When I was a kid, I did a lot of baseball pitching. And I will never forget the feeling of a few times when I played at rural fields where the other team didn’t have a backstop. You could throw a curveball in the dirt and the ball would skip past the catcher and keep rolling and rolling until it stopped. It was terrifying, because you felt like you had no wiggle room.

I mention that because I have been in a cycle recently where I got to meetings on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, then have had other commitments on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. I would say that four meetings per week is a pretty good rate, especially for somebody with long-term sobriety.

However, I found the frequency matters—as in, I do better when I get to a meeting every other day than if I hit a meeting every day for five days straight, then take five days off. By day three or so, I start to feel a spiritual slide.

In my case, that hasn’t meant that I ever came close to a relapse. But I just slip a little on the spirituality scale, so I find my attitude and behavior to be less than ideal. To complete the obvious metaphor, during that stretch of not making meetings, I feel like I am living life without a backstop, and it’s dicey. In baseball, not having a backstop didn’t mean I would throw one wild pitch and we would lose the game. But it meant that one wild pitch could be extremely damaging, and that the fear and insecurity of not having a backstop easily started creeping into my mind for every single pitch, which absolutely could affect whether we won the game or not. I remember having some spinouts mentally because I felt like I was all alone out there, close to one mistake with nothing to help me.

I can’t afford that in sobriety. Without connection to program stuff on a regular, consistent basis, I’m pitching without a backstop, and nobody wants that. Especially me.

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

HEARD AT MEETINGS: “When I was drinking, I paid a high price for low living.”

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.

What does the phrase “pink cloud” mean to you?

I ask because I have been rethinking it a bit recently. The way I used to think of it was as a general time period in early sobriety when you feel naturally high about being off drugs. Recovery is exciting, and you feel like there are no limits to a sober life.

But under that definition, I always thought of it as coming to an end, too. That life can’t just be a big, long pink cloud. That certainly was my experience. The electricity of early recovery began to wear off for me and life went back to normal, whatever normal even means any more.

So in my head, I always framed pink cloud as something short and sweet that will end and turn into something that is more of a grind—chopping wood and carrying water, as they say.

But I recently spent some time around newcomers who were either in the middle of pink cloud or coming out of it, and then I also was around some people with longterm sobriety of 10-plus years. I was struck by a few things that made me contemplate my own definition of pink cloud.

First of all, I enjoyed hearing about the newcomers’ excitement around early recovery. Those days are awesome—I wish you could bottle up that feeling and sell it. There is an optimism about the future and a relentlessness to be better than the past that I don’t always feel in my sobriety these days. People see a whole new world when they are off the sauce and getting acclimated to the world. It’s a beautiful thing to see.

Secondly, I thought about why that pink cloud feeling even happened for me. A big part of it was just escaping the physical misery of that first week without drugs and alcohol. I had headaches, body aches, terrible sleep and no appetite. I wanted to sleep all day but couldn’t sleep, and I had the worst case of restless leg syndrome in the history of humanity. It was miserable, but I was able to gut it out. To this day, I try to always have empathy for people who can’t get through that first week, because I get it. I still laugh about how the worst hangover feeling I have ever had was when I tried to stop drinking and drugging!

Lastly, I think I am done framing pink cloud as something that comes at the beginning of sobriety and disappears. It doesn’t have to be that way. Those long-term sober people I mentioned seem very happy to me, with plenty of pink cloud moments in their lives. I find that when I do the right things in recovery—which is a lot of work, admittedly—then I still experience stretches of pure bliss. Just this past week, I had an awesome lunch with two of my kids, one daughter won the science fair, another daughter got into the college of her choice, I had a work accomplishment that I was proud of and my wife and I talked about celebrating our wedding anniversary, rather than completely forgetting it until the day of. I don’t know that I would describe that as nonstop euphoria, but it was pretty damn great. So I’d say pink cloud is still available—as long as I am willing to float toward 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:

How many AAs does it take to change a lightbulb?

Three. One to make the coffee, one to chair, and one to guide it through the Steps so it can learn to change itself.

(Credit: AA Grapevine, September 2002, John S.)

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.

At a meeting last week, a guy said his sponsor once told him that “Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing that a tomato doesn’t belong in a fruit salad.”

Everybody laughed, including me, but wow, what a profound phrase. I run into the conflict between those two things on a regular basis, and I see it a lot in other sober people, too.

One of the biggest potholes to my sobriety journey has been thinking I have enough knowledge to wage this battle on my own. I don’t. In fact, I’m not sure there is an amount of knowledge that will ever be enough to self-treat my addictions. I’ve read the key pieces of sober literature at least 25 times each at this point. I don’t know every word by heart, but I have explored every syllable of the major pieces of literature repeatedly, so my knowledge is quite good.

It’s not enough. I actually think incredible knowledge of sobriety can be a huge hinderance, because I think knowledge doesn’t ultimately lead to wisdom. I get wisdom from other sober people, and being connected to them. That’s why I think so many people didn’t love Zoom meetings as much as in-person meetings (brief aside: some people love Zoom meetings, and I believe Zoom meetings probably saved thousands of lives during the pandemic. So you will not hear any shade from me toward Zoom meetings. If they help you, that is awesome!). There’s something about reading about living a sober life and then seeing it in action, up close and personal, at meetings and get-togethers with people in recovery. If I really want to live the life that I think I do, I need to see it in action.

I’m a huge sports fan, so I see it play out on TV all the time. A guy knows the playbook really well, but then can’t execute the play or the run or the throw at gametime. That kind of thing requires knowledge and wisdom… and so does my sobriety.

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:

Q: What’s the difference between a recovering alcoholic and an active one?

A: The recovering alcoholic says, “Halfway through the meeting, I passed the basket.” The active alcoholic says, “Half in the basket, I passed the meeting.”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, August 2002, Penny D. from Melbourne, Florida)

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

We recently had to have a tree service company come out and look at the giant tree in our front yard. We were pretty sure that the tree was going to have to be cut down because of all the branches that have been falling in the yard and, frankly, it looked like it was dying.

To our surprise, the estimator came in and said the tree was actually quite healthy. “Somebody loved that tree a lot,” he said.

My wife and I looked at each other like, “Uh, ok, what exactly does that mean?”

He took us out into the front yard and pulled out a little red laser pointer. He shone the light on the bottom of the tree and worked his way up to about 25 feet into the tree, to an open space between the two huge halves of the tree. It splits into two about 10 feet off the ground, then those two halves of the tree go another 100 feet or so into the sky. It looks a little like a humongous wish bone with leaves.

He said, “Look right there, at the wire connecting the two halves.”

We stared up and noticed something we had missed for years—sure enough, there was a heavy-duty wire that looped around the two parts of the tree, like a 30-foot rubber band.

The tree service guy proceeded to explain to us that that sort of wire can be placed around a tree that is splintering so that it can continue to grow separately but never drift too far apart. “It allows the tree to chart its own path but never split to an unmanageable distance,” he said.

I really felt a gut punch in that moment, because I couldn’t help but think about so many relationships in my life—in all of our lives, really. We all move on from high school and move out from our parents’ houses, so we suddenly have distance between family and friends. Then many of us go on to college and make new friends in a new place. Then we move on from there. And on and on and on, for the rest of our lives, getting close and then moving away.

For someone like me, that also includes adding in addiction, which wedges even more distance between people. In my case, I lived in the same freaking house as my wife and kids and still managed to have a lot of distance between us. So it isn’t just geographic distance.

But sobriety provided me with that wire, and I am now responsible for maintaining that distance. I used to worry that by abruptly deciding I had to overhaul my life, that would shoot me off in one direction and I would be headed away from my loved ones. And that fear is real—there were lots of behaviors that I had to clean up, and there were so many people in my life who had adjusted their lives to accommodate and love that version of me.

Realizing that it was okay for me to branch off and still love all those people has been a revelation for me. We all grow in different directions, sobriety or otherwise, and it has to be a significant goal of mine every day to keep us growing in unison, even if we are not growing exactly the same.

A few weeks after that conversation, I was still thinking about it when the tree trimmers arrived. They proceeded to trim off a bunch of branches and reinforce the wire. Since then, I have noticed that the tree seems healthier, losing very few branches after a storm or windy day. And I also can’t help but look up once a week and find that wire because it helps me remember that it’s ok to grow apart from each other as long as it’s not away from each other.

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 closest I ever got to a 4.0 in college was my blood/alcohol level.”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, July 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.

I have been getting asked quite a bit for my thoughts on Tiger Woods, which any sober person can tell you is a common thing when a famous person gets into trouble and drugs and alcohol are involved.

As usual, I would say the same basic thing that I do about all people who might or might not have drug or alcohol issues: I don’t know. I don’t know if anybody else is an addict or alcoholic. I don’t know if they need help. I don’t know if they drink or drug because they were treated like crap as a kid, or if nobody paid attention to them when they were in high school, or any other reason why anybody becomes an addict. Hell, I’m not sure how or why I became an alcoholic. How am I going to assess somebody else’s addiction issues?

OK, now that I am done clearing my throat, a few thoughts:

—I was sad when I heard the news that he had rolled his car and gotten arrested for a DUI. It seems like most of my recovery friends felt the same way, and most of my non-addict friends were more fired up that he continues to drive after multiple accidents related to intoxication. “Why doesn’t he just hire a driver?” is something I heard a lot.

That’s a fair question. Anybody who is rolling cars every few years ought to be getting asked about not driving any more, with or without substances possibly being involved. And yes, Tiger Woods is wealthy enough that he could have 10 cars waiting for him outside any time he goes somewhere, and then he could pick the shiny red car or the silver SUV or the tour bus that he rented out and get a ride home however he wants.

The reason I felt sad, though, is just because I ache when I hear about somebody who might have addiction issues. Again, I say might—I have no idea what his drug and alcohol intake is. But if there is a chance somebody feels like I used to feel every day, my heart hurts a little bit. I definitely transition to the “get a driver, dude!” stage a little later in a case like this. But my first reaction is a pang in my gut about the suffering that someone might be going through.

—Pain is a motherfucker. During his recent arrest, Tiger Woods brought up a crazy amount of medical procedures he has had on his body over the years, and it reminded me of how pain can be a crushing force on people.

When we talk about our paths to addiction, many people talk about past trauma, and rightly so. Other people say their parents were alcoholics, and their parents’ parents were alcoholics, so it’s in their genes. But I always try to mention chronic pain as one key factor in my life—as someone who had multiple amputation procedures on his feet over the years, painkillers and other substances were actually necessary. I, of course, got out of control with them. But they were put in my world by a doctor, not at a rave by a frat guy with a pillbox in his man-purse.

And while I don’t meet a lot of fellow alcoholics and addicts who had all 10 toes amputated, I have met many sober people who have said the biggest hurdle in their recovery was when they had a back surgery or their appendix removed—unmanageable pain can be a very sneaky, dangerous trigger.

—Another question I have been asked this past week: Do you think Tiger Woods picked the right kind of treatment plan? He announced in a very vague statement that he is going overseas to get help, and I didn’t see any direct mention what kind of treatment he was actually seeking.

Long answer short: I have no idea. I’ve always had personal opinions about what works best for someone who wants to get sober, and I have no evidence whatsoever to base that on, and I am almost never right about other peoples’ recovery. It’s a strange part of longterm sobriety, where you see people come in who need rehab but don’t go… then they get sober. Or where you see people who you think are doing everything right, and they can’t make it three months without a relapse. There is no real rhyme or reason to so many peoples’ path.

That said, I made a decision when I went to rehab that I wanted to go to a place that was decent, but not too nice. I didn’t want to be horseback riding on a beach for a month, or doing yoga with baby goats at a mountain resort. I wanted something with a little grime on the chairs so that I could get help but from a place I didn’t want to come back to.

I found the perfect place in New Jersey and joined an intensive outpatient program there. In retrospect, I wish I had just checked myself into the hospital part and been locked away for a month or two. But that’s not what happened, and I have been sober since 2008 with no relapses. So even with my own recovery, I can’t say for sure. What if I had been put in that same hospital’s lockdown facility, hated it and left after four days? Maybe I’m dead right now.

So you never know, even with your own recovery! I certainly don’t know what Tiger Woods should or should not be doing. But I will leave you with this: Even with our most troubled people with addiction issues, I am rooting for them. The world is a better place without people living in active addiction.

(But yeah, maybe get a driver?)

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:

“Now that I’m sober, I no longer wake up in the morning, roll over and introduce myself.”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, June 2002, 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.

When I was a freshman in college, I was just getting started on a drinking problem. I wouldn’t drink every night, but I wanted to. And I also wanted a girlfriend.

I met a fellow freshman who I really liked. She seemed lukewarm on me, but I kept inviting her to parties and she kept coming. At one point, I thought maybe I had worn her down enough to officially be considered boyfriend-girlfriend. And a big part of that was because we shared a mutual love of camping and the outdoors.

Just kidding. I hated the outdoors. I grew up in rural Pennsylvania but I never quite enjoyed nature like so many friends of mine. I didn’t love hunting or fishing, even though I had done quite a bit of both. And I would have rather slept in the laundry room at a Holiday Inn Express than outside in the nicest tent on earth. It just wasn’t for me.

But my potential girlfriend—we’ll call her Debbie—loved hiking. Loved looking at birds and trees and mountains. She practiced building fires and I practiced lighting cigarettes. It wasn’t a good match. And yet I completely pretended that I was Mr. Bass Pro Shops.

I bring this up on an addiction newsletter because I found phoniness to be a telltale sign that I was searching for something that was impossible to attain—I wanted something to fill the void in me, even a potential girlfriend who I had nothing in common with. I had all sorts of dating partners like that in my early days, where I just tried to immediately turn myself into something I wasn’t so that maybe they’d like me. That is dangerous territory for an aspiring alcoholic, because it’s the starter kit for living a life of lies.

In this case, I was trying to date Debbie when a new Lemonheads album came out. The Lemonheads were a great alternative rock band in the 1990s that I always enjoyed, and their new album had a song called “The Outdoor Type.” It was like they were singing the song to me. It was a cover of a song released a few years earlier, about an indoorsman who was pretending to be the outdoor type to date someone.

Let’s just say that freaked me out. I couldn’t believe someone had me pegged like that—the song was the perfect encapsulation of searching so hard for fulfillment from another person that you become a total fake.

I think about it now, at age 48, and how there is a certain amount of phoniness involved in the dating scene, no matter who you are. Everybody wears nicer clothes and makes sure their hair looks ok and they don’t have s**t stuck in their teeth if they are early on in the dating process. That’s pretty normal. But I think I would never dream of pretending to be a camping super-fan just to get somebody to like me any more.

I consider that a gift of sobriety—it took me a long time to figure out who I was, then how to live as that person, not the person that I think somebody else wants me to be. So I don’t think I ever want to go back to pretending that keg stands in the woods is my absolute favorite thing in the world!

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 speaker was going on and on. A man in the fifth row stood up and walked out. As the speaker was winding up, the man returned. After the meeting, the speaker asked the man where he went.

“I went for a haircut,” he said.

“A haircut? Why didn’t you get a haircut before the meeting started?”

The man replied, “I didn’t need a haircut before the meeting started.”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, June 2002, Jay C.)

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 the gym recently for about two hours, and for the first 90 minutes or so, I watched the end of an action movie, then several MMA fights and then a news show, which primarily focused on the war in Iran.

Then I went to the treadmill and climbed on to get in a run. I found myself a little jittery, and was hoping to run off whatever kind of bad energy I was feeling. I put on a TV show on my phone but then I thought, maybe I will run for a bit with no music, no TV, no cage fighting. Maybe the silence would be good for me.

So I did that, and it was fine. Then I glanced at the treadmill screen in front of me, and there was a stock image of a small creek running down through the woods. It was a blurry image, meant to just be the throwaway backdrop picture as you type in the speed and incline of your walk or run.

But I found myself staring at that image and feeling calm. I zoomed in my eyes on the water, and the rocks, and the greenness of the vegetation surrounding it. Next thing you know, I looked up and 10 minutes have gone by and I found myself much more peaceful.

So what is that about, exactly? Well, I don’t know, for sure, but my opinion is that with me, I swallow imagery and sounds all day that are fun and fine and entertaining. But they aren’t very nourishing. They don’t really do much for me other than entertain.

Let me be very clear: I like to be entertained. And I will not be eliminating fun podcasts so that I can listen to the soothing sounds of a babbling brook, and I will not be glueing a waterfall photo on the inside of my eyelids.

But that gym moment did remind me that I will become whatever I consume. If I wake up tomorrow aiming to be a spiritually fit, serene father, husband and neighbor, but then I listen to people scream at each other about the NBA MVP or the top 2028 presidential primary candidates, well, those two things do not add up to serenity. I’ve written in the past about the audio of life, and how our inputs are really never turned off any more—I pour music, podcasts, TV, the news, Instagram reels, whatever, directly into my ears, which then affects my thoughts, which then affect my actions. Those sounds matter.

And I would say the same thing about sights—what I look at all day will impact how I look at the people I care about. That means I need to seek out babbling brooks and quiet as much as I do UFC events and football games… though I am now intrigued by the idea of seeing how I would feel if I could merge having sports happen in the woods…

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:

Hoping to commune with nature, two boozers went on a camping trip. But by nightfall, the mosquitoes were so bad, they retreated into the tent and started drinking. Finally, one poked his head out to see how things were going and saw a swarm of brilliant fireflies.

“We’re done for!” he cried to his buddy. “They’re coming after us with flashlights.”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, May 2002, Chris B. from Columbia, South Carolina)

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 did some alcoholic math the other day, and it had been awhile. But I was reminded of perhaps my favorite slogan about what it means to be an addict: One is too many, and a thousand is never enough.

To summarize, if one is good, you better hide the rest, because I’m coming for it, whatever it is.

In this case, I am trying to lose some weight. My biggest vice is from about 8 pm to midnight. I’ll have a reasonable dinner and be cruising along, then the seal breaks and I absolutely crush some package of chips or cookies. If there are peanut butter cups within 40 miles of me, I will smell them and eat them, too.

Lately, I have been doing pretty well with having two small cookies right after dinner, then two cookies much later, right before I go to bed. I have a little bit of a snack, then I still have something to look forward to before I turn in for the night. If that sounds a little like the way I used to count drinks and pills, well, you’re not wrong.

I was doing quite well with that recently until I opened up the package the other night and found seven cookies left. Hmm, what to do? This is where my masters degree in alcoholic math kicked in. I thought to myself, if I eat two cookies now and two cookies later tonight, that leaves me with three. But three does me no good. What’s the point of three? I need four. If I have three left, I might as well have none, because I need four.

I decided to run some quick calculations. Let’s see… 7-2-2=3… but for tomorrow, that leaves 3-2-2, which equals -1 … yep, okay, I got the answer: I should just eat all 7 cookies. Like, right now.

And that’s what I did. I don’t know what happened to eating several cookies after dinner and then several closer to bedtime. But all seven went right down the hatch. This is exactly what I did with drugs and alcohol. I’d have one beer left sometimes, and think, what’s the point of one beer? I either need 24 of them, or 0. No in-between. I remember having one Vicodin once for like two days as I tried to round up more. I just kept thinking, why bother with one? I needed closer to the 1,000 mentioned in the slogan I said at the beginning.

But that left me in the same spot as I used to be when I was drinking and drugging: A look in the mirror where I wonder, geez, man, do you have no self-control? You just flushed an important goal of yours down the toilet, and what do you have to show for it? What is the real difference between four cookies and seven cookies? Is your self-esteem better? Are you a better husband or dad?

The answer is no! I just wanted the freaking cookies because they are delicious!

The thing that is a little tougher about food boundaries is that I have to eat. I didn’t have to drink 12 beers in two hours, or eat 45 Percocet in a day. In fact, those things were killing me. Cookies won’t kill me, or if they do, it will take awhile. Cookies haven’t almost cost me my job or gotten me arrested for being over the legal limit. With food, I have some wiggle room.

So I don’t need Cookie Rehab, or at least not yet. But hey, save me a seat if Cookie Rehab does exist!

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 called the Al-Anon hotline and said, “My husband just finished off a liter of vodka, passed out, and fell flat on the floor. I can’t wake him. I think he’s dead.”

The Al-Anon on duty tried to reassure her, saying in a calm, soothing voice, “Don’t get excited. First, let’s make sure that he’s really dead.”

There was a half-minute of silence, a gunshot, then the wife’s voice: “Okay, what do I do next?”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, March 2002, Wil H. from Arlington, 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.

I had a recent conversation with someone who was wondering if they might have a drug or alcohol problem. This is a pretty regular occurrence for people in recovery, because I think many people wrestle with whether or not drinking or drugs are doing them any favors or someone they care about.

In this case, we had an awesome hour-long discussion and I explained my situation and how much a life of recovery has been great for me. I mentioned at the end of the call that I probably won’t ever bring the topic up with him again, unless he wants to talk more about it. He was confused by that, and I said, “I try to mind my own business. If you want to go further down the road of recovery, I’m available any time. If you aren’t interested, I’m never going to pester you.”

He seemed genuinely surprised by that. He asked me, “Why not?”

I couldn’t tell if he wanted me to recruit him or what, but I explained that my sobriety is my business, and his is his, if he even chooses recovery. I told him I learned a long time ago that if somebody doesn’t want sobriety, I’m wasting my time trying to convince them. And I told him that that was certainly the case with me—nobody could have convinced me to try 12-step recovery until I was ready.

My friend seemed to understand that. But I also got the sense that he wanted to be convinced, or at least talked into trying sobriety for awhile. I gently just reiterated that I don’t have to bring in new members or anything to keep my sobriety membership card, and that I’m there for him any time he reaches out.

It was a good conversation. But I could tell my MYOB (mind your own business) philosophy was a little confusing to him. So we talked about it some more later, and I just told him that when I mind my own business, I tend to get in a lot less trouble than when I am trying to fix others. That goes for sober people. That goes for work colleagues. That goes for bad drivers on the road. That goes for pretty much everybody and everything.

But I will say that I have to try to balance that MYOB idea with striving to be a warm person. I don’t ever want to turn a cold shoulder to anybody, or even give off that vibe. It’s really a delicate dance to have firm boundaries and also be a welcoming person. I’m not sure I always get that completely right, because it’s a pretty mirky line to draw. I want to be available for help without over investing in someone’s life who doesn’t need that from me.

Now that I think about it some more, it’s so funny that BYOB was such a part of my life for 30 years, and now I’m trying to hype up the idea of MYOB when it comes to not drinking.

