sober people get what I mean.

But I’d say if you are a normie who reads or listens to this newsletter, you probably have a similar radar for yourself—where you catch yourself getting a little fried, or more emotional, or overly frustrated with your kids or other drivers, and you know you need to do something to get yourself back on the beam. For us addicts, that means recovery stuff. For you normies, maybe that’s an Amazon purchase and a Netflix binge.

The thing that confounded me a bit was the possibility that maybe I had that phrase wrong. Is it possible that realizing you need a meeting means you waited a little too long?

That makes some sense to me. If your car has a rattle, why wait until the tires fall off to have a mechanic look at it? If your ceiling has a small leak, why wait until it caves in to get it checked out?

So the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I think that statement might be true in cases where I am feeling really squirrelly. It might mean that I waited a little too long, till my gas light was actually on.

The gas tank is actually a very good analogy here. What if the moment I say “I really need a meeting” is the equivalent of the gas tank being on “E”? I never drive any more with my car that low on gas. Once I am at a quarter tank, I’m getting gas.

My big takeaway is that that saying really made me rethink when I need meetings. The truth is, I need them almost every day—something like 4 meetings a week. That way, I never really have to say “I really have to get to a meeting,” because it goes without saying.

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

HEARD AT MEETINGS

I don’t want my ego to be the first thing people see when I walk into a room.

(Credit: AA Grapevine, November 2000, Shawn)

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

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

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

We read a portion of “Doctor Bob’s Nightmare” from the back of the Big Book at a meeting the other day. If you’re unfamiliar with it, it is the first story in the second section of the Big Book. I have always found the stories in the back of the book to be so important, because they illuminate everything you read before it. In fact, I sometimes think history textbooks might be better and more interesting if you lay out what happened, then had an essay from somebody involved in the historical event.

Here is the specific section of Dr. Bob’s Nightmare that I wanted to address. It’s from pages 180-181:

I spend a great deal of time passing on what I learned from others who want and need it badly. I do it for four reasons:

—1. Sense of duty

—2. It is a pleasure.

—3. Because in so doing I am paying my debt to the man who took time to pass it on to me.

—4. Because every time I do it I take out a little more insurance for myself against a possible slip.

Wow, so much of that hits home for me. I actually want to take it point-by-point because I think there is something valuable in each.

First of all, in the paragraph before the list, I zeroed in on that first sentence: I spend a great deal of time passing on what I learned from others who want and need it badly.

I love that first part, that he spent a great deal of time doing it. Not “once-in-awhile” or “sometimes.” He says “a great deal of time.” I think that is critical. Every minute I am doing that kind of 12-step work with another alcoholic or addict, it’s better for me than whatever else I could have been doing.

And in the second part of that sentence, he makes a key comment for me: “from others who want and need it badly.” I used to exchange numbers with newcomers and then go out of my way to call them and send them lists of good meetings and a bunch of other unsolicited recovery stuff. But I would often spend weeks tied up trying to convince people that recovery was right for them, when they weren’t ready. I don’t do that any more. I always approach newcomers and exchange info. But if I never hear from them, they never hear from me. It sounds harsh. But I learned that I really want to make sure I am available for the people who “want and need it badly.”

OK, now for the list. I love the list. It sums up what might be the most powerful tool that has kept me sober—fellowship. I do feel a sense of duty to make sure I am working with others, regardless of how busy my life is. In reality, my life is busy and full because I worked with others in the past. I have to always make sure I don’t forget that.

Is it a pleasure? I would say yes. There has definitely been some heartbreak for me over the years when somebody doesn’t make it. I certainly have been to more funerals than I would like. But I have had very few feelings that land harder on me than when I see somebody who celebrates a sober anniversary after I saw them come to their first meeting. I just got overwhelmed at a meeting recently when a friend said he had 10 years sober… I had met him at his very first 12-step meeting, and he wasn’t even the same human being on his 10-year anniversary. That is a pleasure to me.

And with the final point, it really is an insurance policy against me slipping up. I think my time with other alcoholics has been the best investment I have ever made, and it continues to pay huge dividends. So why would I stop doing it?

I left the meeting that night grateful for Dr. Bob to have had his nightmare, and grateful that I have had my own nightmare, and that so many of my friends have had their nightmares to share with me. I guess we are one big, happy nightmarish family!

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