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!

Somebody asked me the other day, “When did you know you were an addict?” I’ve thought about that question many times over the years, and I’ve probably given 20 different answers. I guess that’s what happens when there are soooooo many options to choose from.

For instance:

I know how I felt the first time I drank, and I know I thought I wanted to do that every day for the rest of my life.

For instance:

I know the first time I felt the rush come over me from painkillers, and I felt the same way as I did when I drank that first time.

For instance:

I know the first time I had been drinking for multiple days in a row and then had a night where I couldn’t drink, and I remember how excruciating it was to NOT drink. I certainly felt like an alcoholic that night.

But let me give you one that I have been thinking about a lot recently because it is such a good summary of how I think, even in sobriety. I’ll give you a little back story, then the anecdote that has been on my mind lately.

When I went to college, I had partied hard a bunch of times in high school. But I hadn’t actually drank very often. I had never done any drugs, even weed. I had never smoked or chewed tobacco, even though dipping was big in my family and with my friends. Now that I look back on it, I was actually pretty innocent heading off to school.

Not for long.

My first semester, we hit the beer and vodka hard. Not every night, but close to it. I lived in a house with four other guys, rather than the dorms, and that was a terrible idea. We’d even get kegs sometimes and just have beer siting there like an all-you-can-drink buffet.

My roommates also introduced me to my first cigarette. I had pretty bad feelings toward smoking before I got to college, and whoo boy, that changed quickly. I started smoking Marlboro Lights, then was on to Marlboro Reds within two weeks. I got up to a few beers and 10 cigarettes every day in a hurry, and then went really crazy on the weekends with partying.

In fact, I often would pregame pretty hard by myself before the actual parties, and it all culminated with me starting to take a shower at 6 or 7 pm on Friday and Saturday nights, right before we went out. But I would take two beers into the shower, and also a cigarette and a lighter. And then I would drink and smoke while I took a shower.

Let me just repeat that… I WOULD DRINK AND SMOKE IN THE SHOWER GETTING READY TO GO DRINK AND SMOKE ALL NIGHT. Do you know how hard it is to smoke a cigarette during a shower? It’s pretty freaking hard!

So that is a pretty wild example of me taking things to an absolutely crazy extreme. I’d love to say that now that my active addiction days are over, I don’t do absurd things like that any more. But then I think about caffeine, and donuts, and cookies, and good TV shows, and hell, bad TV shows… one is too many, 1,000 is never enough, as the old saying goes.

But hey, at least I don’t binge-watch Ozark in the shower.

Actually, now that I think about it, I wonder if that’s possible…

In case you missed it, I put together a fun mini comedy special about my 10 favorite addiction/sobriety jokes. Check it out HERE! (It’s behind a paywall)

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 attending a few AA meetings, I realized why they use the term “barfly” to describe us. We barf and we lie.

(Credit: AA Grapevine, December 2006, by Dan H.)

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