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: “One reason I don’t drink anymore is that I want to know when I am having a good time.”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, March 2002, Dick L. from New Westminster, British Columbia)

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 recently where the conversation drifted toward deep analysis of the word “promptly” in the 10th Step. As a reminder, the 10th Step says, “Continued to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.”

To me, that means that you take a look at your day, figure out if you owe any amends, then you take care of cleaning up your role in whatever mess you participated in. Pretty basic stuff.

At that meeting, my mind drifted toward the “promptly” part because a guy shared a comparison that had been given to him by a sober friend. His friend had told him that the “promptly” part is a little bit like eating a bowl of oatmeal and leaving it in the sink. If you fill it up with water and rinse it out, you probably have no issue. But if you let that oatmeal dry for eight hours and then try to wash it, you’re dealing with a different thing.

I nodded my head because the comparison is obvious—if I am out of line about something and I wait five years to correct it, that is not good. Whatever the original issue was, now it is dry oatmeal stuck to the side of a bowl. So that’s where the promptly comes in.

But I also have been told over the years that “promptly” doesn’t have to mean “instantly.” There is a big difference. If you say something mean to your spouse at 10 am, is it better to blurt out an apology at 10:05? Or am I better off working through it and making sure I do it right at 11 am or 1 pm?

I think there are situations where the right answer could be either option—I’ve definitely fired off a shitty comment and then immediately realized it was unacceptable and I’ve said that right away, and that was the right thing to do. But I have also seen the benefit of calling up a sober friend, going to a meeting and praying for a few minutes, then doing an apology the right way.

I find that sometimes my immediate apologies are over-the-top in two different ways. One is that I go overboard and act like I just stole their puppy and I backtrack off what my point might have been. By that, I mean, if I think it is a terrible idea for one of my kids to spend $300 on a sweatshirt at Lululemon and I say a snippy thing that I regret, I will immediately want to say, “I am sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. Here is $300 and please let me drive you to Lululemon.” Then I get pissy about it later because I realize I wasn’t trying to clean up a mess that I made with any sort of integrity—I just didn’t want her to be mad at me. That is some people-pleasing b******t by doing an instant apology.

The other way I mess up instant apologies is by saying, “I’m sorry I said that, but you were being a jerk.” That’s not an apology! That’s justification. Maybe I need to stand my ground on something principled but still apologize for a bad behavior, but I rarely am able to spiritually respond five seconds into a disagreement with that level of serenity. It takes some time to get that right.

So the oatmeal analogy is so good—it doesn’t even require you to completely wash out the bowl! You rinse it and loosen up the gunk still in the bowl, then you wash it a little later. It’s actually perfect, isn’t it?

I will be thinking about that bowl of oatmeal a lot going forward, and I bet that is a phrase I end up saying to people in my sober life in the next few years. I will leave out one key part of that phrase, though—I have never eaten a bowl of oatmeal in my life, and don’t plan to! So I don’t like oatmeal… but I love that phrase!

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: “My drinking could be divided into three stages: impulsive, compulsive, and repulsive.”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, February 2002, Gary from St. Catherine’s, Ontario)

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.

There is a great passage at the end of the first 164 pages of the Big Book where the authors offer some encouraging words about moving forward as a sober person, including the iconic line “trudging the road of happy destiny.”

But there was another line from that last page that jumped out at me recently: “The answers will come, if your own house is in order.”

A lot of the sentences before and after that line are about trusting a higher power and having faith that this too shall pass when life gets lifey. So that line about when the answers will appear during what can be a tricky world really stood out to me, because of the emphasis on my house being in order.

At the time, I had a few situations in my life that were perplexing, and I found myself praying and reaching out to the universe to try to figure out what to do. When I read that line, I realized that I wasn’t ready for an answer to arrive, because my house wasn’t in order.

I had missed quite a few meetings and seen my sober calls dwindle a bit. So my spiritual gas tank was running at about a quarter tank, which is enough to live and be happy for me, but not enough to navigate complicated people or decisions. Sure enough, the minute I tidied up my house a bit by getting more spiritually fit, I felt like the answers to these complex decisions started to get a little more focused.

It reminded me a little bit about how some basketball players thrive in pressure situations by first taking some deep breaths and clearing their heads. Why do they need to do that? They’ve shot a million free throws in their lives. They have undoubtedly played lots of close games. They could quite literally do the shooting motion in their sleeps.

Well, I think that line probably has something to do with it. It’s the idea that my house must be in order for the answers to come. In their case, it’s a shot to win a basketball game. In my life, it’s how to figure out what a good parent is, how to pay tens of thousands of dollars for college and how to be optimistic about not getting cancer again. So it’s basically the same thing, huh?

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 was driving home from a conference when she saw an old acquaintance, obviously down on her luck, thumbing for a ride. So the woman stopped the car, and the hitchhiker got in, smelling of gin.

After they’d been riding a mile or so, the rummy noticed a brown bag on the front seat. “What’s in the bag?” she asked.

“It’s a bottle of wine. I got it for my husband,” the driver replied.

The drinker fell silent for a minute and then said, “Good trade.”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, February 2002, Frank C. from Omaha, Nebraska)

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 talking to someone recently who was in the middle of a long, busy work day, and I said, “Damn, I hope you have a big cup of coffee waiting for you later this afternoon!”

She said that she no longer drank caffeine, and I applauded her for that—I kind of wish I had no caffeine in my life but also don’t really want to get anywhere near that idea in real life. I love a good cup of coffee or Diet Mountain Dew to keep me moving on a slow afternoon.

Then she said something that made my head almost spin off my body. She said, “Once in a while, on a day like this, I will reward myself with a cup of decaf.”

I said, “What do you mean?”

She said, “Well, I’ll just have one cup of decaf coffee as a pick-me-up.”

I just stared at her, completely perplexed.

I said, “But…”

She understood what I meant, that I didn’t get how that was a reward and a pick-me-up. She explained that she liked the taste of coffee more so than the caffeine, so she liked to treat herself to a cup of decaf on days where she is struggling.

I nodded my head and continued in the conversation, but in the back of my head, I kept saying, “What the hell? Who drinks coffee for the taste? What person in the history of the world would ever drink coffee without caffeine in it?”

Within 30 seconds, I remembered that I am a hardcore addict who never understood how anybody could leave half a bottle of beer, or three painkillers in the cabinet, or extinguish a half-smoked cigarette. Of course I thought about the effect of something before the taste of it.

Looking back, I’m not sure I have ever had a nonalcoholic beer, or caffeine-free Coke, or anything else that didn’t have the good stuff in there. So it is—and probably always will be—a complete foreign concept to just enjoy the taste of something, or to see it as a reward without it having a chemical payoff in there.

It’s funny how this idea makes total logical sense on the surface—my friend liked coffee and didn’t want caffeine any more. That’s perfectly reasonable, right? And yet I still cannot wrap my brain completely around the idea of a decaf coffee. I feel like if I was really thirsty and somebody handed me a cup of decaf coffee, I think I would have a hard time getting excited about drinking it.

So for now, you can have your unleaded coffee—I still want the diesel fuel!

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

A drunk is leaving a well-stocked lake carrying two buckets of fish and an empty whiskey bottle when the game warden stops him.

“Do you have a license to fish here?” the warden asks.

“No, sir,” the man replies, “these are my pet fish.”

“Pet fish?” the warden exclaims.

“Yes, sir,” the fellow explains. “Every night I take these fish down to the lake and let them swim around for awhile. Then I whistle and they jump back into their buckets, and I take ‘em home.”

“That’s a bunch of hooey!” says the warden. “Fish can’t do that!”

The guy looks at the game warden for a second and says, “Here, I’ll show you.”

“Okay,” says the warden, “I’ve got to see this.”

So they walk back to the edge of the lake, and the man pours the fish into the water. Then he stands back and waits. Several minutes go by, and the warden gets impatient. “Well?” he asks.

“Well what?” replies the drunk.

“When are you going to call them back?” the warden demands.

“Call who back?” asks the man.

“The fish!” says the warden.

“What fish?” says the drunk.

(Credit: AA Grapevine, January 2002, Gini L. from McMinnville, Oregon)

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 talking to a friend recently who has a few years sober, and he’s about 60 years old. He is a die-hard Patriots fan, so he spent January in a very excited mood. I didn’t probe too deep because I thought this was just a sports fan getting amped up about a playoff run by a team that has had about as much success as any pro sports team has had in the past 50 years.

But eventually he dropped a truth bomb on me: In his lifetime, the Patriots had gone to 11 Super Bowls and won six of them. This was going to be the 12th… but the first one he would ever experience as a sober person.

I had to pause for a moment and work through the math. The Patriots got to the 1986 Super Bowl and got crushed by the Bears. They lost another one in the 1990s. Then in the 2000s, the team went on an incredible run where Tom Brady and Bill Belichick were a nonstop playoff presence, often making it deep into the playoffs. That, of course, included six Super Bowl wins. It had been a dynasty that is almost impossible to achieve, and my friend had missed pretty much all of it.

OK, that’s a bit of an exaggeration. He was there, technically, but not really enjoying any part of it because life was miserable every day—it’s hard to get revved up about sports if you think you might die every day because of your addictions. I have a similar experience with some of my favorite sports teams having success during my active addiction days—I was present (sort of) and remember them. But there was no actual joy. It’s hard to feel joy if you are also feeling pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization every day.

It was a great reminder about what addiction does—it takes away entire chapters, not pages, from the books of our lives. I have to stay sober today because if I don’t, I have no idea when I get sober again, or if I even am able to. I am not someone who would have one weekend bender and stop, and based on my experience with people who have relapsed, I am not alone. I would disappear for months, or more likely, years.

So I ended up rooting for the Patriots on Sunday because I wanted my friend to actually experience a Super Bowl win despite being alive for many of them. It didn’t work out for the Patriots, obviously, but the future looks bright for that team—and my friend.

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.

I went to the gym over the weekend, and the second I walked through the front door, something was off. I go to a very big gym, so there are always people in there moving around. On this day, the people seemed weird and robotic. The lighting seemed more bright. The sound of the treadmills was different.

Then I realized what the problem was: There was no music playing. And the sound coming-out of the speaker system was a low-level bzzzzzz that sounded the hum of an old high school gym’s lighting setup—almost like a medical lab.

I paused for a moment because I realized nothing was actually different except for that sound. The people were the same. The machines were all moving and sounding the same. It’s that that loud, unexpected background noise was flooding into my ears and polluting my whole interpretation of the moment.

That got me thinking back to a recent podcast I was listening to, where the hosts were chitchatting about where their best ideas come from—as in, did they find themselves stumbling upon good ideas in the shower? On walks? When they first wake up in the morning?

One of the hosts then said that he felt like he had less good ideas these days because he found himself constantly looking or listening to something at all times. So he said he puts music on when he jumps in the shower, and he listens to podcasts on walks, and he scrolls on his phone when he lays down at night and when he first wakes up in the morning. Then he said, “I think my output is worse because my input never stops.”

I really had to think about that, because I too enjoy the fact that I almost never am left completely alone with myself. I listen to podcasts, watch TV shows on my phone and scan social media during any break in life. I think it is very cool that in 2026, if you’re sitting in a doctor’s office or at the DMV waiting area, you can entertain yourself and not have to stare off into space getting aggravated that your day is stalled out.

However, the gym scenario and that podcast made me think about the flip side to it, which is that my output is affected by my input. That certainly goes for letting my mind wander and come up with work ideas, or remembering that someone’s birthday is coming up, or a place where I might have left something that has been missing. If I am watching videos of guys blasting airhorns as people tee off at snooty golf courses—a common occurrence, I will admit—there is no space for me to think about how I should tell my wife I was grateful for that dinner she made, or that I haven’t checked in with a work colleague in awhile.

But even more than that, I realize that constant entertainment also deeply impacts my mood and outlook on life. If a terrible world event is happening and I doomscroll about it for the afternoon, you can imagine what it does to my brain. If I go to the gym and blast AC/DC in between football podcasts, I’m enjoying myself but I am also not exactly focused on serenity and being of service to others.

Now, I’m not going to pretend that I am only going to listen to 12-step speaker tapes or self-help books while I am running on the treadmill or laying down for the night. Far from it. But I am going to try to leave space for my brain to just recharge and not be distracted more going forward… but for old time’s sake, here is a link to AC/DC’s “Back in Black” on YouTube. Go ahead and crank that s**t!

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:

Desperate, a drunk goes into her doctor’s office and pleads, “Doctor, doctor, you’ve got to help me! I can’t keep my hands from shaking.”

“How much do you drink?” asks the doctor.

“Not much at all,” she answers. “I spill most of it.”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, December 2001, 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.

I had a very interesting conversation a few years ago with someone in sobriety who was extremely aggravated about the behavior of some other people at meetings. He said a guy had started coming to a specific meeting with a guitar, and he would sometimes raise his hand to share. Then he would say a few words before telling everybody he wanted to sing a song for them.

I had to laugh, because I’ve never seen that or heard about something like that. And I will admit, if the moment presented itself, I’d probably tell the guy there’s a time and place for playing music, and meetings aren’t it.

It got me thinking about a bad tendency of mine, which has gotten better over the years but still exists: I kinda want to be the sheriff of Sobrietyville. I should be keeping an eye on how people park, how they share, whether they’re on their phone too much, whether their share is enough about the topic, etc.

I’ve run into trouble in the past with this concept of policing recovery meetings. My worst one was when I knew a guy was celebrating his anniversary before his actual anniversary, which is a no-no in my head. Recovery is a one-day-at-a-time thing, and celebrating a year sober when you have 11 months and 12 days is different than having one year. I think most sober people would agree with that.

The guy was pissed, and he yelled at me for not minding my own business. When I shared that anecdote with other sober people, they agreed—with him. They told me to butt out, that I was playing the director role that is discussed various places in sober literature. I need to be an actor who plays his part to the best of his ability, and that’s it. No stage-managing.

See, nobody voted me deputy lieutenant of the sobriety monitoring division. Nobody ever even thought about putting me in that position, or creating that position in any way for anybody.

The one caveat to that is that I do think there are egregious behaviors that the principles of my recovery program require me to speak up about. The biggest one is inappropriate romantic behavior at meetings. I’ve seen it a few times and it hasn’t only been men… but it’s usually dudes hitting on people that they shouldn’t. We even have a term for that—13th stepping. In that case, I have always pulled the guy aside and said, “Hey man, you really think you should be getting that young woman’s phone number? She has 15 days sober and you have 3 years.” Luckily, that has seemed to be enough.

The other big one—which I have not seen first-hand—is any kind of safety violation, physical confrontation, or threatening behavior. That’s unacceptable, too, in my opinion. I feel like every person who wants to get sober deserves to have a place to come where they won’t get harassed or threatened.

After that, it’s a really tough call. I have had issues with cross talk at meetings, where I thought people were inappropriately directly addressing others at a meeting. In those cases, I usually bite my tongue and then cave in and say something to the person. I once pushed hard at business meetings for a specific meeting that we needed to add a strong anti-crosstalk statement, and we did add it.

Did people actually follow that request that we added? Not really. That meeting was a little later at night, and nobody seemed to mind. At the end of the day, I had to learn that every meeting is autonomous. If a meeting’s members wants to be rowdier than I personally like, who I am to be reprimanding people? I’ll never forget going to a meeting in Virginia once at 9 pm on a Saturday night and the chairperson introduced the topic as page 69 from the Big Book, which happens to talk openly about sex.

He proceeded to make multiple wisecracks that were pretty sexually suggestive and gross, and my eyes bulged out of my head. It’s one thing if some newcomer wilds out and goes rogue about sex at a meeting. But the chairperson, who happened to be celebrating 10 years sober? Not cool, in my book.

I didn’t say anything but I must have had a pretty nasty look on my face because an older woman pulled me aside afterward. She said, “It was great to have you at this meeting. I wanted to just let you know that this is a meeting that we have voted to keep in this spot on Saturday nights, with this vibe, because that’s what we wanted to provide to sober people. Not all meetings are like this. But as you could see, we have a lot of younger people come in, and we wanted an environment that is a little more PG-13.”

I smiled and nodded my head, and I left with a warm feeling in my stomach. At the end of the day, I don’t have to go to meetings more than once if I don’t want to. And if people want to act like drunken rugby players talking about sex, or play a sweet guitar melody for their share, if that’s what a group wants, who am I to jump in with my sheriff’s hat on?

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 didn’t know I was sick until I started getting better.”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, November 2001, Kari B. from Brooklyn, 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.

I had a recent work experience where I had to approach people and ask if I could talk to them for a few minutes. Many said yes. Some said no, thank you. And some told me to get lost. For those people, I will have a white-hot burning resentment that will burn within me for the rest of my life.

Wow, rejection hurts, doesn’t it? I don’t experience much of it these days. I’ve been with my wife for 28 years, so I haven’t had the pleasure of approaching someone and asking them out and having them tell you that they have no interest in you, which I think is probably the toughest kind of rejection. I certainly remember the dating scene and what it felt like to get dumped or ghosted by someone. But most of that was 30 years ago, so the agony of those moments definitely has worn off a bit.

I certainly pitch things at work and get declined on a regular basis. I wouldn’t say it’s fun but it never seems to cut my guts out. I think professional rejection is often pretty gentle—most workplaces require rejection to sound more like, “Let’s hold off on that for now” rather than “You suck and so does this idea.”

When those people blew me off the other day, I think I handled it pretty well. I slinked off and looked around to see if anybody else noticed. That seems to be a crucial part of how much I let rejection bother me: Did anybody else see my shame and humiliation as it happened? WHAT WILL THEY THINK OF ME?!?!?!

But I did realize two things. One is that I don’t think I have the spine to ever get into sales—I’d take every rejection as a soul-crusher. The second is, I don’t think I would handle dating or getting dumped very well, either.

I ended up spending some time in deep thought about rejection. Why does it hurt so much? Think about it for a second. In theory, if you live a good life and love your family and can afford food and heat for your house and try to always do the next right thing… you’re okay, right? Why would someone blowing you off or telling you that you have food in your teeth send you reeling for the rest of the day? When I’m in the right place, my ego is the exact size it should be—not too small, not too big, and if you tell me I am a bad driver, I will smile and go about my day. It doesn’t tear my heart out.

I think that’s where humility comes in. I can’t be humiliated if I have humility. But humility can be hard to drum up, or at least hold onto. I tend to drift to either thinking I am extremely important and everybody is paying attention to me… or to, I suck and nothing matters. Humility is knowing that you are neither of those things. I’m just another bozo on the bus, as we say in recovery.

So how do you get humility and keep it? I don’t know if an exact formula exists. I will say that I think you want to surround yourself with people and situations that never allow you to veer off to any extreme. I have recovery people in my life who I know would never let me get away with thinking too much of myself, and they would never let me drop to a place where I was sulking too much.

I do think one thing I need to always remember is that humility cannot be bought on Amazon or kept forever—it’s something I need to chase every day like I chased drugs and alcohol.

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:

Two men walked into a bar.

You’d think the second one would have swerved.

(Credit: AA Grapevine, November 2001, Fritzi J. from Conyers, Georgia)

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.

There is a famous professor named Scott Galloway who was asked what advice he gives to young people as they go out into the world. That advice, to boil it down to one sentence, is, “Get the easy stuff right.”

He goes on to define “getting the easy stuff right” as making sure you get the basics right as you start a life and a career. As in, show up on time. Have good manners. Wear the right clothes. Shower and shave as needed. Listen more than you talk.

On one hand, that sounds like incredibly obvious stuff to tell someone. But on the other hand, how often do most of us mess that up? I’d say it’s a considerable amount, right?

I thought of that recently because somebody who is not an addict asked me what it takes to get sober. The answer is, of course, complicated and impossible to pinpoint, in my opinion—I think the formula for every person is different.

But I would say that getting the sober basics right is a really good place to start. I’m a 12-step person, so my suggestions are going to revolve a lot around that method of recovery.

Go to a lot of meetings (90 meetings in 90 days is the most common recommendation), and go back to ones you like. Get a sponsor, plus multiple other people that you talk to at least once a week outside of meetings. Take service commitments when possible, and try to anchor down with a meeting or two, where you become a regular.

I could add 25 more suggestions but I’ll leave it at that. I think that professor’s broader point is to take care of the easy stuff so that leaves room for the tougher things later, some of which are out of our control. That’s probably the case for sobriety, too. I obviously think working the steps is an awesome part of growth, and sifting through financial insecurities and a sex inventory are very beneficial, too. But I do think getting the easy stuff right opens the door for me to get into the tougher, graduate student-level sobriety stuff. There are lots of times where I have a very good week, and it’s mostly just because I got to a bunch of meetings, spent lots of time with recovery people, and I did spiritual things every day like praying and meditating.

It reminds me of hearing a football player once address a question about the evolution of football, and how high-powered offenses and brilliant schematics have changed the game. He didn’t disagree with that general idea. But he also said, “At the end of the day, don’t forget that the team that wins is usually just the one that blocks and tackles the best. All the other stuff is nice and sometimes can make a big difference. But if we block better and tackle better, we’re probably going to win almost 100 percent of the time.”

I think about that sometimes, especially during football season. Block. Tackle. Rinse and repeat. That’s a good way to think about sobriety, too!

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:

Several years ago, my wife and I took a vacation in Las Vegas. Sandy, our 65-pound boxer, came along. The motel allowed pets, and everything went smoothly until the manager asked us to take the dog out in the afternoon so the maids could clean our room.

My wife had made the plans to go shopping, and I wanted to make a meeting. But the temperature was in the mid-90s, and we couldn’t leave Sandy in the car. So I got the number for the local AA clubhouse, called, and explained the situation. “Could I bring my boxer to the meeting with me?” I asked.

The man who answered the phone was silent for several seconds. “Sure,” he finally responded, “as long as she doesn’t talk more than a few minutes when it’s her turn.”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, October 2001, Pat O. from Indiana, Florida)

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

I had just started college when the movie Jerry Maguire came out. I loved everything about it. It was about a sports agent representing a football player. It was about a compassionate, empathetic guy trying to fight a system that can be cold and heartless and focused entirely on money. And last but not least, it had a beautiful love story.

But there is one quote that has stuck with me to this day, and I’ve been thinking about it lately because it is an enormous problem for me. I’m not talking about “Show me the money!” either.

I’m talking about “You complete me.” It’s mentioned earlier in the movie off-handedly as something that two deaf people sign to one another in an elevator. But it becomes the entire center of the movie toward the end, when Jerry realizes that Renee Zellweger’s character, Dorothy, is actually the love of his life. He ultimately says, “You complete me,” to her, and she ends the conversation by saying, “You had me at hello.”

For some people, that is probably just a lovely quote and a good way to summarize a perfectly fine romantic comedy. But for me, I realized that the message of that movie really hit me wrong, at the wrong time of my life, because it set an expectation about what a romantic partner could do for me.

Again, let me emphasize that this is only related to me—I have no opinion on the way other people choose to love each other. I just know that that quote lands with me in a way that suggests if I feel like something is missing, maybe a girlfriend will take care of it.

I don’t want to blame all of my romantic struggles early in life on a movie. But I was impressionable, and this movie came along at a time when I really was heartbroken at my inability to have the kind of relationship I wanted. I, of course, was the issue. I was a heavy, obnoxious partier who didn’t have much trouble speaking with women or getting first dates. I just didn’t get a lot of second dates because I was pretty awful at the whole dating scene. I definitely had an issue with falling in love in 20 minutes, which I attribute a little bit to my addictive personality. Guess what? People don’t like you practically proposing to them before they know your last name.

Looking back, I think I walked around a lot looking for something to complete me. Alcohol obviously stepped forward as something I tried. Same with drugs. Romance is on that list, too. I remember wondering why I felt like an incomplete puzzle all the time—maybe a girlfriend would be that last piece to complete the puzzle, like in Jerry Maguire!

I guess there is a context in which “You complete me” could be a positive phrase in my life. It’d have to be that I have tremendous spiritual fitness, and that I am indeed missing one small piece from the puzzle. But I do think it is a dangerous concept for me, as someone who has often felt like something is missing, to think that YOU will be the answer. Those expectations are wacky and too heavy to put on a human being, in my opinion, and it’s inevitable that a person fails to complete another person. I just don’t work that way. There’s no new neighbor, or girlfriend, or boss, that is going to fix me. That’s an inside job, and I have to do the work to feel self-worth so that there is reasonable space for that last piece of the puzzle. When I do that, my ability to be a solid romantic partner, with realistic expectations for what another person can do for me.

When I watch Jerry Maguire now, I get this sinking feeling toward the end, because I don’t know that many relationships can survive when someone is a total mess trying to figure out their life, and then they just go back to an ex-girlfriend and say, “You complete me.” It makes for a lovely Hollywood script, but I can’t imagine that doesn’t end up in divorce court three years later, where both people, ironically, will end up saying, “Show me the money.”

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: “Alcoholics are the only people I know who need a pole vault to get over an anthill.”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, October 2001, Chuck I.)

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.

How long does it take for you to get mad?

I have a friend who recently had a road rage incident. He just blew his stack and almost got into a physical altercation on the side of the road. There was no pause or contemplation of whether being that mad was worth it. He just lost it. The cops showed up and broke things up. But it made me think about how long my fuse is.

I would say my anger can come in just a few seconds. I can get to that emotion almost immediately—if my emotions were on a shelf, anger would be front and center.

I wish that weren’t the case. But I will say that the longer I have been sober, the more that anger has been pushed a little farther back. That’s progress. And I would also say that rage is far out of reach for me—I might get a little spicy without much effort, but it’s gotten pretty difficult for me to be in a rage. Mild irritation is more available than I would like, but I will take that over wanting to throttle people in a millisecond. So that’s a good thing, and something I will continue to work on.

I heard somebody say recently at a meeting that he tries to make anger expensive and kindness cheap. He says he wants warmth to come easily, and resentment to be hard to buy. He admitted that it’s often the other way around—resentment is available for a penny, and kindness is much harder to buy. He said he wants to not have easy access to anger, and instead have love and tolerance constantly jingling in his pocket as loose change.

Man, I find myself as the opposite on a lot of days, and having constant mild frustration is itself quite frustrating. I keep asking myself, Why can’t I just naturally be all smiles? Why do I need to put in hours of work every day to be the version of me that I like? God, let me roll out of bed as a bundle of positive energy!

The more I thought about it, though, the more I realized that I need to accept that kindness isn’t available at the Dollar Store for me. I have to earn it, and that’s ok. Like so many other things about alcoholism, I need to just accept that I have a disease that requires daily treatment. When I had cancer last year, I didn’t like going to chemotherapy… but I never tried to get out of it. I had to do it. End of story. There was no choice.

So that means in my little metaphor of kindness being cheap and anger being harder to buy, that simply means I need to invest some money in up front to reduce the cost, then cash it in for inexpensive love and kindness.

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 signs you might be an alcoholic:

--1: The convenience store clerk asks why you have grass on your back.

--2: You keep the dry-wall repair guy on retainer.

--3: You believe that you’re receiving the equivalent of a college education watching Court TV.

(Credit: AA Grapevine, October 2001, Tom L. from Orlando, Florida)

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

My oldest daughter was talking to my wife and I the other day, and she mentioned how strange it is that we don’t have our location services turned on for each other. As in, we only know where the other will be based on what that person tells us.

Apparently, for my kids’ generation, it makes complete sense to know where loved ones and friends are at all times. I hear my one daughter checking on the other and saying stuff like, “Oh, she just left Target. She should be home in about five minutes.” My wife always knows where my two older daughters are based on their phones, so it’s not like either one of us is a total privacy prude.

On a certain level, it makes sense for a spouse to know where the other is. And, as my daughter said, what are you hiding?

The truth is, I’m not hiding anything. I have some old-school notions about privacy, and I don’t see the need to have GPS tracking my wife or me. I certainly understand a parent following along with a younger kid to know what they are up to. But for the most part, with any other adult, I want to have the kind of relationship where I have faith in what you say to me, and I want you to have that faith in me, too.

Let me back up to the privacy thing for a second… I am pretty adamant about reasonable levels of privacy. I just don’t love the creep of technology into our lives and how inescapable it can feel—I always ask myself, do I own a phone or does a phone own me? Adding in a layer where my phone is broadcasting my whereabouts just feels unnecessary to me. For me, it’s about boundaries. But to each their own.

Again, I have zero to hide—I live a boring sober life these days. I can’t think of a time in years, maybe a decade, where I didn’t go where I said I was going to go. Now, if I had a relationship where I worried about my spouse’s behavior or they worried about mine, that’s totally different, and I also don’t think I am beyond that. Hell, the reason I am writing this is because if I had an iPhone during my active addiction days, I can almost guarantee my wife would have wanted to know my whereabouts, because I lied almost every day about what I was up to.

I don’t live like that any more, and I had a very proud moment when my wife said to my daughter, “I don’t need Dad to have his location turned on.” I honestly was a little surprised—if she had brought up that she would rather know where I am, I’d probably do that because, again, I have nothing to hide. But instead, she said she didn’t care, and I had to pat myself on the pack a bit because that’s 17 years of telling the truth. She doesn’t need a tracker on my ass any more, and that’s pretty cool.

Now don’t get me started on how often I am tracking a package that is apparently lost in the mail and not arriving by Christmas 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 day a skid-row drunk collapses on the street and a large crowd gathers around him. They all try to be helpful.

“Give him a drink of whiskey,” says one lady.

“Stand back and give him some air,” a man shouts.

“Give him the whiskey,” the lady insists.

“Call an ambulance!” someone yells.

Suddenly the drunk sits up and hollers, “For Pete’s sake, shut up and listen to the lady!”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, October 2001, Dick L. from New Westminster, British Columbia)

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 have a spot on my couch that is my spot. Let me just say that again: IT IS MY SPOT.

The couch is gigantic and could comfortably fit five people, with room for about eight if you really wanted to squish in there. So the corner that I occupy for long stretches of time is only one small corner.

And yet, these people that live at my house—who you might refer to as my family—insist on sitting there sometimes. How dare they, right?

I came back the other day and my 20-year-old was home from college. She was camped out in that spot, and I asked her to move. She said she would in a few minutes.

A few minutes went by and I asked again. Now I could see that she was digging in. “In a few minutes, I said,” she told me.

“It’s been a few minutes,” I said.

“Well, it’s our family couch, not your couch,” she said.

I walked out of the room. This was such outrageous behavior.

Then I remembered one of my favorite passages from the book Living Sober, where the authors unpack what anger and resentments really are. They came up with a list of 16 descriptions of forms of anger other than just flat-out being pissed off.

The list is: intolerance, contempt, envy, hatred, snobbishness, rigidity, cynicism, discontent, tension, sarcasm, self-pity, malice, distrust, anxiety, suspicion and jealousy.

That is such a provocative list to me. Who thinks they are angry when they’re being sarcastic and having a good laugh? Who thinks of snobby s**t-talking as anger?

Rigidity is the most intriguing to me, because I think lots of people would say they are not rigid. But I also think most people have significant moments of rigidity, even though they don’t call themselves rigid people. I certainly do, as evidenced by my couch incident. I also think that I sometimes struggle with timing on things—if we decide to go to dinner at 6 pm at a restaurant a half hour away, I am breathing out of my mouth at 5:31 when all of my kids are wandering around whining that they can’t find their water bottle.

I also think most of us—alcoholics and normies—have a hard time managing work projects, a personal budget, a birthday party, whatever, without thinking everything should be done as we believe it should be done. I think I often convince myself that because I am running the show, the show should only be run the way that I think it should be run. That’s rigidity, and that’s anger. Think about how pissed you usually get when something isn’t done the way you wanted it to be done.

The ultimate nightmare rigidity scenario is when you dig in, and the other people digs in, too. That is rigidity butting up against more rigidity, and guess what? It’s usually two cinderblocks smashing into each other.

That was certainly the case with my daughter. Neither one of us wanted to budge on our couch demand until I ultimately decided to take a few deep breaths and walk away. Deep breaths are big for me—sometimes I visualize my aggravation as a knot that is caught in my chest, and I picture me just blasting it out of my body through my lungs. It doesn’t always get rid of the irritation completely. But it makes it a more manageable blob.

I went upstairs and watched a few minutes of football. When I came down to the living room, she was sitting in the kitchen. I knew she wasn’t sitting there because she wanted to; she moved because she was ultimately giving me back the spot. I also knew she wasn’t going to say, “Sorry I snapped at you. Please have your spot back.”

And I certainly wasn’t going to say, “Sorry for overreacting about one small area of our large couch. I love you and am so glad you’re home from college.”

What do you think I am, spiritually fit?!?!?!?!

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.

When I was drinking and drugging, I started waking up to a brutal question from my wife: “Do you remember what happened last night?”

Sometimes the answer was no, and that was terrifying. Sometimes the answer was yes, but I didn’t know how I was going to weasel out of whatever I could remember about the drunken buffoonery from the night before.

I wasn’t a big blackout drinker or drug addict. But I had some, so I would guess that I was asked that question about 20 times total in my decade of overindulgence. Each of the 20 was a disaster, and I never had a single good answer to that question. My wife never said, “You did all of the dishes and made a beautiful flower arrangement. Thank you!” It was always something I was glad I didn’t remember.

So this past weekend, I woke up on Sunday morning and my wife said, “Do you remember what happened in the middle of the night?”

My stomach plummeted because that question is so associated with alcoholism for me. I didn’t say anything for a second, then just said, “Uh, no. What happened?”

Then she said something equally terrifying.

“You don’t remember yelling somebody’s name four times?”

Oh my god. I was ready to drive to the airport and a one-way ticket to fly into the sun. I had no idea where this was going.

Then she said, “Who is Bill? You kept yelling, ‘Bill!’”

Whew. OK, I can work with that, I thought.

The truth is, I don’t know who Bill would be. Bill Belichick? I have a family friend named Bill, but I’m not sure why I would have been dreaming of him. Buffalo Bill, the killer in Silence of the Lambs?

I had no answer for what she was asking, and she ultimately just shrugged and laughed and we moved on.

I kept thinking about the whole thing for awhile because it’s a pretty funny story. A few days later, I am still laughing about it, and I ended up feeling two big things:

One is, I am grateful that I don’t blackout and do crazy s**t that requires an explanation the next day.

And two, I’m going to tell myself that the person named Bill that I yell about in the middle of the night is Bill Wilson, one of the godfathers of recovery. I’m going to assume that I love sobriety so much that I just scream about it all night!

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:

Asked by her third-grade teacher to spell the word “straight,” Susie, the daughter of an alcoholic, stood up proudly and said, “S-t-r-a-i-g-h-t.”

“Very good, Susie,” said her teacher. “Now, can you tell us what it means?”

“No ice,” Susie answered.

(Credit: AA Grapevine, August 2001, Kevin O. from Hastings, Nebraska)

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 watch a lot of UFC fights, and there is a moment before every fight where both fighters walk to the cage. It is a wild walk—there’s music blaring, and sometimes 20,000 people are screaming for a guy as he or she walks into a cage where they will try to absolutely destroy another human being.

I still remember some of the conflicting emotions that I used to feel as a wrestler running out onto the mat through a tunnel of teammates and coaches yelling and screaming and slapping me to get me wound up. It was exhilarating, terrifying, joyous, a little dangerous and very brotherly.

I was struck by that the past two weekends when I watched fights. A fighter would come to the cage with an entourage of their closest friends and family, men and women who sweated, bled and cried with these fighters as they trained for months for this moment. And now they were going to go into the cage, then somebody would lock the door and they would go to battle against another person with their own crew standing outside the cage.

They always hug. No high fives. No chest bumps. Hugs. There’s a reason why they always hug their people before they go into the cage, and it’s because they all knew what it took to get there and also how daunting the thing could be that they were about to do. There’s real danger when it comes to that kind of violence.

I’m writing about this on a sober blog because I was in the grocery store recently and saw a sober guy who I hadn’t seen in a year, maybe more. In fact, I couldn’t even remember his name, just that he went to some of the same meetings as me. I don’t have his number, don’t know where he lives, don’t talk to him outside of meetings and can’t remember a single conversation I have ever had with him one-on-one. And yet, I gave him a big-ass bearhug in the soup aisle today.

That got me thinking about what hugs represent, especially for us sober people. We are huggers. I think of the 5,000 or so people I’ve ever met at meetings, I think I have probably hugged about 4,900 of them. It’s actually a little odd to give out handshakes.

So why is that? It’s definitely not because we are going to cage fight anybody. But… we also know the fight that many of us went through to get to that moment. Everybody I meet at meetings has had a horrible bottom they have lived through. There’s lots of arrests, divorces, bankruptcies, missed birthday parties and funerals. We all have so many scars. They’re all different, of course. But they’re kind of all the same, too, if that makes any sense. As we say in the rooms, I may not know you… but I know you.

Maybe there are similarities with fighters, after all. MMA corner people know what somebody went through to get to that point, and they want to love them through the fight they’re about to endure. In that way, we sober people are similar. I know what it takes for a full-blown alcoholic to stay sober, so when I see them again, some part of me is glad that we won the fight—for that day, anyway. That’s why we hug.

I should say, though, that the initial reason I started thinking about this topic was because the UFC pay-per-view from two weeks ago came on at 10 pm. At about 10:02, the cameras zeroed in on the three-man broadcasting team, and all three announcers were staring backwards away from the camera because a massive brawl had broken out in the crowd. Fights at UFC fights are pretty common, but I have never seen the entire broadcast sputter like that because the brawl was so chaotic.

It turns out, the fight was on the floor, near the side of the cage, and it was between one fighter’s training partners and friends, with another fighter who is a well-known online troll. He’d been picking on that fighter for years on social media, and now he ran into the guys who hug the fighter before he goes into the cage.

So maybe the similarities end there with UFC fighters’ entourages and my sober crew. I don’t think I want a sponsor and sponsees who want to beat the living s**t out of any sober nemesis of mine!

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

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

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

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

Monday was my 17-year sober anniversary. I say this every year but… what a ride it has been.

I try to take a moment at the end of every year sober and reflect upon the previous year—what did I specifically make progress on this year? And are there any areas where I stayed the same, or took a step back?

For me, there was a big headline from November 2024 till November 2025—cancer. In March 2024, after a routine colonoscopy, I found out I had rectal and liver cancer, making it Stage 4 cancer. Basically, my ass was falling off.

On the day I was celebrating my 16th anniversary last November, I was coming off a brutal surgery, with three more chemotherapy sessions to go. Then… who knew? Was the cancer gone? That would be the story of my year.

Luckily, the cancer was indeed gone. But I was told, in no uncertain terms, that uncertainty was going to be a part of my life going forward. Cancer tests aren’t like on TV. There’s no definitive yes/no. There are lots of appointments to talk about strange masses that might be fluid, or maybe swelling, or maybe a horrific tumor that will choke the life out of my body… who can say?!?!

But long story short, the tests keep looking good. So as of Tuesday of this week, I am cancer free. And when I look back on the year, and if I made any spiritual progress, I keep coming back to the same word: uncertainty.

When I found out I had cancer, everything I thought I had plans for went out the window. My year shifted toward revolving entirely around a hospital near my house, and everything that my doctors told me to do. My cancer trumped everything. It was like if the earth just completely changed course and begun to orbit a different star.

That meant the ground underneath my feet always was shifting, that I could never quite get my feet under me in just about any aspect of life. I had to go do a will, closely examine my life insurance policy and make adjustments, and have some conversations with people about what I would want if I don’t make it. The only certainty was the uncertainty.

But you know what? I began to accept the uncertainty, and I came to an obvious realization that most people would agree with but never truly accept in their heart: This whole thing is uncertain. The world. The country. The state. The town. My freaking house. Nothing is for sure. I could redo my roof and try to sell my house, then a tree branch falls on it. I might walk out to start my car tomorrow morning and it doesn’t start… or it’s not even there!

When I say that to people, they all nod their heads. They know that’s true, logically, but I don’t think many people truly accept that. If they did, we’d have 90 percent fewer arguments, 90 percent less middle fingers on the roads and I think Facebook would just disappear overnight—because when you accept the uncertainty of this world, and that none of us knows for sure that we have tomorrow, then you are able to truly feel what actually matters. And winning an argument about whether Bill Belichick is the best football coach ever suddenly doesn’t occupy a half hour of your day.

But accepting uncertainty is easier said than done. I need to surround myself with people who live that way, and thankfully, I have so many sober friends that treat their disease as a one-day-at-a-time, 24-hour reprieve from substance abuse and that has now spread into their entire worldview. That has become infectious for me, and I very rarely find myself saying so many things that other people struggle with… have I saved enough money? What will I do if I lose my job? What happens if my kid gets sick? What if I get sick? What happens when we die? If there is a heaven, will I be in it?!?!

I’m pretty at ease with all of that stuff, because I have people in my life who constantly remind me to not live in the wreckage of the future. That is a big deal—I need people who won’t put up with unproductive negative thinking—and I feel like I made major strides this past year when it comes to accepting the uncertainty of the world around me.

And yes, that even includes if my ass starts to fall off again!

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:

You know you’re a recovering alcoholic if:

--1: Emails from your friends say HALT in the subject header.

--2: Your idea of a smooth opening line is “I really liked what you shared.”

--3: You don’t know the last names of most of your friends.

(Credit: AA Grapevine, July 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.

I was in New York City multiple times in the past month, and I had quite an experience.

I worked in New York for 10 years, specifically in the midtown New York area. For about five of those years, I had begun to hustle and work urgent cares and doctors offices for pills, all while spiraling pretty hard into an ugly alcohol addiction, too.

So as I walked those streets, I had multiple instances where I remembered some very ugly day or incident at a street corner or a bar or pharmacy. There was one McDonald’s where I tried snorting several painkillers, which didn’t go well. Shocker, right?

But on this recent trip, I also began to note that at many of these dark places, there was also a lot of light. I’d spent about seven years running loose as an active addict and alcoholic, but then three years as a newly-sober person who loved his new life without drugs and alcohol. So many of those street corners and restaurants and pharmacies also featured fond memories of walking out of a meeting with my sponsor, getting together with a newcomer and lots of other awesome things. There was one combo Subway/Dunkin Donuts in particular where I used to go and nod out from the painkillers while trying to hype myself up with caffeine at the same time. And that was the same Subway/Dunkin where I went to pick up party subs for an anniversary party at the 12-step meeting I called my home group.

When I was there recently, it had been awhile, and I found myself caught up in the feeling of sweet-and-sour that addicts can feel about their old stomping grounds. On one hand, I felt overwhelmed by the sadness of what I used to do in those parts when I was still running and gunning. On the other hand, I felt tremendous gratitude about the people who invested their time in me and helped me live an entirely different life in the exact same place. The good feelings ultimately trounced the bad ones. In fact, the negative memories seemed to amplify my gratitude that I didn’t have to live like that.

It was just a helpful reminder about what so many addicts go through as they try to get their life on track. Often times, they can’t just go to Hawaii for 90 days to get clean and sober, then come home and quit their job and dump their husband or wife to move to Canada to avoid all of the old triggers. I had to get sober and turn things around while in the same house, job and car, and I am so glad I had people there to guide me through those same spaces where I used to wreak havoc. Without them, I probably would have ended up violently throwing up in every Applebee’s bathroom in New York City, not just the vast majority of them!

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

HEARD AT MEETINGS: “When you make a mistake, make amends immediately. It’s easier to eat crow while it’s still warm.”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, June 2001, Susan C. 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.

I’ve often wondered, why does the 12-step approach to God and faith work so well for me when I struggled with it for most of my life?

The answer came to me at a meeting the other day where the importance of faith was the topic. It’s still amazing to me sometimes that spending an hour listening to people unpack a topic can go so far to assist me in my life. It just doesn’t happen if I spend an hour talking to my friends about football games, or scrolling Instagram reels for 45 minutes. I have to be in the right environment.

Lots of people shared about how they had bad experiences with religion when they were younger, and that has made it hard for them to go back to any kind of church. I never had bad experiences in church, but I never did connect with a specific church, religion or concept of God. And I did see instances where religion tore people apart, not brought them together.

But with the help of people and the principles of recovery, I have gotten to a place where I found a faith that works. Mine is squishy and hard to explain to anybody else. But I have just come to believe that I do not know how we got here or where we go when we die. I don’t understand some of the magnificence of the universe, and neither do scientists—I still often think about a 60 Minutes piece I saw about 5 years ago about NASA. In it, some of the world’s smartest space experts ended up agreeing that we know about 5 percent of how the world and the universe work. Think about that—for every 1 thing we know, there are 19 that we don’t. How did the universe start? Is there other life? Where do stars come from? Why are there stars? Why are we here? What’s in a black hole?

The answer: They don’t really know! That’s enough for me to stop picking holes in anybody else’s theory about how we got here.

The big thing that hit me during that meeting was that I think the reason recovery-based faith works so well for me and so many others is that we leave it open-ended. So much of my experience with religion has a specific final destination you have to get to—believe in this exact God, with his picture on the wall, and do these exact 10 things to become saved, and never interact with other concepts of higher powers, and always try to collect other people to believe the same thing… it just doesn’t work for me. It may sound like I am pointing directly at Christianity, but I’m not. I think almost every version of organized religion that I have encountered has some pretty strict requirements that the entire congregation must get to, or else you might not qualify. There’s a not a lot of room to introduce what those NASA people said without somebody smiling and saying that they already know the answer based on a book that people wrote hundreds or thousands of years ago.

So with recovery faith, we’re encouraged to keep trying, and there’s no test or criteria for how you get there. Most of the people who bristle badly at the idea of God being mentioned in recovery say that with their fists balled up, acting as if other sober people are going to come to their houses and question if they’ve been a good boy or not. There’s nothing like that. I’ve been sober for 16 years. Been to thousands of meetings. Had thousands of phone calls with sober people. Nobody has ever inquired about my relationship with my higher power, or interrogated me on what it is.

I love that, and I think most people in recovery do. One of my favorite recovery stories was that I once was struggling with figuring out the God thing and I asked a guy, “Who is your higher power and how do you stay connected to it?”

And he took a bite of his breakfast and said, “It’s interesting that you should ask. I’m actually between higher powers right now. I’m looking at a few possibilities…”

It blew my mind, in the best possible way. He was talking about finding faith as if he were considering switching realtors or his wireless company! It was a spiritual experience, because I realized this wonderful sober person had embraced the idea of finding a higher power that is loving, kind and not rigid. That’s what I needed, and continue to need… though I’m always looking at all the possibilities.

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

HEARD AT MEETINGS:

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

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

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

I went to a meeting this week where we read from Living Sober, and we were on a chapter that unpacked the Serenity Prayer. It was an eye-opening experience, at the exact time when I needed to sit with the serenity prayer.

It hit me during the meeting how much I tend to quickly summarize the serenity prayer. It’s not that I don’t love the serenity prayer—I do. But I often truncate the meaning of it, which diminishes its usefulness to me. I often just summarize it in my head as, “Acceptance is the answer.” Which is absolutely one of the keys to a happy life.

But something changed for me that day. I sat with the serenity prayer for an hour, going over it repeatedly and listening to others share as realized a startling truth—the serenity prayer isn’t just words that boil down to acceptance being the answer. It is a cheat code with multiple action steps that I need to take in order for it to become true. I also realized for the first time that it is exactly 25 words long, and that those 25 words are worth millions and millions of words.

Let me just include the serenity prayer here for practical purposes:

God grant me the serenity,

to accept the things I cannot change,

courage to change the things I can,

and wisdom to know the difference.

First and foremost, I never noticed that there is a command in the first sentence—I need to ask God for the serenity. Think about that for a second: I can’t just roll into figuring out what I can control and what I can’t. I need to work for serenity first.

That is a huge thing. In fact, it might be the most important thing. When I say the serenity prayer, I’m usually not in a great head space and I haven’t done anything to achieve serenity before unpacking everything else.

For me, that means I need to ask God directly to be granted serenity, then I need to do all of the things that are available to me to get to a serene place. That’s getting to meetings, calling other addicts, going for a walk, going to the gym, meditating, taking a nap, etc. That’s real work—just saying “grant me the serenity” to God isn’t the answer. I never have said the serenity prayer and been immediately plowed over by a dumptruck full of serenity. I need to chip in and do some work too. And remember, I can’t really do anything else related to acceptance until I am serene. It’s a little bit like buying books for a college class when you haven’t been accepted into the college. The cart is in front of the horse.

OK, so I need to get to a serene place before anything else. For me, serenity isn’t instant. I’d say it is a minimum of about an hour away, which usually means that I can get there if I get to a meeting. Then I am feeling much more serene during a tough time.

Now I need to use that serenity to accept the things I cannot change. That means I need to do two followup things: I need to figure out what that list looks like, and I need to grind away at accepting those things. It’s not just the list—it’s getting to a place of acceptance of that list, too. And like serenity, acceptance is not something that many of us can just hit a button and achieve.

The next thing is the courage to change the things I can. Again, there are two actions there—I need to ask God for courage, then I need to do the work I need to do in order to change the things that I can.

It’s funny that the final thing is actually sort of one of the first things—wisdom to know the difference. I actually need the wisdom earlier in the process so that I can sort out what is changeable and what is not.

Last thing that hit me: The serenity prayer is 25 words. At meetings, we often say it and there are 27 words in it. Most people add “the” before courage and wisdom. That’s probably the second-biggest revelation that hit me during the meeting. But hey, saving two words every time ain’t nothing!

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)

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.

Did you know QTIPs are not supposed to go into your ears? Like, not at all. The manufacturer says you can clean around the outside of your ears, but not inside. And the main use, apparently, is supposed to be for applying or removing makeup.

Interesting, huh? Has anybody else spent at least 40 years destroying your ear drums with a product you thought was supposed to clean those same ear drums?

Today, I’m actually more interested in the acronym, QTIP: Quit Taking It Personally. That phrase comes up quite a bit in recovery, but I’ve heard many others outside the rooms use it, too.

The idea of not taking things personally certainly isn’t new, and we throw that phrase around a lot. If you think about the past five times you’ve been really upset, I bet all five on some level involve taking something too personal. But it’s worth a deeper look.

First, let me just say that sometimes people do things or say things are personal insults and those insults sting, and that’s okay. I’ve spoken about how valuable the book The Four Agreements has been for me, and one of the agreements is to not take things personally ever. An example in the book is that you should never take a single thing personally, even if someone punches you in the face.

Uh, okay, I guess I understand the value of not taking things personally in that instance. But come on… let me say for the record that if you punch me in the face, it will be taken personally, and there will be a punch coming back at you. So even though I get that not taking things personally is valuable almost all the time, I also think if someone punches you or says, “You’re fat and ugly, and I wish I could kick your dog,” well, I’m sorry, that’s pretty personal. If it hurts, I think that’s human. To not ever take a single thing personally seems like an AI nightmare. I just don’t know that I even want to try for 100 percent success rate in that regard. I’d be more robot than person.

Secondly, I think it’s worth everybody sitting with the question, what do I think taking something personally means? And is there a difference between taking something personally and taking something TOO personal? I think there is. If you get a little pissy because you’re sitting at a red light and the light turns green and the guy behind you immediately lays on the horn, is that taking it personal? I’d say yes, and I don’t know if that’s problematic. When I get feedback on a work project, or reminded that I keep leaving the toilet seat up, that is personal information that might sting a little bit. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, and I actually think it’s a good thing to be receptive to reasonable feedback and adjust because you don’t want it to happen again.

The issue, of course, is when that driver honks and you scream back and begin hiring a hitman to wipe the guy out. That, to me, is taking things too personal. That usually means that that honk got right past my shields and cut right into my self esteem. That’s not good—that’s where QTIP really helps me. Quit. Taking. It. Personally.

The third thing is, how do I QTIP? It’s a great acronym. But how do I actually quit taking stuff personal? I have two solutions, and both require work.

One is, do esteemable things. My self esteem is high when I am doing things that build up my self worth. I was part of a group of sober people who took a meal into a homeless shelter this past weekend, and it’s among the most worthwhile, fulfilling acts of service I have ever done in my life. It’s hard for a horn honk to rattle me to my core right now.

The other thing that is very helpful for me is to figure out the action stuff that breaks the cycle of feeling wounded from something. Let’s say you get shitty feedback on a work project and it cuts you deeply. My tendency is to sit on the couch and stew, or sometimes call somebody else from work and vent. I find that to be incredibly unproductive—it just solidifies the loop I am going to be stuck in for the next eight hours.

But there are other action things that do help bust up that cycle of rumination. Praying for someone you’re mad at almost always works for me. Going for walks helps. Running really helps me—it’s almost like difficult movement helps digest resentments. Finding some piece of engrossing entertainment can sometimes pull me out of taking something too personal—a book, a podcast, a movie, a football game. Meetings and calls with sober friends often work their magic on me taking things too personally.

At the end of the day, I have to be able to find a way to live where the most important part of my self-worth is my opinion of myself, not others. And that means not taking things from the outside world as devastating blows to my self esteem.

Hopefully you got something out of this. And if not, I won’t take it personally.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For my entire life, I can remember a common debate between people around the question of, Is weed addictive?

I get asked that quite a bit, and I have my own answer to that question. But I’ll answer broadly first.

Weed usually sparks some very interesting conversation, with a wide array of responses. The general consensus seems to be no, marijuana is not an addictive substance, and that certainly seems to have picked up steam over the past 20 years or so as marijuana laws have been significantly scaled back. I’d say I am out once a week these days and encounter a weed cloud in a public place where I don’t remember that happening before. It sure seems like at least 51 percent of the general public is pretty chill about putting marijuana in a separate category than cocaine, opiates and other drugs.

There’s also a key distinction that I run into a lot when talking with normal, non-alcoholic/addict friends—the difference between physically addictive and mentally addictive. Is weed physically addictive? The verdict seems to be no, you won’t have physical withdrawals if you stop. But are donuts physically addictive? Is money physically addictive? Is love physically addictive? Probably not, right?

But does a person with an addictive personality come to rely upon them in an unhealthy way? In my experience, yes, that’s possible. So is a donut addictive? Lots of people would say no. But for an addict like me, if I eat 10 donuts every day and think I can’t live without them… well, look out if you try to stop me from my donuts.

OK, now let me give my personal answer, which—sort of—came up recently at a doctor’s visit for me. As I have written about many times before, I had the ends of both amputated 20 years ago. I’m doing well these days, but my feet are a significant disability that cause me pain every day. I got a new podiatrist, and she is awesome. She’s about 40 years old. Super smart. Super energetic. Her office is cool and upbeat and seems like it is run by a cool 40-year-old doctor. When I told her that I am in recovery and don’t want to mess around with any sort of medication, she had a very good understanding of what I was saying to her. I’ve had doctors who listen to me explain my past and then they nod their head and say, “OK, we’ll keep you off morphine but here’s a prescription for 300 Vicodin.” Not her. She got it.

Well, at least I thought she did. At the end of the conversation, I mentioned that my foot pain keeps me up some nights, and she said, “Just take one or two Benadryl. That will help.” I said that I didn’t think that was a good idea, and she said, “Just take one once in a while. Not every day.” I still said I didn’t want to do that, that I had messed around with Benadryl during my active drinking and drugging days and that I had abused it.

She said," “Well, you’re sober now, so you know now to do that.”

I ended up just nodding my head and saying I’d think about it. But I couldn’t believe it.

What she was missing is that for somebody who is an addict, such as myself, everything should be treated as potentially addictive until proven otherwise. I drank and did drugs because I wanted to change the way that I felt. Was there physical addiction, too? Yes, eventually. But it was a two-pronged addiction that involved my mind and my body.

So to come back to the original question: Is weed addictive? I don’t know what the medical journals and rehabs will end up saying about that 50 years from now. I never did much weed and didn’t enjoy it when I did. But when I think about whether weed is addictive, my answer is yes… for me!

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: “At first I thought the ‘God thing’ was a crutch. Turns out to be stilts.”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, May 2001, Mark)

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 saw a movie recently where a guy gets sober, and his mom hugs him and says, “I haven’t seen my son in a long time.” It’s a powerful scene, where you feel the weight of a loved one disappearing before a mom’s eyes.

Is it a little ridiculous? Yeah, probably. In the movie, the guy had a few weeks sober and all of a sudden he was back to his idealized, pre-substance abuse self. In my experience, that can take a little bit longer than Hollywood run times allow.

But it does capture a general truism that I have encountered: We vanish before the people who care about us. Sometimes it’s slow. Sometimes it’s fast. But whoever that person cared about gets swallowed up by the substance abuse, and the other person just has to watch it happen. Brutal. Absolutely brutal.

The only reason I feel like I truly understand that concept now is because I’ve ended up caring about so many people in recovery who go back out and continue to vanish before my eyes. That’s when the reality of addiction really hit home for me, and I had a new appreciation for people who stuck by me. They didn’t have to.

One other thing that hit me when I was watching that movie was the idea that that mom got her son back… but she better hope her son doesn’t go back to being the exact same person, just without the booze. In my experience, yes, my loved ones got me back. But to live a different life, I had to start to become somebody different, and that can cause some friction. If your loved ones missed the old you, and the old you needs to continue to grow in order to not relapse and die, then there could be some areas of conflict on the horizon. But those areas are important for that sober person.

I’ll give you one example from my own life. When I got sober, I really started to take commitments more serious than I ever had before. If I said I’d meet you at 1 pm, I would do everything I could to be standing at that place at 1 pm or a little earlier. Until I got sober, even before I became a raging addict and alcoholic, 1 pm and 1:15 pm were basically the same thing.

I remember in my early days of sobriety, I wasn’t drinking, but I’d still show up at 7 pm recovery meetings at 7:10. I’ll never forget going to a New York City meeting a few minutes late and raising my hand to share, and the chairperson said, “Sorry, you were late.” Turns out, they had a rule that late people couldn’t share. I remember how pissed I was at the rule, then I realized I was pissed at myself for that character defect.

The friction started happening at home because my wife and kids had never really paid attention to time before. We would roll out whenever we rolled out, and we would apologize and smile and do nothing about making other people wait for us to arrive. When I started to insist that we leave on time, woo boy, there was some significant whining and complaining and snapping at each other and pacing… so much pacing. Me pacing in the living room. Then me pacing out front in the yard, right in front of the windows so that my pacing could be seen.

That may sound like a little thing. But anybody who’s married with kids knows that this happens every single day, where you’re in the car and someone forgets something and you have to wait, and people start bickering with each other… it actually adds up to something pretty significant. I definitely could have cooled it down a bit on the pacing and acting aggravated. But I did think making a commitment to being timely was an important change in my life and our lives. So I am glad that it became more important to me.

So that is a good example of how many of us can’t just go back to being that 25-year-old version of ourselves. We need to turn into the 35- or 52-year-old version of ourselves that we were meant to be. And for some of us, that comes with a little bit of pacing in the front yard.

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: Show me an alcoholic whose Big Book is falling apart, and I’ll show you an alcoholic who isn’t.”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, May 2001, Earl T. from Buhl, Idaho)

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 have a hot take that has been coming up a lot recently for me: I think we use the word “perfectionist” too much. And that includes me.

I think many people say “I’m a perfectionist” as if it’s a medical diagnosis, and they’re using it in a way where they can chalk up their behavior to something that can’t turn off.

But are any of us truly that level of perfectionist? Or are lots of us, me included, applying it whenever and wherever we feel like it?

I was at a meeting recently and that concept came up in a very helpful way. Perfectionism pops up a surprising number of times in the sobriety community, because I do think many of us have issues with seeking out a world that is exactly as we want it. Quite a few people chimed in with comments about their own experiences with perfectionism.

My issue with that word is that I often catch myself being full of s**t. In my head, a true perfectionist strives to do everything at a very high level, to the point where it becomes problematic. With me, I’d be lazy about lots of things and a perfectionist about certain other things.

At the meeting the other day, a guy shared that perfectionism is a more profound term to him than just getting stuck on a work project or being anal about your garden at home. He said that when he catches himself using it, he’s sometimes trying to blame his DNA for something that is actually just him being an a*****e.

I identify with that. When I have told a coworker that I don’t like a workplace project’s direction because I am a perfectionist, that’s not usually true—it’s more that I picked out one project that was very important to me and disagreed with whatever was happening with it. And yet there would be 10 other projects where I was not demanding perfectionism on them. So is that perfectionism? Or is that just me insisting on my way whenever I feel like it?

I think it’s the latter. And I think it’s important because I do believe sometimes I lean on the idea of being a perfectionist as a code word for “This is what I want and it’s not happening the way I want it.” And that’s not perfectionism—that’s just a*****e-ism.

Going forward, I am going to be very careful when I try applying that word in my life. I think I might have been using that word as a way to cover up a serious amount of b******t. So from now on, I am going to be a perfectionist about the use of the word perfectionist.

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

OVERHEARD IN A BAR:

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

“She reached 98 and never needed glasses?”

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

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

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

I’ve been pretty aggravated driving around my town recently because there has been a lot of road construction going on. It’s nothing major—it’s usually lane closures or short detours.

But it tacks on a few minutes to short drives, and that has caused me on more than one occasion to be frustrated and growling under my breath as I wait in traffic. It’s the epitome of a luxury problem to have a 6-minute drive turn into a 9-minute drive and you’re pulling your hair out and cursing out road crews—with the windows up, of course. I don’t need a road construction worker to kick the s**t out of me for barking at him.

I’ve also caught myself on more than one occasion groaning at meetings if someone shows up that I don’t particularly want to hear share that night. I don’t really despise anybody in sobriety, and I tend to not avoid meetings if I think someone I don’t care for will be there. But that thought has been crossing my mind quite a bit lately—I have several meetings where there’s a person or format that I don’t love, so I cross it off the list.

So last Friday, I went to a new meeting in the next town over, and I had to laugh when I sat down and noticed a pinboard behind the chairperson. There were multiple signs up announcing upcoming sober events, and a few meetings that could use more support. And then there was a big orange traffic sign that said, “Character Construction Zone.”

For some reason, that sign really hit me, because it tapped into both areas of recent frustration, the road construction and the people, places and things that annoy me at meetings. It hit me in the moment that I need to never, ever forget that we’re all characters, and we all probably have some character defects to work on, and we’re showing up at that particular meeting at that particular time because we want to do that work. There are definitely people in recovery who have what I want, and there are definitely people in recovery who have what I DON’T want. It’s fine—we need all the different flavors of sobriety to make 12-step recovery possible.

On a deeper level, any time I notice multiple areas where I am aggravated, it always means one thing—I am walking out into the world with an idea of how things should go, and it usually is the way that I want them to go. When they inevitably don’t go that way, that leads to aggravation.

I find that to be a self-centered way to approach life, and it usually means my faith in a higher power has dwindled. To put it bluntly, it usually means that I am my higher power. Spoiler alert: That rarely works out.

So I made a promise to myself that I would get to meetings this week that benefit my recovery, without taking attendance of who I like and who I don’t. And I also vowed to be more relaxed about accepting roadwork as a necessary part of life. (But holy s**t, if they close that right lane on Main Street again, all bets are off…)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Credit: AA Grapevine, May 2001, Anonymous)

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

Let me give you a sober scenario about gossip. I went to a meeting recently where the topic was how hurtful gossip can be, and it really got me thinking about what the definition of gossip is, why it’s so appealing but yet toxic and what I can do avoid participating in it.

I’m making up this scenario, including the names. Here goes:

You go to a Sunday meeting and meet a new guy named Mike. After the meeting, you’re talking to Mike and your sober friend Biff comes up. You all start talking together and exchange numbers.

The next week, you go to the same meeting and the same thing happens. You, Mike and Biff all catch up, and Mike says he’s got two weeks sober and struggling a little bit, but he says overall, he’s doing pretty well.

That week, you talk to Mike on the phone and he seems to still be doing okay. He says he is getting to a different meeting on Sunday this upcoming weekend because of a scheduling conflict, so he won’t see you there.

That weekend, you go to the meeting and Biff is there. But no Mike. Afterward, you and Biff are talking and he says, “I was hoping Mike would be there. Have you talked to him? How’s he doing?”

Now here is the question: What do you say in this situation? Is it gossip to say that you talked to Mike during the week?

My first thought is, that’s not gossip. That’s genuine concern over a new mutual friend trying to stay sober. I think I’d say, “I talked to him this week. He sounded pretty good. He said he was going to another meeting.”

But think about it a little more. What if Mike doesn’t really love Biff’s message at meetings? What if he is cordial after meetings and likes Biff, but doesn’t want him close to his sobriety? What if he has decided that he doesn’t really need Biff in his business, but he does trust you? Aren’t you pulling Biff into Mike’s sobriety more than he would like? I think the answer is yes, but that is actually a pretty harmless example.

But think about a slightly different version of that scenario. Let’s say Mike called you during the week and said he relapsed and is struggling, but he’s getting to a different meeting on Sunday. Is it gossip to pass along that Mike relapsed? Or anything from that conversation?

That’s a tougher one. The thing to remember is that in a real-life version of this story, I’m friends with Biff. We go back a long way. Telling him, “That’s none of your business” sounds good in theory, but he’s a real person, so it can be a little socially awkward to hit someone with that.

I think I would end saying something like, “I did talk to him. You should give him a call. That’s his story to tell.”

You can probably see what I am wrestling with. What exactly constitutes gossip? What if the best thing for Mike might be that other people are concerned about him and trying to connect with him, even if he’s not the most outgoing guy?

For me, I guess the ultimate answer comes down to erring on the side of the spiritual foundation of 12-step recovery: anonymity. I’d rather be too secretive about somebody than not secretive enough, because in my head, sharing too much is generally more harmful than not sharing enough. I’ve never gotten into a pickle or two in recovery or at work because I didn’t gossip about a coworker. But I have had quite a few situations where I think, “Holy s**t, I should have just shut my freaking mouth.”

I have had a few more obvious scenarios pop up, though I wouldn’t say they were easy. A few weeks ago, a sober friend said, “Man, there is some WILD stuff happening here in our sober community.” My first thought was, “Oooh, tell me more!” But my second thought was, “As badly as I would like to know what you’re talking about, I have no business knowing about it. And really, what good would it do me to know about it?” I was pretty proud of myself that I didn’t ask about it and said I didn’t need to know.

That’s the key question for me—when I get involved in a conversation about somebody else who is not standing right there, what is my motive? Is it genuine concern? Or is it a strong desire to know stuff, to judge and to possibly have juicy information to pass along to the next person?

That’s a big question to wrestle with. Why do humans gossip at all? The truth is probably pretty complex, dating back to when cavemen and cavewomen started to form societies and the exchange of information helped bond and unite. But in 2025, we’re not exactly obsessed with where the wooly mammoths have been hiding out. My motives are usually just that I want to know because it makes me feel important. People who know a lot of gossip tend to have social cache—think back to being at an event and somebody says, “Did you hear what happened with Ted and Heather at last year’s work retreat?” If you hadn’t heard what happened with Ted and Heather at the work retreat, you sure would like to know, right? Which elevates the dipshit passing along what happened. (By the way, in case you were wondering, Ted and Heather made out at the work retreat when they were both really drunk. But then Heather accidentally called Ted by a different guy’s name, and Ted started crying. So Heather said, “Do you want to make out some more, Ted?” And he said yes, and they kept making out. Craig from accounting took a picture of them tonguing the living s**t out of each other, but then both Ted and Heather laid their heads down on the table and fell asleep. The next morning, they both laughed and said they didn’t remember it. Thank God Craig had that photo that he texted to everybody!)

The most common form of gossip that I encounter in recovery is, “Hey, was Mike at the meeting on Sunday?” I try to be fair to both sides in that situation. If Mike was at the meeting, I usually end up saying, “Yeah, he was. You should give him a call and say hello.” People usually don’t dig any further. I do think that question is harder than it sounds. On one hand, a friend asking about another guy usually comes from a place of genuine concern, so shutting down that conversation can be pretty awkward, and I do think about how much I needed people checking on me when I first got sober.

On the other hand, by strict definition of gossip and anonymity, saying someone was at a meeting is a clear violation. If you weren’t at the meeting, then it’s none of your business by letter of the law. Anything you shared at the meeting should stay there, including your attendance. And I absolutely think saying anything like, “Yeah, I saw Jane on Tuesday and she said she was really struggling” should probably be avoided.

So what do you do about gossip? It’s something that comes up every single day, multiple times, for me. And it certainly comes up in the recovery community. Here’s my multiple-part answer, which is certainly not something that I have gotten an A+ grade on over the years.

First of all, don’t start any gossip about a specific person, and don’t add to it. I have found it can be tough to be the high-and-mighty asswipe who firebombs a conversation with moral superiority any time somebody else says, “So I heard that Steve might be leaving the company next week…” and I jump in and say, “That’s not appropriate conversation. I refuse to participate.” I usually just try to not contribute anything and perhaps steer the conversation toward something else.

Secondly, always think about your motive. Is it 100 percent, genuine concern? Is it 40 percent concern, 60 percent curiosity? Or is it coming from an even worse place? Sometimes I catch myself talking about work stuff or situations in my neighborhood where it’s more passing along news or asking about news. I’ve said, “What’s going on with that empty house at the end of the block?” out of interest and curiosity, with no real need for the information but also no ill intent. I ask a lot of questions about what’s going on at my workplace, and some of that probably qualifies as gossip but it’s rarely anything personal. I do like to know what’s going on because it helps me at my job. Do I manipulate that in my head sometimes to justify wanting to know gossip? Other than pretty much every single day… never! I would never do such a thing!

The last thing that comes to mind about gossip is a metaphor I heard once, which is that participating in gossip is a little like going up to the roof of a building with an old-school feather pillow and cutting open the pillow and shaking it out. The feathers fly everywhere, in unpredictable ways, and they can never be put back in the pillowcase. They’re gone out into the world in all different directions, just like gossip can ricochet around and hurt people you’d never expect, including yourself. We’ve all probably been busted sharing something that we shouldn’t have and felt embarrassment and shame and cold sweats. It’s not fun, and I want to avoid that at all costs.

But I did hear some wild s**t about Biff, if you’re interested…

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: “Drinking didn’t drown my problems, it irrigated them.”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, April 2001, Dick L. from New Westminster, British Columbia)

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.

Some people see God at church. Some people see God when they look at the stars. Some people see God in nature. Some people see God in the rooms of 12-step recovery. And some people see God… on stones with their dead cats’ names on them.

I bet that sounds weird, huh? Well, let me explain. My wife and I have had seven cats since we have been together (yes, we’re old!). We lost four of them over the years, and with the passing of each, we had a small stone made with their names engraved.

For the past 15 years or so, those stones sat somewhere in our house and I totally forgot we even had them. Then, a few weeks ago, my wife tore out some shrubs in our front yard, near the walkway from the driveway into our house. She wasn’t sure what she wanted to put there instead, but then one day I came home and she had put a bunch of flat stones in the bed, right near where we park our cars.

I thought it was very nice and walked into the house. I walked past the stones the next day and felt the same thing. Then one day I limped home from the gym, sweating and beat up. When I got out of my car, I was a little wobbly and ended up walking on the stones, sort of by accident. I was struck by how grounded those few steps made me. They connected me with my best little furry friends from my past. I had a few moments where I felt incredible love and appreciation for what my cats have provided to me over the years. I also felt a sense of loss that didn’t make me sad; it just made me feel present and grateful for what I had with them, and what I have right now with my three little furry buddies still chasing random paper balls around my house.

You might be wondering, what does this have to do with sobriety? Well, a lot, actually. One of the most important things I need to think about every day is whether what I am doing is contributing to my spiritual condition, or subtracting from it. There are obvious things that contribute to my spiritual condition—going to a 12-step meeting, or talking to my sponsor or a sponsee. There are obvious things that subtract from my spiritual condition—like driving into New York City or arguing with one of my teenaged kids.

But there are lots of not-so-obvious things that can contribute to my spiritual condition, too. Soaking in some sunlight… a late-night peaceful walk… a quiet nap… a good song or two… sitting on a beach… a nice sunset or sunrise… a strong breeze on a warm day… and lots of pet stuff. I find my mood improves every single time one of my cats crawls up beside me and starts purring as I pet the little guy. I also feel a little more serene when I come across a cool dog in the neighborhood. And now I purposely walk through those stones in my front yard because it pulls me closer to the calm, kind place that I want to be.

I’ve had a few times recently where I come home wound up over something, or left the house wound up over something. Every time I walk through that path I feel a little more grounded, a little more right-sized.

So to make my point directly, I am writing about the cat tombstone walk because I think those kinds of things can be very valuable small additions to a better spiritual condition. Some of my best days are when I stack these spiritual things one on top of another. It’s hard to have a bad day if your schedule is stacked with things that introduce joy and gratitude and calm into every hour. You don’t have time to be an a*****e!

That should be your takeaway today: Find small spiritual things and surround yourself with them, so that you run out the clock on being an a*****e!

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’ve spent my share of nights in jail. Thank God, nowadays, the only thing being arrested is my physical, mental and moral decline.”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, March 2001, Kevin J. from Evanston, Illinois)

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 went to a meeting the other day where the topic ended up being about sponsorship, and how to know when you’re ready to be a great sponsor. Pretty much everybody said what I have come to believe, which is that becoming a great sponsor really isn’t what you’d think. It’s not a degree that you earn, or a black belt that a sensei gives to you after years of training.

That’s because my view of sponsorship in a 12-step program isn’t really about talent or knowledge or even sober time. I do think you want to know the program and believe in it. I also think that the general guidance that you should have a year or more of recovery under your belt is a wise suggestion.

But my version of being a good sponsor is walking the walk, and talking about the walk. That’s it.

I used to get so uptight about being a good sponsor, about needing to have wisdom to pass along, about being nice but direct with sponsees, about always knowing the right thing to say, about never saying the wrong thing that would make someone go back out and drink. But that was overrating what I have come to believe a sponsor is for. I don’t think I need to be some amazing guru who life-coaches you into getting or staying sober. I think I have worked a good recovery program for 16-plus years and I can tell you how I did it. That’s about it.

That’s probably why I struggled so much early on in recovery. I think I was a good sponsor to the first few guys I sponsored. But I definitely think I invested too much of my own sobriety into theirs, and I think I took it way too hard when a few of the guys went back out. Could I have been a better sponsor? Maybe. But in my experience, I think it’s pretty rare that a not-so-great sponsor causes somebody to relapse. As we often say in the rooms, if somebody wants to drink, I probably can’t say anything to make them stop. And if somebody really wants to be sober, I probably can’t say anything to make them want to start drinking.

I used the word “confidence” in the title here because I do think I need to be confident in myself and my program in order to be a good sponsor. Confidence isn’t arrogance, though—I think humility is an essential part of being a solid sponsor. I don’t really want a sponsor who thinks he has all the answers, or talks down to me in a way that I find insulting. I’m not looking to have a drill sergeant as my sponsor, you know?

One other thing that I think relates to confidence as a sponsor… my mentors in sobriety have always encouraged me to talk to as many people as possible. I’ve never had a jealous mentor who wants me to only call him about recovery. And that requires confidence in yourself and a thick skin—I don’t need to be the be-all, end-all sobriety expert for anybody. I think having a huge network is so valuable, because it gives you lots of voices and lots of different experiences in sobriety. For instance, if someone I work with is going through a divorce, I haven’t been divorced but maybe someone else has been. I haven’t ever been wealthy, so if you’re trying to be rich and sober, try calling someone with a newer iPhone than me.

I don’t have all the answers, and that is a beautiful thing to realize. I used to feel bummed out if I felt like I didn’t know something. But the more confidence I have in myself to say I don’t know, the better I am as a sponsor.

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)

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 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.

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)

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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)

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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.

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.

In my first 15 years of driving a car, I got pulled over at least 10 times by the police. I never got a DUI but I did get multiple speeding tickets and several stops for broken lights or for having a chunk of my Chrysler LeBaron hanging off dangerously.

In my next 16 years of driving, which is the length of my sobriety, I got pulled over for speeding once in 2010, and I had a headlight out in 2011 or 2012 that got me a warning.

But I haven’t been pulled over in at least 12 years, even though my wife and kids all have been saying for years now that I’m going to get nailed for going through a yellow light at some point.

Well, that day came earlier this week. I blew through a yellow-ish light that a kind police officer referred to as “red” after he pulled me over. It was so egregious that I didn’t say a single word to argue. I was getting a ticket, and I deserved one.

But when I handed him my license and registration, I also began to plot out my court case. I could argue that the road I was traveling on was a total mess because of construction, and that I had a momentary lapse as I tried to process everything. Which is true… but also not true at all. I definitely sped up to get through the yellow light, and it was purposeful.

I found myself getting mad at the cop as he sat back there writing my ticket, and I considered saying something to him about what a dumpster fire the road situation was. But I ultimately realized that I was full of s**t, and I hadn’t done the right thing. I had earned a ticket.

He came back to my car a few minutes later and handed me a ticket. “I’m just giving you a warning,” he said, and sure enough, the ticket said “Warning” in big letters across the top. Phew.

Then the real predicament came. Do I tell my wife or kids about it? It was just a warning, after all. And even if it was a ticket, was it really any of their business? I crumpled up the ticket and threw it in the trash—at the gym, not at my house, just to make sure there was no evidence of my transgression.

I didn’t actually spend much time debating it. I don’t live that life any more where I keep things from people that they would probably want to know about. I knew I was going to have to eat a s**t sandwich from everybody along with a bunch of “I told you sos.” Oh well. I’d rather that than the alternative, which is that I embrace any kind of withholding of the truth. It wouldn’t be outright lying if they never knew to ask about it… but it wouldn’t be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, either, would it?

Later that evening, my two teenaged drivers were sitting in the living room with my wife and I came in and raised my arms to get their attention. “I have an announcement to make,” I said, and then I told them. They all giggled and busted my chops exactly how I thought they would. And I didn’t have to eat one s**t sandwich—I had the great honor of devouring three s**t sandwiches, with extra s**t sauce on them.

But you know what? Who cares. How did absorbing some deserved punishment and ball-breaking really hurt me? It didn’t. What a change that is. This blog is titled humility and humiliation, because I used to feel humiliated by situations like that. My drinking and drugging certainly was something I felt humiliated about and kept to myself. But every time my feelings were hurt, or I bought something stupid, or I missed a credit card payment, or I got made fun of and didn’t like it… I would keep that to myself because I felt shame and humiliation.

Since I have been sober, though, I have learned how to find more humility, which to me is defined as being right-sized—I’m not the greatest person in the world or the worst. I am somewhere in between. And as long as I try my best to do the right things in this world, I have found that my pride and ego are in a place where I have humility. And when I have humility, I have never felt humiliation. I’m sure it’s possible to still feel humiliated. But if I am comfortable with my life and the way I live it, I rarely have room to feel humiliated. Humility is one of those things that crowds out humiliation.

My warning ticket certainly qualified as something that I would have been embarrassed and humiliated by in the past. I didn’t feel it this time. And as my family ribbed me about it, I felt like I had some kind of shield up that protected me from feeling deeply wounded. And that was an awesome thing to feel—it made me feel like I have grown a lot.

Did the s**t sandwiches taste good going down? No, they did not. But I digested them just fine!

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 Saturday afternoon, around 3 p.m., the town drunk came lurching into the pool hall.

“Hey, Ed,” one of the locals called to him. “Have you been drinking all day?”

“The drunk rolled back on his heels, thought for a minute and replied, “I don’t know. What day is it?”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, October 2000, Jim S. from Galesburg, Illinois)

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.

The other morning, I went into the bathroom to put in my contacts. I happened to be in the middle of a disagreement with my wife, so I may have been muttering under my breath a bit. On a scale of 1-10, with 10 being boiling hot, I’d say I was at about a 4. It definitely was taking up space in my brain, though, and that led to some hilarity in front of the bathroom mirror.

I put in my right contact, then I went to put in my left contact and it… wasn’t in the case. Where did it go? I dug my finger into the case over and over again, with no luck. I looked all over the sink and the ground, then checked both places again. I also was struggling with my vision because with one contact in and one not in, I always have a warped sense of vision as I look around.

It was a frustrating five minutes or so until I had a bizarre realization—the reason my sight was so off wasn’t because I had one eye with a contact in it and one eye without a contact in it. The problem was, I had one eye with no contact in it and one eye with TWO contacts in there. So one eyeball had my normal bad vision and one eyeball basically had the Hubble telescope in there.

It turns out that in my haze of resentment—over a topic that I don’t even remember, to be honest—I had pulled both contacts out and distractedly placed them both in the same eye. I’ve been wearing contacts for more than 30 years, and that has never happened before. Perhaps I was more like a 7 out of 10 on the boiling hot scale?

I had a good chuckle and then removed the second contact from my eye. Almost immediately my vision improved because I had one contact at 20/20 and one at about 40/60 without a contact in. Then I put the other one in, and voila, I had good vision in both eyes.

I walked out of the bathroom thinking about perspective—literally and figuratively. The literal perspective was just that I could freaking see rather than having one binocular eye. The figurative perspective was that it reminded me that my brain can often put lenses over minor things and make them big. Or take a clear picture and make it very, very blurry. Some days my perspective is like an eyeball with no contact in—a little fuzzy, just out of proper view. Some days my perspective is like an eyeball with two contacts in it—supersized in an unhealthy way, blowing up a minor issue into something that seems much larger and daunting.

And some days I have the correct contact in both eyes and I can see fine, with nothing out of whack. The best way for me to get to that place is a strong sober program—meetings, phone calls, literature work, service, gratitude lists, making amends… all of the things. For other people, there are probably other ways to get yourself to have the right perspective—walks, prayers, meditations, going for a drive, making meals for the homeless, etc. But the broader point is, we probably all could use the perspective of two contacts in two eyes, rather than one or zero contacts in. And two contacts in one eye is definitely a really shitty idea.

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:

Friday night at the convention, two police officers watched as thousands of alcoholics streamed toward the stadium, singing, laughing, and shouting.

“Isn’t AA marvelous?” exclaimed the first officer. “Here are all these alcoholics, and not one of them is drinking!”

“Yes” replied the second, eyeing the crowd a little nervously. “Let’s just hope it keeps working until Sunday.”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, October 2000, Anonymous from Minneapolis, Minnesota)

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

Have you seen the social media conversation about whether 100 people could defeat 1 gorilla? If you’re lucky, you have no idea what I am talking about because it’s one of the dumbest conversations in human history.

But if you’re me, you’ve spent way too much time thinking about it and now have a theory that you believe wholeheartedly and would defend against 100 people and a gorilla if you tried to argue. I know I’m right.

OK, here we go. First of all, I have some credibility on the topic because I wrestled my whole life and also spent quite a few years getting into skirmishes as a drunken idiot during my addiction days. Obviously, this makes me an alcoholic brawler black belt.

Let’s start with the criteria for this exercise. I am considering this scenario as if the gorilla were an adult male in peak physical condition. In fact, I’m going to just assume we got the best and brightest and meanest gorilla in the entire jungle for this exercise.

Now, I am going to ask for the same in return. If you are telling me that we have to just go to Walmart and grab 100 dudes from the aisles for this, I think the humans have no chance. Even if you told me we could grab a college football roster of 100 big, strong dudes, I still think the gorilla would be favored. And I actually think if you went to a gym and collected the 100 biggest, strongest, most fit dudes, I’d definitely take the gorilla.

But if you let me grab the right mix of 100 people, I believe that the gorilla would lose. I’m not sure it would even be close.

I’d want 100 people who a) are in good shape but a mix of physical skills, b) are able to work together and apply a strategy and c) have no fear about surviving the fight.

On the first point, I think you want good strength but also very good stamina. The best way to defeat a large animal is to wear it out with constant probing attacks from various angles. That’s how hyenas eventually tire out lions and other animals, and that’s what my team would need to do.

On the second point, I think you’d want about 20 small, fast guys to be the first wave. They’d go at the gorilla and then retreat, then go again, from all angles around the gorilla. Then I think you’d want to send in about 20 very strong, big guys to put a hurting on the gorilla. Then I think you’d want another wave of 20 small, fast guys to again try to gas out the gorilla for a few minutes. Then I think you have two waves of a mix of mid-size and big guys to end the fight. I actually don’t know that you’d need that last batch of 40 people because I think if the first 60 last 10-plus minutes, that gorilla is going to be completely wiped out. The people win.

On the third point, it would have to be a team that cares about each other but not much else. If we have moms and dads in there, I think there’d be a strong pull to survive for others rather than fight it out. You’d need a zero percent chance that people start turning and running for the exits. With that in mind, I think your best bet would be some kind of military unit of 100 to line up and be willing to duke it out. I’ve heard some people say you could take 100 prisoners and promise them freedom if they won, but I’m not sure you could herd those cats into a cohesive unit that will fight for each other.

So to summarize: I’m pretty sure the humans win pretty easily if the group of 100 is anything close to what I said. I even do think you could probably take a college football roster of 100 bros and have a pretty good chance if they are willing to be coached in this ridiculous exercise.

All right, so enough of that very morbid scenario of mayhem and animal cruelty. I actually hope we never get a firm answer on that, though I’m sure some renegade reality TV show producer is putting together a pitch right now.

The reason I am writing about this on a sober newsletter is because I recently had a stretch where I just didn’t do enough recovery stuff. I did some. But not enough. And I found myself surrounded by fear, anxiety, resentment, irritation and a bunch of other risky emotions. It felt like 1 human against 10 angry gorillas, which is what sobriety can sometimes feel like. Without alcohol to numb it all out, I really need to always figure out how to ask for help, how to be vulnerable and how to feel emotions, especially when they pile up.

And they do pile up, don’t they? When I’m worried about money, I often find myself arguing with my boss, yelling at my kids and prepping my middle finger for use on the roadways. It’s a collision of powerful, uncomfortable emotions—sort of like 10 gorillas coming at me from all different angles!

The cool thing about that scenario in recovery is that I have 100-plus phone numbers of people in recovery who will show up for me. So I know I have those gorillas outnumbered.

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:

Friday night at the convention, two police officers watched as thousands of alcoholics streamed toward the stadium, singing, laughing, and shouting.

“Isn’t AA marvelous?” exclaimed the first officer. “Here are all these alcoholics, and not one of them is drinking!”

“Yes” replied the second, eyeing the crowd a little nervously. “Let’s just hope it keeps working until Sunday.”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, October 2000, Anonymous from Minneapolis, Minnesota)

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

A few days before Mother’s Day for the past few years, I have had a pretty pathetic first thought: “Ugh… how long till Father’s Day?”

I know. I know. I know. That’s pretty selfish and juvenile. But hey, I’m not going to lie on here. Plus, I have learned in sobriety that I am more responsible for my second thought than my first. And my second thought was much better. Which was, let’s make this an awesome Mother’s Day for my wife and my mom. I think I did okay after that.

We had a nice Mother’s Day for my wife. All three kids were home and, with only a small exception or two, they all put themselves behind their mom for a day. Or at least most of the day. We went to a beach in Connecticut and walked on a pretty sweet boardwalk, then got some baked goods from a bakery in the town. The weather was awesome. I thought the gifts we got for my wife—including a nice bundle of goodies from me—were all excellent.

I have found over the years that I have gotten better and better about putting others first, even if my first thought is all about me. As a sober friend of mine always says, I may not be much, but I’m all I ever think about. I’m getting comfortable with the concept that that may never change, and I just need to continue to make sure my brain immediately hustles toward having a better followup thought.

And for the most part, I was able to do that. And I gotta say, the longer I have been sober, the more I appreciate how much positive energy and fulfillment comes from seeing smiles on other peoples’ faces. I really felt that way on Sunday. At one point, my wife and three daughters sat outside at the bakery and I stayed inside because there were no more seats out front. So I sat by the window and made an absolute fool of myself by making ridiculous faces out the front window. My kids were dying laughing and my wife refused to turn around, and multiple passersby seemed either amused or perplexed by my idiocy. It was a win-win for all involved.

By the end of the day, I was very tired and went to bed at a decent time. I laid my head on the pillow that night and was glad that I had been able to devote the day to someone other than myself. Did I happen to check an online date calculator and find out that Father’s Day is only 35 days away? No comment!

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.)

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.

Someone shared a familiar comment at a meeting the other day—that they see God in nature.

I do, too. Sometimes I am out and about and see animals or trees or even feel the wind, and I think about how majestic this world is that we live in. I also recently saw some images of the surface of Mars, and the barrenness of the planet made me feel grateful for what we have. I grew up in Pennsylvania surrounded more by nature than I have now living in a big town in Connecticut.

But where do you see your higher power? I think the No. 1 place where I feel like I can see a God of my understanding is during fellowship with other alcoholics and drug addicts. Sometimes it’s a newcomer who is trying badly to get sober. Sometimes it’s with somebody celebrating six months sober. Sometimes it’s hearing an old-timer talk about getting sober when Jimmy Carter was president.

I’ve been thinking a lot about that topic for the past month because a friend shared something that her sponsor said to her once: “If you see God through a certain window, go to that window often.”

That’s a relatively simple phrase, but it’s a lot to unpack. First of all, that phrase can be literally true sometimes—I watched two rabbits chase each other around my backyard yesterday and it was hilarious and mysterious and weird and cool. It looked a lot like me during my single days chasing people around bars and frat houses all night trying to get their phone numbers. And yes, I am pretty sure the rabbits were doing some sort of mating ritual, so I decided to walk away from the window and give them their privacy. Only God knows for sure if they got down to business back there.

Secondly, the figurative meaning of that phrase is so powerful and helpful. Think about it—wherever you see God in this life, why not turn to that as much as possible? If it’s fellowship with other alcoholics for me, why am I not spending an hour on the phone every single day with alcoholics? If it is nature, why am I not going for a walk in the woods as much as I can? If it’s through my kids, why I am not cherishing every minute with them?

The truth is, I usually only go to that window when I desperately need to, or I accidentally peek out it. I guess going forward, maybe I need to build it into my days to purposely keep track of what those windows are, and go to those windows more… even if it means I catch some X-rated rabbit action sometimes!

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 man walks into a bar and orders a drink. He takes a sip of his drink when he hears a voice saying, “That’s a very nice tie you have on.” He looks around but he doesn’t see anybody else in the bar except for the bartender, who is reading a newspaper at the other end.

The man takes another sip of his drink and he hears, “That shirt is a good color for you.” Again the man looks all around and sees nobody. He calls the bartender over.

“I must be cracking up,” he says. “Every time I take a sip of my drink, I hear voices.”

“It’s that bowl of peanuts,” the bartender says.

“The bowl of peanuts?”

“Yes,” says the bartender. “The peanuts are complimentary.”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, September 2000, Mick K.)

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 went to the grocery store the other day and got a cart. I started cruising around the store and was having a pleasant shopping experience when… WHAM! My cart suddenly got wobbly for a second and then shot sideways into the side of an old dude’s cart. He gave me a dirty look and I gave him a confused look back. What happened?

Turns out, I picked out a cart that worked perfectly fine for nine out of every 10 minutes, then one of its wheels seemed to have a panic attack and lock up. Every time I was pushing the cart and it seized up on me, the force of me pushing plus the three good wheels kept the cart moving, but its movements were completely unpredictable. I spent the rest of the trip moving very slowly so I could minimize the number of 80-year-olds who wanted to kick me in the groin. When the wheel would lock up, I would have to recognize it and try to unlock it with some side to side movement that broke it free from being jammed up.

About halfway through the shopping experience, it hit me: I am the wobbly cart. I routinely catch myself cruising along and then… BAM, I lock up. Then I need to do something to unlock that wheel that went rogue.

I think that analogy is funny, but it resonates with me for a few reasons.

First of all, I need to always consider myself a wobbly cart. The minute I think I have four perfectly-calibrated wheels on my shopping cart is the minute that I start to slide. That can’t happen.

Secondly, I have to know what to do when that wobbly wheel locks up. For me, it usually means connection—getting to a 12-step meeting or calling 12-step friends. I know some people rely on readings or prayers, but I need connection with my sober program to reel me back in. I cannot white-knuckle it and decide that I will fix my own wheel. You know what they say—a sick mind can’t fix a sick mind.

Thirdly, it helps me to remember that when my shopping cart goes off the rails, I ram into other stuff—people, places, traffic cones, you name it. My wobbly wheel has repercussions, so it can be a matter of great significance if I just keep pushing that problematic cart around.

Okay, I think I may have driven the shopping cart analogy into the ground… until next time, sober 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:

Two eggs, a sausage and an English muffin walk into a local bar for a drink. The bartender looks up and says, “Sorry, we don’t serve breakfast here.”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, September 2000, Trina W. from Elizabeth, Pennsylvania)

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 went to Miami last weekend and it was awesome. I left chilly Connecticut on a week when my kids were going to be home from school for spring break and I landed in Miami to 81 degree weather with just enough breeze to make it feel perfect. Let’s just say that juxtaposition did not break my heart as I pulled out of my driveway and headed for the airport.

I now know that part of traveling is planning to hit at least one meeting. I have had enough experience of going to a new place and camping out in a hotel room by myself to know that I need to stay connected to 12-step recovery. I used to try to make lots of calls to sober friends during any trip. But I found that a meeting in a new place was a) a pretty fun adventure during a road trip and b) a great way to keep me centered. Without the meeting, I would find that on trips I would begin drifting from the solitude of being alone and serene, to just isolation and loneliness.

So the Miami trip was awesome. I got some sun, did my work obligations and felt grateful every minute of what ended up being a pretty difficult trip. I had a slew of logistical and travel dumpster fires, but honestly, I never stopped feeling grateful the entire time, so it was fantastic.

But the main reason I think I ended up feeling grateful was because during what was a 96-hour trip, I hit a meeting right around the 48-hour mark and it was a perfect and necessary halftime. Because I gotta say… I don’t know how I would have done if I had tried to get sober while living in Miami. It is an awesome city, but there is a wildness to it that rocked my serenity a bit.

Let’s start with drugs, alcohol and the overall partying vibe… Miami has to be one of the top two or three cities for partying, right? Maybe it’s Las Vegas at No. 1 and Miami at No. 2? I think there is a case to be made that Miami is actually No. 1. But either way, it’s up there. I ran on a treadmill overlooking Biscayne Bay and good lord, I couldn’t even count the number of million-dollar yachts where people were lugging cases of beer onto all day. It was out of control.

I also was blown away by the sheer amount of money flowing through that city. I lived in New York City for a few years and I certainly felt the overall sense that wealth was around me. But I never felt it oozing out of every pore of so many people the way Miami felt. And I think in that environment, I would have been a disaster trying to get sober. It would have felt like I was always one good scam on a neighbor away from having enough money to keep drinking and drugging. Or I would have ended up borrowing money from that rich guy up the street who says his job is “a little bit of this and a little bit of that,” not repaid the money and ended up floating in Biscayne Bay. It would not have been good.

And the last thing is that I could not believe how good looking people in Miami are. The men are beautiful. The women are beautiful. The freaking dogs are 10s. I really think a stable family life helped me stay grounded as I tried to get sober, so I couldn’t imagine going to rehab in Miami with a bunch of millionaire male and female models who are social media influencers and party animals. It would have been tough to stay on the road to recovery in that setting for me.

But here’s the thing: When I looked up meetings in Miami, there were lots of them. I found one near my hotel and went, and it was awesome. Did it look like an Abercrombie and Fitch photo shoot that I didn’t belong in? A little bit! But once the meeting started, I realized—as I always do—that these were my people… just very buff and good-looking versions of my people.

The meeting was big and in the middle of a cavernous church, so they had microphones they passed around when it was time to share. I don’t usually love that setup because it can feel like people are public address announcers at a rodeo or something. But this meeting worked pretty well, and I enjoyed the honesty. Several of the people who shared mentioned that they grew up in areas other than Miami and then moved there, then they hit their bottom in Miami. This is not a scientific finding, obviously, but those people who were outsiders did all hint at the idea that Miami helped them get to their bottoms faster. It does seem easier to become both broke and broken in a hurry in that city.

I ended up having a great trip despite some significant travel snafus, and I credit that meeting for quite a bit of why it was successful. I re-centered myself on that Friday night, then mostly stayed that way for the duration of the trip. I came back to Connecticut feeling good, with a slight tan and a good outlook heading into the next week. I did end up feeling a kick in the ass about dropping some weight and getting into better shape, so that was a good thing… but I also had an urge to buy a tiny little poodle and walk around all day with him in a man purse on my side. Hopefully that wears off!

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:

They say that alcoholics have three kinds of memory loss: short-term, long-term, and convenient.

(Credit: AA Grapevine, August 2000, Peter M. from Putnam, Connecticut)

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 spoiler-free review of The White Lotus, Season 3… even if you don’t watch the show, there are a few things that I am going to talk about that might be of interest.

I love The White Lotus. The creator and director, Mike White, does such a good job of skewering the rich while also being honest about how there’s a part of all of us that would like to be wealthy. He also is brilliant at creating characters that we all recognize—even the richest a*****e in the show acts like somebody you’ve met before. It’s uncanny.

I just finished up Season 3, which had its finale on Sunday night. I love the series, but thought this was the weakest season. I loved Season 1 the most because it came out of nowhere and barreled us all over during the pandemic. I think Season 2 might actually be a little better, but I knew what I was in for. And I liked Season 3 a lot; I just thought it was a notch below the other seasons.

The biggest issue I have with Season 3 is that it was trapped in story purgatory. Like so many shows these days, it should have been either half as long or twice as long. What I mean by that is that there were multiple storylines introduced that should have either not been introduced or expanded dramatically because they end up feeling like Mike White gave them short shrift. This season was eight episodes, but it felt like it should have either been six episodes or 15. The season finale was 90 minutes long and yet felt like 5 important scenes were deleted. Nevertheless, I hung on every minute of the show. You can tell a show has hooked you when you have to watch it live every week, rather than three days later.

I’m writing about the show on my sobriety newsletter because there is usually some addiction stuff in the show (that was certainly the case in Season 3, including a nasty relapse). But the thing that I always connect with is how much Mike White likes to delve into the collision between peoples’ morals and their desire for money and prestige. The White Lotus tends to portray the world as if you have to sell your soul in order to be rich, and the show also consistently indicates that that wealthy lifestyle is an addiction itself.

I get it. I’ve flown on an airplane about 200 times in my life, and I have only ever been in first class once. And yet within five minutes of sitting down in those sweet seats up front, I found myself saying, “Get these peasants to the back of the airplane where they belong. And please keep them out of our special bathroom—I don’t want to be around those grotesque animals!” I realized right away that I am not quite spiritually fit enough to be a rich person yet.

I guess my takeaway on this show—and shows like it—is that lifestyle can be a destructive addiction too. Most of the rich people I’ve encountered in life seem to be people who might struggle if they had to go cold turkey on the 1 percent lifestyle. I would throw in one caveat—of the sober rich people I’ve met, I would say that most of them live admirable, service-driven lives. I like to think I would be one of those types of wealthy people… but perhaps I’d still need to sit in the middle seat of the last row of an airplane once-in-a-while to remain grounded!

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:

Then there was the drunk guy who arrived for an intake session with the rehab psychiatrist—constantly snapping his fingers.

The doctor politely inquired, “Why are you doing that?”

“To keep the tigers away!”

“But there aren’t any tigers here.”

“See,” the man said, “it works.”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, August 2000, 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.

Earlier this week, I went to a large meeting that I hadn’t been to recently, and I was surprised that they’d done a significant format change. The meeting had gone from a show of hands to popcorn style, where every person who shares picks the next person to share. The change was made for good reason—at this meeting, there are typically about 75 people and yet there will be long gaps where nobody raises their hand to share. The theory was that this would spark less stretches of silence, and it seems to have worked.

I am a fan of those kinds of meetings, but only if they include the same thing this meeting adopted—that the popcorn style would end with 15 minutes left and they’d go to a show of hands. That way, anybody who doesn’t get picked still has an opportunity to share. I don’t love meetings where it goes around the room or is only popcorn style, because I always worry that someone who really needed to speak would come to a meeting and then not get a chance.

Popcorn style definitely has its downsides. Sometimes popcorn style can mean only a select group of friends gets to share because a clique keeps picking members of that clique. I also think some people would rather not be caught off guard by getting chosen unexpectedly, though they can always say, “I think I’ll pass,” and pick someone else.

This got me thinking about what the best styles of meetings are. So I went through all of the formats I’ve experienced, and I realized that I have been to about 50 different types of meetings. Which is my favorite?

Well, as usual, I found it easier to start with the kinds of meetings that I DON’T like.

I don’t love any meeting where we read an entire section of the Big Book. Those meetings have a purpose, for sure, because it’s a very good way to get knee-deep into the literature. I have read the entire Big Book more times at meetings than sitting at home reading it. But I don’t love when 30-plus minutes of a meeting get swallowed up by just reading out loud. I’ve been at meetings where there are 30 people and we end up with 16 minutes for sharing.

That also applies sometimes to meetings where we read an entire step from the 12 and 12. Again, I’m not at a point in my recovery where I want an entire meeting to be eaten up by reading out loud. With the 12 and 12, there are times when I have read a specific step several times in the same month, and I don’t always love that.

I’ve also found myself shying away from speaker meetings for similar reasons. I do like hearing people share their stories of experience, strength and hope, but I don’t love when the person shares for almost an hour straight. I’ve been to a few speaker meetings that I really enjoyed because they asked the speaker to limit their story to 20-30 minutes, so I’d say I rank that format ahead of open-ended speaker meetings.

One more that I don’t love: when the chairperson can pick any topic they want. I’ve been to meetings where people bring in poems or songs or just randomly pick a topic that’s on their mind, and I am not a fan. I have found that when that happens, sometimes the meeting drifts away from its primary purpose—sobriety—and can turn into a therapy session.

OK, so what do I like?

I like Daily Reflections meetings. The readings are short and sweet, and then the chairperson can share and open it up to the room.

I like meetings where it goes around the room, but saves 15 minutes at the end for anybody who needs to raise their hand to share.

I have been to a few meetings where a speaker shares on a step of their choosing for 10 minutes, then the meeting opens up to others.

I like As Bill Sees It meetings. That book is underrated, in my opinion, and I have only ever been to one meeting where that is the format. I like As Bill Sees It because it is a book of short-ish readings, and I like that it combines readings from official conference-approved literature, with Grapevines, letters and other writings from Bill W.

I guess I would close by throwing out an important caveat—that I actually pretty much love every meeting I have been to. I have almost a 100 percent success rate when I get to a meeting, regardless of the format. So please consider the above thoughts to be like me choosing between amounts of money that I found on the ground. In other words, they’re all pretty damn great.

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:

Typing an email message while tipsy could cause some serious harm. Consider the case of the practicing alky who left the snow-filled streets of Chicago for a vacation in Florida. His wife was on a business trip and was planning to meet him there the following day. When he reached the hotel after several drinks on the plane, he went right to the hotel bar and kept drinking. When he finally went up to his room, he decided to send his wife a quick E-mail. Unable to see the screen clearly, he managed to type the message with one eye closed.

Unfortunately he missed one letter, and his E-mail was directed not to his wife but to an elderly preacher’s wife, whose husband had passed away only days before. When the widow checked out her email, she took one look at the monitor, let out a piercing scream, and fainted. When her family rushed into the room, they saw this note on the screen:

Dearest wife,

Just got checked in. Everything prepared for your arrival tomorrow.

(signed) Your eternally loving husband

P.S. Sure is hot down here.

(Credit: AA Grapevine, June 2000, Jeff 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.

I was at a meeting recently where the topic was cravings and God. Almost immediately, I was like, “Huh? What do those two things have to do with each other?”

Luckily I just sat and listened for awhile before I shared. Because it turned out to be an incredibly valuable combo topic.

I forget sometimes how overwhelming a craving can be for an alcoholic. Don’t ask me how I forget, because I routinely get a craving for peanut butter cups or watching three more episodes of a TV show after my normal bedtime, and I usually succumb to the cravings. So I still struggle with it.

Yet I forget sometimes that I used to get a craving for alcohol or drugs, and then completely buckle under it. The cravings would be so strong, and I had no plan to battle back, and I would just grab a pill bottle or vodka bottle. I had no chance.

As people shared about cravings, I found myself nodding my head and flashing back to those days. And then people would inevitably share about how they don’t have cravings for drugs and alcohol any more, and that they attribute quite a bit of that to their higher power.

By the midpoint of the meeting, my opinion had completely turned around and I was 100 percent in agreement. As much as I would like to think my hard work, good looks and charisma made my cravings go away, it’s simply not true. I for sure played a part in doing the right actions to reduce or eliminate cravings.

But cravings are mysterious and illogical, and I don’t think any amount of action could completely wipe away the strong ones I used to feel. And yet, they’re gone. So I know something bigger than me played an important part in letting the air out of those cravings a bit.

That’s probably going to be the formula on any future cravings, too. I have been struggling with late-night eating, and it’s because I get a craving for something and I last two minutes trying to fight it. And for the record, the cravings I get for late-night food are not for apple slices and lettuce—it’s cookies, donuts, peanut butter cups and other terrible-but-delicious garbage. It’s probably going to take action on my part, plus reliance upon something bigger than me, to adjust. I’m working on it.

In the meantime, all this talk about peanut butter cups is causing quite a craving…

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 always wanted to control everything. But as an alcoholic, I realize I’m uniquely unqualified to rule the world.”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, June 2000, Dan S. from New York, 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.

I just got back from an awesome trip to San Francisco with my wife. She’d always wanted to go there, so I gave her a trip to San Fran for Christmas.

We did all the tourist stuff, including riding a trolley car and touring Alcatraz. But while I was there, we also took note of something called Waymo. Waymo is a driverless car service, similar to Uber just without a human in the driver’s seat. On our first day there, we kept noticing dozens of these cars taking people around, the front wheel spinning and the turn signals coming on without an actual human doing it.

For that first day, we were pretty startled by it. But by the second day, when a friend from the San Fran area recommended we try it at least once, we decided to give it a shot. So I downloaded the app, put in my credit card info and booked one.

The car pulled up that morning and my wife and I both gave each other a look, like “Here goes!” It’s the same look you might give a friend right before you jump out of an airplane.

For the first two minutes, it was jarring. A robotic female voice comes on and tells you to buckle in and enjoy the ride. There is a message warning you against trying to grab the steering wheel. And then we were off.

It took some getting used to. But I was stunned how quickly we both just started looking out the window and enjoying the ride. The car had a computer screen in the middle where you could see all approaching cars, people, squirrels, everything, and the car never once seemed confused or on track to drive into a ditch. I was quite impressed.

I couldn’t help but think of my journey to find a steady higher power. I have one. But the relationship always feels tenuous, and every time I try to explain it to someone, I don’t even know how. It works for me but it’s a little confusing sometimes. Part of me wishes I would just stumble into a church and a religion somehow. But it hasn’t happened yet. The journey continues.

There’s the obvious comparison, that life is one big driverless car and no matter how much we try to grab the wheel and steer for ourselves, it doesn’t usually work out well for us. For me to be happy, I need to let go of so many things, and I need to accept the world as it is, not how I want it to be. Anything other than that is pretty miserable and also inevitable—the more I try to squeeze the wheel myself, the more pain I am in, and also the more I realize that it is a pointless exercise, anyway.

But then there is the concept of struggling with finding a higher power. I’m relatively certain that of the alcoholics I know, a large percentage of them scuffle on some level to figure out their higher power, how to rely upon it and how to understand that higher power. So that means that I and many of my fellow sober people are on a constant quest to click our higher powers into place.

My issue is, I know that and yet I barely try. I pray once a week, usually less. I don’t attend church regularly. I don’t spend much time asking spiritual friends how their higher power works. I do the bare minimum to lead a happy life. And honestly, I haven’t felt much pain because of that. My life is pretty great. So I feel like it is working quite well for me.

But going back to the driverless car example… my Waymo showed up and literally took the wheel. I was able to sit in the back and surrender. But think about the work that I did to land in that place. I investigated how it works. I asked a trusted friend about them. I downloaded the app. I filled out the information they needed. I paid for it. I booked it. I did a lot of work before the car picked us up.

To go back to the higher power situation, it’d be the equivalent of me seeing a Waymo drive past and then shrugging my shoulders when one didn’t magically appear in front of me to drive me around for the day. I had to invest in it in order to be able to connect with it.

That has really sat with me for the past few days, though I’m still trying to figure out how it will translate into my life. The one thing I can tell you is, if you struggle with a higher power, you might want to fly cross-country immediately and get yourself a driverless car.

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 think alcoholism is contagious. I know I caught it after going to a few AA meetings.”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, June 2000, Alan M. from Melbourne, Florida)

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

I’ve never read anything written by Leo Tolstoy, the legendary Russian author, mostly because I’ve never felt smart enough to sit down with any of his writings. I stick to basketball boxscores and previews of the NFL draft.

But I was listening to a podcast recently where a Tolstoy fan began laying out his views on death, and those thoughts really hit me hard. The podcast host talked about how Tolstoy wrote that people who fear death aren’t actually scared of dying—they’re scared of the life that they led.

When I sat with that, I found it mind-blowing. I used to be terrified of death. What happens when we die? Will my kids be ok? Will it hurt? What all will I miss out on?

Fear of dying is normal, and it’s probably the oldest fear that humans—or any animal, really—have ever had. In many ways, we’re wired to fight to survive and procreate, which means we’re always going to be hardwired to have a fear of death. I get that, and I still have it on some level.

But it’s different now. When I found out I had Stage 4 cancer a year ago, I went through the entire thought process of the possibility that I wouldn’t live. And to my surprise, I was fine with it. Did I want to die? Absolutely not. I wanted to fight like hell, and I did fight like hell, so as of today, I am cancer free.

But I wasn’t terrified. I didn’t live my life crippled by that fear. In fact, I went the other way. When death was more on the table than ever before, it made me want to be grateful for every day. I credit most of that to sobriety, which has a constant emphasis on staying present. I used to use drugs and alcohol to escape the past, the present and the future.

I also think a significant portion of my fear of dying from before was the idea that deep down, I was scared that I hadn’t done enough with my life. That I would be leaving the world too soon.

I don’t feel that way any more. I have lots and lots and lots of desire to do lots and lots and lots more things in my time on Earth. But I now feel content with how I lived my life and what I have accomplished. I do get bothered by the idea that if I got hit by a bus tomorrow, or cancer took me out a year from now, I would miss out on some heartbreaking parts of my kids’ lives. That’s why I fought so hard.

But professionally, I feel great about what I’ve done. Personally, I am proud of the growth I’ve made, the people I’ve helped along the way and my 25-plus year relationship with my wife. It’s a big reason why I lay my head down most nights without any anxiety about what I need to still accomplish in my life.

Do I want to accomplish more? Absolutely. I feel as driven as I ever have. But my acceptance of myself and the world is at an all-time high, so my fear of death no longer haunts me. I feel exactly how Tolstoy described. Will I be diving headfirst in more of Tolstoy’s writings? Probably… but not until the NFL draft is over.

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:

An usher in a posh movie theater noticed a drunk sprawled across three seats. “Sorry, sir,” the usher said, “but you’re only allowed one seat.”

The man groaned but didn’t budge.

The usher became impatient. “Sir, if you don’t get up from there, I’m going to have to call the manager.”

Again, the drunk only moaned, which infuriated the usher, who turned and marched back up the aisle in search of the manager.

In a few moments, both the usher and the manager returned and stood over the man. “All right, buddy,” the manager said, “what’s your name?”

“Sam,” the drunk moaned.

“Where did you come from, Sam?”

With pain in his voice, Sam slurred, “The balcony.”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, June 2000, 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.

Greetings, welcome to March 5, which is National Cheesedoodle Day and National Multiple Personalities Day. I have about 29 different insensitive jokes about the idea of those two things being celebrated on the same day. But I will use restraint of pen and tongue and not say them out loud…

Brace yourself, I heard a life-changing phrase the other night at a meeting.

The topic was acceptance of the world as it is, not how it should be. Or, as we commonly say in recovery, accepting life on life’s terms.

Here’s the saying from the other night: Get rid of the word “should” from your vocabulary, and every time you want to use the word should, instead say, “I cannot accept.”

Try it once. Think about some of the times you might use the word should, then slide in that phrase. A couple of examples:

“You should think about hitting the gym more often.”

That changes to: “I cannot accept that you don’t go to the gym more often.”

“You should use my car repair shop instead of yours.”

That changes to: “I cannot accept that you don’t use my repair shop instead of yours.”

“You should call me more often.”

That changes to: “I cannot accept that you don’t call me more often.”

For me, that hammers home the self-centered way that we throw around the word “should.” It’s me imposing my will on you, and when I use the word should, I think it often comes with strings attached. If I recommend my car repair shop instead of yours, and you don’t switch, then there’s a decent chance I will end up with a small resentment or at least feel a little annoyed that you dismissed my opinion.

Now think about big examples. Instead of car repair shop, imagine telling someone “You should get sober now” or “You should think about getting a divorce.” Imagine how sharp those comments would feel if you delivered them.

I also ended up thinking about how selfish that phrase is, and how it doesn’t mesh with the way I want to live my life. I don’t really want to be in the business of telling people what to do, what to watch, what to eat, when to go to the gym.

Do I still do it? Yeah, sometimes. But not like I used to. The longer I have been sober, the more I realized how pointless opinions usually are, especially if someone didn’t ask you for yours. And the truth is, how often does someone say to you, “Do you think I should get sober?” or “Do you think I should switch repair shops?” In actuality, I bet 90-95 percent of the time, you and I aren’t asked that, but we inject it, without somebody asking. And that’s where I get into trouble.

The reason I love the concept of “I cannot accept” is that I don’t think I have ever said that to someone, and I hope I never will, because it’s so aggressive. The word “should” feels like it is a gentle word, and that’s probably why we use it when we are trying to dictate something to someone else. “I cannot accept” is direct and aggressive, which is probably why it sounds so much worse when you sub that in.

For the past 48 hours, I keep thinking about how often I lob that phrase out there. It’s definitely less than I used to. But hopefully I can cut that down to zero because I really should stay out of peoples’ business.

Wait, strike that… I CANNOT ACCEPT that I don’t always stay out of other peoples’ business. That’s better.

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:

When a woman called the local police station to report that she had found a drunk in her cellar, the police sergeant advised, “Make a trail of drinks from the basement to the yard and wait for the drunk to follow them outside.”

A little while later the woman called back: “I did what you told me. Now I’ve got two drunks in my cellar.”

(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.

I went to a great meeting the other day, where I heard a newish guy speak about his experience, strength and hope. He did a great job.

Just one problem: Somebody sitting near me reeked of alcohol. Was it deodorant? Aftershave? Mouthwash? I don’t know, but I don’t think so. It smelled very much like alcohol, and I had a hell of a time smelling that for an hour.

I should say that I’ve smelled alcohol many, many times over the years, and it is mildly unpleasant. But I haven’t had it up my nose for an hour straight since my last drink, in winter of 2008. So the intensity of it, while listening to a story of drunken craziness, was a tough 1-2 punch.

Another thing that hit me was that as a sober person, the smell is actually kind of gross. I guess it would have an appeal if I was still drinking because I’d want the side effects of a drink. But there’s a reason they don’t make car air fresheners or candles that are called “A pint of vodka” or “Old bar-scented”—I found it to be quite gross.

On the way home, I had a little laugh to myself about how we often say to avoid people, places and things in early recovery. But I would add smells to that list, too, because it was a very visceral trigger for me that night. I didn’t want to drink; I just felt rattled and too close to alcohol.

I could tell it had gotten into my psyche because I could smell alcohol in my nostrils for about 24 hours afterward. I knew I wasn’t actually smelling alcohol, but it’s like my mind trapped the smell in there. It was strange to be smelling something that you knew you weren’t smelling, but I have that issue sometimes at pharmacies, too. I spent so much time getting pills over the years that the smell of pharmacies and pill bottles still can hit me and cause me to have a Pavlovian response. It can be strange to be at Walgreens buying peanut butter Easter bunnies and suddenly have an urge to buy pills, but it happens.

I also had a drunk dream later that weekend, and I rarely have those any more. I completely blame the smell of that drunk guy at the meeting, because it still seemed to be in my head all weekend. I went to another meeting a few days later, still thinking about how much I dreaded that smell, and I ran into a sober friend of mine who works out a lot. Apparently he had worked out before the meeting, because he was smelling a little gamey, like an old gym sock.

On the way home, I had to chuckle thinking about how I guess I would rather smell BO than liquor… but maybe my nose could get a few days off from smelling anything at meetings?

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:

An inebriated lady was weaving down the street carrying a box with perforations in the lid. A friend stopped her and said, “My word, what have you got in that box?”

“It’s a mongoose,” said the lady, with a hiccup.

“What on earth for?” said the friend.

“Well, you know how it is with me. I’m not very drunk now but I will be soon, and when I am, I see snakes and I’m scared of ‘em, and that’s what I got the mongoose for—to protect me.”

“But,” said the friend, “those are imaginary snakes.”

“That’s all right,” said the woman. “This is an imaginary mongoose.”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, April 2000, Diana L. from Tulelake, California)

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.

A sober acquaintance of mine once shared at a meeting that he was hoping people could pray for his friend, who had recently relapsed after deciding to go out drinking for one night—and one night only. You can probably guess whether the relapse was limited to one night only.

Anyway, this guy shared that his friend (we’ll call him Billy) hit a nearby bar for a few drinks. Then he went to another bar for a few more drinks. Then he went to a strip club, where he had a few more drinks and also did some cocaine. Unfortunately, the cocaine was laced with fentanyl and Billy overdosed in the bar.

Lucky for him, he was revived somehow within a minute of overdosing, and he shook off the cobwebs sitting at the bar. Then… he bought the entire bar a round of drinks to celebrate that he didn’t just die.

That is exactly the kind of drunken preposterousness that seems made up… but us alcoholics can all empathize. To be honest, when I heard that story, my first thought was that it made total sense, that not dying of an overdose is a reason to celebrate with more substance abuse.

That story was fresh in my head when I brought a meal into a local homeless shelter and there was a flurry of activity. Turns out, a man overdosed and passed out on the toilet in the men’s room. The staff used NARCAN to bring him back, and he came roaring back to life… and was furious with the staff. He said he was just sleeping, not using anything. I couldn’t believe how mad he was at the staff, saying they overreacted, that he was just asleep.

Then the EMTs arrived and the guy only got more and more angry. The lead EMT listened to him spew against the staff, using some very choice language, and she eventually jumped in and say that he should be grateful that the staff cared enough to try to save his life. He reiterated, even louder this time, that he was fine, that he was just dozing off in the bathroom.

He eventually waved off the emergency crew and told the staff to piss off, that he wasn’t staying at the shelter that night. He grabbed some food from us and then left the shelter, saying he would just walk around outside all night.

I can’t say for sure… but I didn’t buy the sleeping story. I used that same bathroom and it was about 41 degrees in there, so I don’t think anybody could take a quick nap while sitting on a cold toilet seat. My guess is, he did indeed overdose and was just pointing the finger at everybody but himself as he ranted and raved. And then he let the shelter door slam behind him in anger as he waded out into 20 degree weather, all while professing a pretty hard to believe story.

Again, another example of a story that would be very confusing to a regular person but makes perfect sense to an alcoholic. It’s a good reminder of just how absurd the active alcoholic’s mind can be. Thank god I don’t have to live like that any more.

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.

One of the biggest hurdles for me in sobriety is getting comfortable and putting myself on cruise control. I’ll often catch myself thinking, “I should start to eat better” or “I should go through the steps again,” and then the thought goes away. Then it comes back the next day, and I’ll shoo it away again, and I won’t do whatever had been on my mind.

That’s why it hit me yesterday at the gym when I read a sign on the bulletin board that said, “You are what you repeatedly do.” I freaking love that phrase, because I find it to be true. I also find it to be one of my biggest whiffs in life, and I suspect that most people would agree that they’re guilty of that, too.

I remember early on in sobriety I turned to caffeine—heavy, heavy doses of caffeine. I’d drink a 2-liter of soda in the morning on my hour-and-a-half drive to work. It would get me hyped for the day but come on, 64 ounces of soda before 10 am? Oof. I remember being bloated and too wired most days, but I kept doing it anyway. I remember thinking to myself, “God, soda isn’t great for you, and this amount of soda must be horrible for your body. I should stop.” I also remember somebody commenting to me that I drink a ton of soda, and I immediately said, “Nah, it probably seems that way. But I really try to avoid it.”

That was a total lie, or at least me saying out loud a wish I had. I remember being embarrassed that I had a reputation as a Diet Coke guzzler, and yet I didn’t change my behavior for a long time (I no longer drink soda, for the record, but it took 10 years). I was what I repeatedly did—I was a soda guzzler.

Right now, I go to the gym about 6 days a week, sometimes 7, and I work hard at my job, I pay my bills and I get to about 4-5 12-step meetings per week. So I am all of those things because I repeatedly do them. But I also eat about 800 calories of cookies and crap after 8 pm every night, so I am that, too. I don’t want to be that guy. I try to rationalize and say I am just about to stop eating all of that stuff… then I keep doing it. So I am what I repeatedly do every night, which is hammer the snack cabinet. Until I actually repeatedly don’t crush the chips and cookies, I am a guy who overdoes it every night. I wish I wasn’t. I vow to someday change my behavior. But I’m not guy that yet, because I repeatedly do it.

So with that in mind, my suggestion to anybody hoping for a change is to stop hoping, and start acting.

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 patient was lying in bed, still groggy from the effects of the recent operation. His doctor came in, looking very glum.

“I can’t be sure what’s wrong with you,” the doctor said. “I think it’s the drinking.”

“All right,” said the patient. “Can we get an opinion from a doctor who’s sober?”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, March 2000, Matt W.)

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.

One of the things I always say about my active addiction days was that it was never boring. Terrible? Yes. Potentially deadly? Yes. Financially and spiritually catastrophic? Yep. Heartbreaking to everybody who cared about me? Yes.

But boring? No.

I was thinking about that the other day at a meeting where we read a recent Daily Reflections passage that was about freedom from alcohol and drugs, which gave us the freedom to do so many cool things.

I found that not having to drink and do drugs every day was the ultimate relief. After not being able to stop for years, I suddenly had put together one week, then two weeks, then a month, then two months of nonstop abstinence, and it felt freaking great. That was the “freedom from” part. It was awesome.

Then I hit a point at about three or four months sober where I was like, “Is this it? Who am I? What are my goals?” It was a natural moment that many addicts have, where the rush of early sobriety wears off a bit and now you’re supposed to pay your bills on time, show up at work every day and lead a normal life. The adrenaline of hustling to find drugs, pay for them, take them, then cover up your using had occupied so much time and energy that suddenly that void could be felt. And I felt it.

This was the “freedom to” part that I needed to figure out. What was I going to do with all that time and energy now? I ended up figuring out that I wanted to pour myself about 20 percent more in to work, 20 percent more into family, amp up my recovery efforts and also pick up some hobbies. I started really getting into sports, movies and TV shows to occupy my time.

But what about the “who do I want to be?” part of things? That was a longer process. I went through various phases where I tried not swearing for awhile, tried a bunch of churches to see if I could get into that, tried the workaholic thing for awhile and various other incarnations of who I was trying to become. I eventually landed on the version of me that exists now. I’m still into lots of the same stuff (sports, movies, TV). Church didn’t quite work out. And holy s**t, I swear as much as ever.

The point of this entry is just that it dawned on me how hard early sobriety can be, followed by that chunk of the first year where most of the fires are out but now you need to rebuild. That process can be tough, and it takes awhile to find your footing in this new life. If you’re in that place, I’d say stick around and give it a chance. The reality is, as tricky as that space can be, it’s also the ultimate “freedom to” chance, where you can kind of be whoever you want to be. And you can probably swear quite a bit, if that’s what you want!

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

On New Year’s Eve, Judy stood up at the bar full of alcoholics and said, “At the stroke of midnight, I want everybody to be standing next to the one person who has made your life worth living.”

The bartender was nearly crushed to death.

(Credit: AA Grapevine, March 2000, Dave S.)

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.

One of the things I think about a lot these days is, am I still growing? Am I getting more sober? Less sober? Staying the same? Less sober is certainly bad, but standing still isn’t great, either. I always say that recovery is like walking up a down escalator—even if you stand in place, you’ll be at the bottom pretty quickly.

I’ve been sober since 2008, and I know I am more sober than I was then. Same with 2009, 2010, probably even 2011. But I am more sober today than I was in 2018? 2020? Six months ago? That’s hard question to answer, because I think if I have grown, it’s incremental. Instead of a 50 percent improvement in Year One, I’m probably looking at yields of 1-5% per year these days, and that’s harder to notice.

Well, I had a day at the gym last week where I did notice quite a bit of growth. I was doing bench press beside a short, stocky guy when a friend—we’ll call him Fred—came over and said hello. We talked for a minute and then Fred drifted over and started working out about 25 feet away. In between sets, he kept up the conversation with me by yelling across the gym. The gym has music playing (usually AC/DC, Guns N Roses and that kind of heavier music). Fred’s voice was moderately loud, I will admit. I think I might have mostly just been listening, but there’s a chance I yelled something back at him.

At a certain point during this conversation, while I was doing a set of bench press, I heard the guy beside me get up and say, “Shush! I’m trying to lift over here.” And I heard Rob stop talking and say, “Sorry, my bad.”

I didn’t take offense to it, though my first thought was, “Hey, this is a public gym with music blaring. Are you studying for the SATs or working out?”

My friend, Fred, on the other hand, began to slowly lose his mind in anger over the next hour. It started as a simmer, with him exchanging a look with me that indicated he was not handling the shush well.

Then I went to the other side of the gym, away from the shusher, and Fred followed me. He was pissed. He said he felt like a wimp for saying sorry, and then he ran through a list of things he’d wished he had said. Then he just ranted about how dare that guy tell him to be quiet.

For a full hour, he got angrier and angrier until he couldn’t contain himself. He started jumping up and down like a boxer or UFC fighter might before stepping into the ring for a fight. He eventually told me, “I ought to go over there and shove a weight bench up that guy’s ass.” The look in his eyes told me he was serious, and I said, “Hey, it’s not worth going to jail over. If you need to shove a weight bench up someone’s ass, do it to me.” I quickly corrected myself and said, “Actually, maybe don’t shove anything up anybody’s anything. Let’s cool down.”

He eventually left that day without violating anybody with a weight bench. But it’s been a week, and he’s still boiling about this guy.

I bring all of that up because I was struck by how much the old me would have been really bothered by it, the same way Fred was. It would have pissed me off that I didn’t say anything to the guy, and then I would have been livid for days—or months or years—by not telling that guy to shove it.

I actually had a few moments where I looked at Fred and just appreciated that I don’t have to live like that any more—what a gift! And it answered for me that question of whether I’ve grown or not, because I honestly think even a few years ago, I might have still had a serious run-in with the shusher. I know not wanting to shove a weight bench where the sun doesn't shine isn’t exactly the greatest measure of serenity… but I’ll take it.

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

A drunk goes into a bar. The bartender says, “Boy, you look like you need a drink!” The man says, “Okay” and gets the drink, but he doesn’t have the money to pay for it, so the bartender kicks him out.

The man returns an hour later, even drunker, and the bartender explodes. “I kicked you out earlier. I don’t want to see your face in here again.” The drunk says, “Why, I’ve never been in here before!”

“Oh really?” says the bartender. “Then you must have a double.”

“Okay,” says the drunk, “and not too much ice.”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, March 2000, Steve P. from Sarasota, FL)

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.

If you listened to parts 1 and 2 of this podcast series, you heard me discuss finding out I had cancer, then starting chemotherapy, then having surgery to remove the tumors. There were some dark days—very dark days—during that six-month period. But for the most part, I couldn’t have asked for a better outcome as I entered the end of November with six more rounds of chemo to go.

I had a breather between the surgery and the start of the last six rounds of chemo, and the time flew by. I love the phrase, “Don’t live in the wreckage of your future,” but I caught myself counting down the days till chemo started again. I was dreading it.

Here’s the thing about chemo at the hospital: There is no way you walk in there and end up going, “You know what? Today was an awesome day of chemotherapy!” It’s miserable. The process is miserable. The other people are often miserable. They do the best they can to keep you warm and happy, but chemo is chemo.

People ask me what it’s like, so I will get very granular about it. The first thing they usually did with me was access my port, which involves stabbing a small needle into my chest for the day. It’s never pleasant when they puncture that area but it just kind of ended up being like a shot that stays in your chest.

Then they start putting fluids into you. I usually started with a steroid and an anti-nausea medication to try to get out front of the actual chemo.

Then they come in with the chemo. My nurse would always have a full hazmat suit on, with gloves and a plastic mask over her face the entire time. It was such a jarring visual because my nurses would be protected in case they spilled any of the chemo. Meanwhile, the chemo was going INTO me. Think about that for a second. They’re worried about it getting on their skin, and they’re injecting it straight into my chest. It was always a haunting thing to see.

The first six rounds of chemo, the actual chemotherapy part was about 4 hours of constant poison draining into me. This six-round cycle, they reduced it a bit to 2 hours of chemo. I remember being excited because I thought maybe the side effects would be better with such a reduced amount of chemotherapy.

Not so fast. From Day One of this round of chemo, I found the side effects to be unbearable and worse and worse every time. My doctor explained even though the doses were smaller, I was still getting a heavy batch of very strong chemo, and that the effects of chemo are often cumulative. Which means that Round 7 is worse than Round 6, and Round 8 would likely be worse than Round 7.

I found that to be the case, in a big way this time. The chemo caused me to have significant headaches, which flared up especially bad when I was around noise and people. I also started getting bloody noses this time around, though my doctor thought that was partially due to chemo and partially due to the dry air of winter. I felt nauseous for long stretches of time—I never threw up or really felt close to vomiting, but I felt unease in my guts pretty much all the time. And last but not least, the neuropathy has gotten to be pretty brutal. For me, that meant serious tingling in my feet, hands and face when I got near anything cold. That certainly was the case when I would be outside in 20 degree weather. But I also recoiled the other morning when I woke up and grabbed my laptop computer… just that room temperature computer made me feel like I stuck a screwdriver into a light socket.

The cycle for chemo was usually that I went in on a Wednesday, then went home with a pack on that kept pumping chemo into me for another 44 hours or so. Then they’d remove the pump and I would stop taking the steroid that seemed to muffle some of the symptoms. So days 1-3 would be rough but not the roughest—days 4-7 or so usually got worse and worse.

That usually gave me a general cycle of one bad week, then one good week, then start over again. But during Rounds 7-12 over the past few months, I found that it was pretty much 14 rough days, then you do it again. I didn’t find much relief, and that’s where recovery comes into the picture a little bit.

I am an alcoholic and a drug addict. I sought comfort for years with drugs and alcohol. Sometimes it was to sooth physical discomfort, but other times, it was to sooth mental discomfort. So I really started to struggle in December when I couldn’t find any relief. I still hurt from the surgery, and the chemo was getting worse and worse, and I had spent six straight months battling cancer. I wanted relief, even just for a short amount of time.

But the relief came a different way. I doubled down on getting to meetings, and I found relief there. It wasn’t the same kind of instantaneous buzz that wipes out the bad feelings. It was more methodical and slow-building, but it worked.

I also helped to launch a group of sober people who take food into a homeless shelter once a month, and every Thursday at a smaller warming center. I found tremendous relief there, too, because it really takes you outside yourself. These are people who are hurting, sometimes because of substance abuse, and you’re able to bring them some comfort for an evening. I got a lot out of that.

So I kept inching along with my chemo, and I took a blood test in mid-December that would show if the cancer had spread elsewhere. We knew my liver and rectal areas were clear. But my doctors couldn’t say for sure that cancer cells hadn’t spread out anywhere else.

I had gotten a preview that the test results were good. But on Dec. 31, I met with my oncologist for the first time in a month or two. We sat down and went through the plan for the remaining few rounds of chemo, and then I asked him what my status was, officially. And he said, “As far as we can tell, you are cancer free.”

The words hit me pretty hard. It was a weird feeling to know that the most agonizing cancer treatments were up ahead for me… and yet I was cancer free. But he explained that the last few rounds were precautionary treatments, just to make sure we got it, and I understood that. I don’t want to get to the 1-yard line and not punch it in for the touchdown.

So last week I went in for my final round, and two days later, they took the chemo pump out for the last time. I felt horrible, so it was a strange feeling walking out those hospital doors for what I hope is the last time. I felt like celebrating but absolutely did not want to celebrate. But the overall feeling was awesome. I’d made it. I was cancer free.

It’s interesting how I am feeling today, though. This sounds bizarre to say, but life with cancer was quite simple. I had one big goal every day—fight cancer. It gave me a specific sense of purpose and motivation every day, that I was battling this big thing. And I’ll admit, I have always responded well when there was one big fight in front of me. I get all juiced up and ready to rumble, and then I rumble.

What’s tricky is that I now feel a little bit of a hangover, as strange as that sounds. I don’t think that’s uncommon for addicts like me. When I got sober, there was a huge part of me that was so sick and tired of living the way I was living—I was suffering pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization every single day and wanted out so bad.

And yet… once I got sober and paid my bills on time and wasn’t chasing drugs and alcohol all day, there was a part of me that felt like I had a giant void in me. What would I fill it with?

That’s on my mind right now. I think I have enough spirituality in my system that I don’t need to find a new life-threatening battle to give me purpose. But I am keeping an eye on it, and connecting within recovery will be the key.

The fight is over. All is quiet on the western New England front for me. I was at a meeting the other day where someone said that if your ass falls off, you need to pick it up and get to a meeting, and I couldn’t help but laugh at how close I came to actually having to find a second seat for my cancerous ass that fell off.

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

I was invited to a fight the other night, and an AA business meeting broke out.

(Credit: AA Grapevine, Feb. 2000, Michael S. from 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.

Welcome to part 2 of my 3-part series on facing one of the toughest challenges of my life and my sobriety: finding out I had Stage 4 cancer in April. In part 1, which I linked to here, I talked about starting out on chemo and trying to juggle sobriety with all the other stuff going on in my life.

Part 1 of the recovery journey was tough but it went well. The chemo worked. They had seen significant damage to the tumors in my liver and rectal area, and my doctors were encouraged about my overall response to chemo. So that bode well for me.

But now, I had a massive surgery scheduled for the end of September. I knew it was a massive surgery. I knew it was going to be hard. I knew I had support. I knew I’d be down for the count in a big way, for possibly months. And yet… it was brutal.

The day of the surgery, we had to be at the hospital by about 5 am. The surgery was scheduled for seven hours. One surgeon was going to cut about 20 percent of my liver out. The other surgeon would cut out my rectal tumor. It would take all day.

I went under that day and woke up seven hours later, and I was extremely out of it. I would be having a conversation and just fall asleep mid-sentence. It was bizarre.

But one huge thing registered no matter what my state of mind from the anesthesia: my rectal surgeon had somehow managed to not have to do a colostamy bag. That was a mini miracle. I had been prepping for a bag for months, knowing that I would have to have my whole system rewired for a few months. I had begrudgingly accepted that it was in my future, but it was the absolute worst fear of mine. I just couldn’t get my head around having a colostamy bag.

So that was the great news.

But things went south pretty quickly. On Thursday and Friday in the hospital, I was able to drink some apple juice and water and other clear fluids. But still no food—it had been about four days without anything to eat. My doctor on Friday assured me I’d be eating cheeseburgers any day now.

Well, that day didn’t come for awhile. I had a nasty, nasty weekend. I had 59 staples from my stomach to my chest holding me together from the incision, and they also had to do a liver drain, which was a plastic grenade-shaped bottle coming directly out of my liver. Apparently the liver gets hyperactive after a surgery, so excess fluid is produced and has to be drained.

By Friday night, I was starting to feel really bad. I had developed an ileus, which essentially means your digestive system stopped working. Mine was completely dormant. They couldn’t hear any of the normal gurgles and digestive noises, and I started to feel my stomach get bigger and bigger. Nothing was moving through my system, and it hurt so bad. By the middle of the night on Friday, I needed a nurse to come in and stick a tube down my nose into my stomach to drain everything. For the next five days, I had a plastic container that just filled with digestive grossness as my body struggled to start back up.

It got really dark and scary for me during those few days. The nights were horrific. No sleep. Constant pain. I had wires and cords coming out of everywhere on me, so I could barely move. Those were some of the worst nights of my life. I didn’t want to die… but if you told me I could go into a coma for a month till my body heals, I would have signed the papers in a heartbeat. It really started to break my spirit in a scary way.

But on Monday morning, things started to turn around. I got some better nursing care than I had gotten from the weekend shift, and I had lots of sober friends stopping by and scheduling Zoom meetings to try to keep me engaged. So I ultimately pulled through.

One big thing I want to talk about was pain management through all this. I was in tremendous pain, but I was declining pain medication as much as possible. My nurse and my family eventually cornered me and said, “If you don’t take pain medication, you might set back your own recovery. You cannot be in agony all day.” So I started on a morphine pump and some other narcotics, and I took them as prescribed. I guess they helped, but honestly, I was in so much pain that it felt pointless to take them. I was very leery about the whole narcotic thing because opioids are a huge reason why I got an all-expenses pain trip to rehab back in 2008. They were my main drug of choice, though “all of them” might be a better answer for what I used to do.

On Tuesday or Wednesday of that week, I was really on the upswing. I was walking around and they were hearing my system starting back up again. I still couldn’t eat or drink anything but I felt like I was on the right path. And by the end of the week, they were saying I could come home. As an added bonus, when I was about an hour away from leaving the hospital, one of the surgeons came in and said as far as the tests were showing, they had gotten all the cancer out. It looked like there was nothing else cancerous in those two areas.

So when I walked out of the hospital, I was flying high… even though I wasn’t high. I declined painkillers leaving the hospital, and I was so glad I did. I definitely suffered a little bit more than a regular civilian might have. But I also didn’t have to worry about flaring up the allergy again—I have no idea what will happen if I take that first drink or drug, so I didn’t really want to chance it here.

For the next six weeks, I just tried to heal. They pulled the liver drain out a week or so later, and it was about as excruciating as anything I’ve gone through. It felt like somebody was paper cutting my entire midsection as they yanked this long tube out of there. It took me an hour of laying down in the doctor’s office before I could walk out of there.

And the next day, over the course of about 10 minutes, a nurse pulled each one of those 59 staples out of my midsection. I’ll never forget the clink-clink-clink-clink over and over again, 59 times.

But I walked out of the office that day feeling like I had turned a corner. The recovery was longgg—my midsection still hurts four months later—and painful. But I did recover.

Now I had one more big hurdle in front of me to finish treatment: 12 more weeks of chemotherapy.

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 comes home after a couple of hours spent drinking in her favorite tavern. As she falls through the doorway, her husband snaps at her, “What’s the big idea coming home half drunk?”

The woman replies, “I’m sorry, honey, I ran out of money.”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, Feb. 2000, Shirlene)

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 want to try something a little different over the next week or so. I’m going to write a three-part series about what I have been battling over the last eight months: Stage 4 cancer, while trying to stay sober.

Part 1 is going to be about finding out I have cancer, and then figuring out how to juggle treatment with an active sobriety program. Part 2 will be about the massive surgery I had this fall. And Part 3 will be about where I’m at today. Trust me when I say that this story has a scary beginning but a happy ending.

In March, I went in for my yearly physical. The verdict was tremendous—I was in the best shape of my adult life, and by every metric, it looked like my overall health had improved greatly over the previous five years. I was going to more 12-step meetings than ever, and I had started therapy and gotten my mental health to a really good place. At the end of the appointment, I mentioned to my doctor that I had seen some blood in the toilet a few times. He said it was probably a polyp of some kind, and recommended that I get the colonoscopy he told me to get at the previous year’s physical. I swear I listen better than ever to advice… but I do usually need to be told twice before it gets through the brain barricades I have built.

So I had a colonoscopy in late March, and within five minutes of me waking up, the doctor walked in and said, “I’m sorry. You have cancer, and it’s bad.” It was quite jarring to have a doctor make such a bold declaration. Usually they him-haw and say maybe it’s this thing, or maybe this other thing, and we’ll have to do some testing to figure out what’s going on. Not this time.

I was in shock walking to the car with my wife. But I didn’t feel scared. I don’t know if it was still the anesthesia tamping down my emotions, but I didn’t start catastrophizing.

But later that afternoon, I did start to ponder my own mortality, and I felt a little sorry for myself. I didn’t get to a meeting that night because I wanted to sulk. Looking back, I think the problem had a little to do with me being shallow. I kept thinking of all the cancers, I get rectal cancer? Couldn’t it have been a cooler cancer, like a brain tumor or lung cancer? Nope, I was going to die from my ass falling off, and I was embarrassed about that.

The good news is, I can feel right away now when I am starting to sink into that warm bath we call self pity, and I know the repercussions… and they’re not good. So the next night I made sure to hit a meeting, and I also told a few close friends. I felt like even though it was early in the process, I wanted to stay current with my connections in my inner circle.

I ended up having some more scans and finding out that the cancer had spread from my rectal area to my liver. So it counted as Stage 4 cancer, and at my first appointment with my oncologist, he said somebody in my situation typically has a 40 percent survival rate. I gulped a little bit at my chances, but I still felt good.

I started chemotherapy in April, and I made a key decision: I had to keep my spirit up. I could tell right away that the medication they were putting into me was a huge part of this fight, but my attitude was very, very important to whether I survived this thing or not. I had to cultivate that, so I pushed myself on three important things.

One was that I was going to continue going to the gym every day, even if I felt terrible. I had to keep that as a daily habit. I’ve found that there is a direct connection in my brain between physical activity and optimism—I’m moving forward and not letting physical stuff keep me stationary, and that impacts my overall sense of moving forward with everything else in my life. Move a muscle, change a thought, as the old sober saying goes.

The second decision was to get to as many meetings as possible. It got a little dicey being able to drive myself to meetings, but I had friends who offered rides and I often took them up on those offers. Meetings are spiritual places, and you can’t spell spiritual without the word “spirit.” I felt an injection of hope and fight every time I went to a meeting.

And the third was that I would continue to push myself at work—it gave me purpose and I like what I do for a living, so I kept plowing forward.

So that’s what I did. I had six rounds of chemo in late spring and early summer. I’d go in on a Wednesday for about six hours of a very high dose of chemotherapy drugs, then I would wear a pump for the next 42 hours. I experienced many of the common symptoms—nausea, headaches, neuropathy in my hands and feet—but they weren’t overwhelming at first. For those first few months, the chemo felt pretty manageable.

But down the home stretch, the doctors had warned me that the side effects would start to ramp up because chemo drugs are cumulative. I started to feel it heavier and heavier, and one of the big things that ended up happening was my ability to leave the house and be around people. You know how your old phone had a battery that was at 100 percent, then you’d take a call for 16 minutes and it suddenly had dropped to 67 percent? That was me. I kept going to meetings, but an hour around people was about my limit. I would start to get really bad headaches, nausea and extremely tired. I was that old phone.

Eventually I got through the six rounds of chemo and had a few weeks off before surgery. But the closer we got to the surgery, the scarier it got. My doctors said they rarely do this kind of procedure because it is fairly dangerous—they were going to cut 20 percent of my liver out with one surgeon, then another surgeon was going to cut out the rectal tumor and reroute my whole digestive tract through a colostamy bag. The whole thing would last about seven hours of me with my body sliced in half.

I also had to meet with a nurse who specializes in colostamy bags and it really derailed me. The one thing I didn’t want was a colostamy bag. For whatever reason, it was just the one thing that made me feel like the cancer was winning. I couldn’t get my head around being a guy with a bag of crap on his hip at all times for three months.

In my other appointments before the surgery, everybody laid out what they were going to do, and things got really real. The idea of a 7-hour surgery finally hit me. When they said they were going to need 50-100 staples down my chest to my groin to seal me up, it hit me that how significant that is. And when they mentioned they might get in there and have to pull back if anything goes sideways, I realized this was a surgery that I could conceivably not wake up from.

But I hit a meeting every night for a week before the surgery, and I got myself to a good place. Cancer is one day at a time—you cannot think about two months down the road or a year down the road. You have to be in today, and things are usually fine. Guess where I learned that from, guys!

So on the morning of the surgery, I went with my wife at 5 am to the hospital. I hadn’t eaten or drank anything in two days, and they had given me all the colon blaster drinks a fella could ever hope for, so my body was empty… but my heart was full. I had my family, my friends and my 12-step superstars all in my corner.

And I was going to need them.

Tune in for part 2 next Tuesday.

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 little prayer:

“Dear Lord, so far today I’ve done all right. I haven’t gossiped, haven’t lost my temper, haven’t been greedy, grumpy, nasty, selfish, or overindulgent. I’m really glad about that.

“But in a few minutes, God, I’m going to get out of bed, and from then on, I’m probably going to need a lot more help.”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, Jan. 2000, “Ham on Wry,” by 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.

I’ve been thinking about amends quite a bit lately, because I have been having to say sorry more than I would like. The main issue is that I have been snappy, so I’ve had a sharp tongue with some people lately where I need to apologize for being a little too spiky with my reactions.

But one of the issues I catch when I say sorry is that I notice I am thinking, “I’m sorry for overreacting earlier… but you were kinda being an a*****e.” That’s not really an amends. That’s a fishing expedition for an apology to be sent back my way. So that made me think about how important it is that the Fourth Step comes before the Ninth Step. I need to clear out resentments before I say sorry. Otherwise, I am not doing it right.

It reminded me of an amends I had to make 10 years ago. I’m going to change some details of this story just to be on the safe side. A new neighbor moved in beside me, and I liked him right away. But then I noticed lots of other people liked him, too, and that people were talking about how smart and funny and interesting he was. Well, I’m supposed to be the smart and funny and interesting one, so I immediately felt some jealousy.

I also became aware that he had had a car accident and suffered a significant concussion, so he had memory issues and some other things that impacted his life. To be honest, because I was harboring a resentment against the guy and have had concussions myself, I thought he was being a little full of s**t and overly dramatic.

Well, one day he and I got into a heated argument about, of all things, how good LeBron James is at basketball. Yes, I repeat, I had a heated argument as a late 30s adult man about how good an NBA player was. Looking back, it was a ridiculous argument that was fueled by me just having an axe to grind with this poor guy.

So we argued back and forth. It actually got quite heated, and I walked away from him in a huff. I think I thought about that argument for about eight hours, all the things I could have said, what a moron this guy was, what I’d say to him next time… it was pretty pathetic, in retrospect.

By the end of the day, I was in enough pain that I connected with a sober friend and told him what happened. At that point, I knew I needed to apologize. But my friend said he thought I needed to do a fourth step first, and explained that I needed to clear out the underlying anger toward this guy before I could legitimately say sorry.

So I did that, and I found what I said earlier: jealousy, insecurity, pettiness. I felt immediate relief that I was able to name the issues, and I felt my resentment toward this guy subside quite a bit—enough to make an amends the next day.

So the next morning, I approached my neighbor and said I was sorry about yesterday, that I got way too heated, that I liked him too much to bombard him about an NBA player, and that it would never happen again.

He said he appreciated that… but he had no idea what I was talking about. He explained that he had memory issues because of the concussion and had no recollection of the argument I was discussing.

I couldn’t help but laugh at myself, and feel empathy toward him. The concussion issues he was experiencing were real and he deserved to be treated with respect by me. I found my resentments against him were completely gone, and I felt clean in my soul because my side of the street was taken care of.

I won’t lie, though: A part of me thought, Damn, this dude basically has amnesia about yesterday, so I could have avoided the amends!

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:

Sponsee: “When will I get a good job?”

Sponsor: “When you’re ready.”

Sponsee: “How will I know I’m ready?”

Sponsor: “When you have a good job.”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, Jan. 2000, “Ham on Wry,” by 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.

A friend shared a really provocative quote to me the other day. He said he used to subscribe to the idea of doing the next right thing, and he still does. But he altered the quote a little bit, to “Do the next thing right.”

It really got me overanalyzing that phrase, which is essential to my recovery. I just need to always do the next right thing, and I need to have a good recovery program to know what the next right thing is. On my own, with only my voice in my head, sometimes the next right thing becomes what the next best thing for me will be.

But what about doing the next thing right? I was intrigued by that, because it’s certainly true. I’ve done the next right thing but not done it well, so I get the difference between those two quotes. And in those cases, I can often be a little righteous when things don’t work out well, because I can fall back on something being the right decision. But my friend’s quote made me think about how part 2 is actually doing it right.

I’ll give you one example. I’ve routinely had instances where I need to reprimand one of my kids for a bad behavior, and I’ve consulted with sober friends and they agreed with me. But then sometimes I would reprimand my kid from a much angrier head space than I would have wanted, or gotten into a big argument with a kid who lashes out when you take their car keys from them. That’s not really spiritual, even though the decision might have been the right one.

So I ended up thinking both of those thoughts—do the next right thing, and do the next thing right—because they both have their merits. And I ultimately landed on a melding of the two quotes. How about, “Do the next right thing right”?

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 approached her sponsor and asked, “What do I do when I finish with the Steps?”

And the sponsor said, “Lie very, very still—because you’re dead.”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, Jan. 2000, “Ham on Wry,” by Jim G.)

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.

Let me set the scene for you.

Yesterday morning, the day after Christmas, I had to go on a work trip to Detroit. The plane left at 5:20 am, which was maybe the dumbest idea I have ever had for booking work travel.

But I got up at 3 am, drove to the airport, parked and walked into the airport. Before I even got in the doors, I saw massive lines and chaos all over the place, and realized this might be one of those days where my spiritual meter might dip a little.

It wasn’t so bad, though. I got my tickets in a reasonable amount of time, then got in line for the TSA conveyor belts. Again, not too bad. When I got to the bins to put my stuff on, though, that’s when the fireworks began.

As I waited to start loading my stuff, an older guy, maybe 70-75 years old, came back and stood beside me. He’d clearly been ahead of me and gotten sent back by the TSA crew to put something through again. Happens to the best of us, and it ain’t fun—this dude was standing there hoping some grumpy traveller would let him squeeze back in.

I was that grumpy traveler. I told him to go ahead, and he said thank you in a very kind voice… then he let loose. In a series of f-bombs that was quite impressive for an older gentleman such as him, this guy started railing on TSA for busting his chops about his shoes. I didn’t even catch what the issue was, but apparently the shoes might have had metal in them and needed to be scanned.

He was loud enough that a flight attendant and pilot standing behind me whispered, “Geez, they probably didn’t need to send him back through for that.” He must have heard, because that only empowered him. He put his shoes on the belt and said to a random TSA worker who had thus far not been involved, “This is ridiculous. You guys are ridiculous.”

Whoa. That one felt out of bounds for me. Grumbling about TSA is one thing, even if the volume is a little loud. But it felt very insulting to the people there on Dec. 26 at 3:45 am to call their jobs ridiculous, and that is exactly how everybody received those words from him. Even the flight crew behind me turned on the guy.

So of course the dude goes through the full body scanner again and is told that he needs to go back and put his shoes through again. I didn’t catch the reason, and neither did he because he was absolutely boiling. He kept calling everybody and everything ridiculous, and I saw TSA agents all gathering around and giving each other looks like, “OK, fine, you want it to be ridiculous, it’s gonna be ridiculous times 10.”

So they dogged this guy. Sent him back and forth another time or two. The guy was losing his mind, and he had his whole family waiting on the other side. They were standing there silent, just letting him vent, and I got a bit of a sad feeling at that point because this dude was soooooo mad. Not mad. Big mad. The kind of mad that isn’t really about sending your shoes through the x-ray machine an extra time or two.

Eventually the dude got through, but they put him through the wringer, and it was purposeful. They might have been a little bit nagging initially, but then he got pissed and they responded with pissyness, too, and the whole thing just was ugly.

I’m writing about this on a recovery newsletter because it was a vivid window into what it looks like when there is disagreement and people dig in. I am certainly capable of that and always have been. I tend to get into an argument and switch to trying to win the argument, versus having a conversation about something we might not agree on. I have to win, and when somebody is doing that, there is no win. If I happen to crush the other person in an argument, I doubt that relationship improved from my glorious win.

That’s a recovery thing. When you talk to people with good sobriety, you’ll notice that there isn’t a lot of airing of grievances. Good sobriety usually means that when you hit a pothole, you move on, rather than launch a full investigation into who put the pothole there, why wasn’t it fixed, etc. I was thinking of all the people in my life whose sobriety I respect, and I couldn't come up with a single one who would have had that ugly argument with TSA. There might have been heavy helpings of quiet sarcasm and character assassination, which I am here for usually, but I can’t imagine them wanting to engage in an unwinnable argument with people who can decide whether you go to jail or not over scanning your shoes.

I saw the guy later in the airport, and he seemed to have cooled down. He had his terrifying, dangerous shoes back on and was getting a drink from the water fountain. He seemed a little more tired than he had before, like maybe the weight of exploding at people was heavy on him. Or maybe he was just an old dude hunched over at a water fountain. Either way, I couldn’t help but think the whole damn thing was exactly what he called it: ridiculous.

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:

Before a meeting was about to start, the young chairperson asked the older newcomer to read, “How It Works,” giving him a photocopied sheet from Chapter Five of the Big Book. A few minutes later, the newcomer politely handed the sheet back to the chairperson.

“You’re supposed to read this,” explained the chair.

“I just did,” said the elderly beginner.

(Credit: AA Grapevine, Jan. 2000, by Ernie S. and Doug R., New York, 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.

I was at a meeting the other night when we read from page 66 of the Big Book, where deep resentments are addressed. It’s remarkable how aggressive the language is in that section. We’re told that deep resentments lead us to drink, and to drink is to die. We’re told deep resentments are poison that cause us to waste years of our lives.

It’s a big contrast with other sections of sober literature, which I have found to be quite gentle in discussing character defects and other bad behaviors. Our sober founding fathers and mothers were aggressive in telling us that we absolutely cannot afford resentments.

But I was struck by the specific use of the phrase “deep resentment.” To me, deep resentments are absolutely poison, and are probably reserved for some of the more serious people, places and things in our lives. In my head, deep resentments refer to ex-wives and ex-husbands, moms and dads, etc. I don’t consider someone who took your parking spot at the grocery store or didn’t email you back fast enough to qualify as a deep resentment.

However, I must say that I also realized something else. It’s certainly bad to have one deep resentment devouring you. But I also think that 10 small resentments equal or surpass one deep resentment. And I would argue a bunch of small resentments might be more dangerous because we often underestimate small, petty annoyances.

Think about it this way. What’s riskier, a deep resentment against a former boyfriend or girlfriend who dumped you? Or being mad yesterday at a driver who cut you off, at your kid for getting an F on a big test, at your neighbor for having loud construction done, at the garbage crew for knocking your can over, at your mail guy for letting a package get wet, at a coworker for calling you out at a meeting, at the local weather person for being way off on their forecast… you probably see where this is going.

I think all of those little brushfires add up to at least as much as one big fire. I have days where I am not irate and don’t yell at anybody, but I am constantly annoyed, constantly balling up my fists and cursing somebody out in my brain. I usually think about each one of these little skirmishes as too small to bring up with a sponsor or at a meeting. But the reality is, I am boiling hot for long stretches of the day about stuff that I deemed petty. That may not be a deep resentment, but it’s a terrible headspace to be in. It’s just one long stretch of being aggravated and not present in life.

The answer is probably to make sure I am doing daily maintenance things. So many of these little brushfires are better prevented preemptively rather than after you scream at the old guy at the grocery store who didn’t return his shopping cart. When I am spiritually fit and serene, I’m not doing that.

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

Welcome to AA

I was in a meeting when I was new and a fellow was being disruptive. Several AAs asked him to leave and walked him out, saying, "Keep coming back!" I asked why they said that after making him leave. They said, "When he comes back, we want him to feel welcome."

(Credit: Grapevine, by Kay K. of Redondo Beach, California, September 2009)

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.

At a meeting the other day, a guy mentioned that by the end of his drinking, he was DoorDashing food and alcohol to his door every single day. He said he thinks he barely left his apartment for six months or so, and that his interpersonal skills had basically disappeared. He was a recluse.

Then he talked about how he realized he had to get sober, and that meant he had to leave the house. So he started taking baby steps and going to meetings, where he said he was uncomfortable at first. But meetings force you to up your game—there are hugs, inquiries about how you’re doing, exchange of phone numbers, and public speaking.

As he was talking, I flashed back to my early days at rehab and then meetings. It was awkward for me, too. Very awkward. Start with the public speaking, which is a very human struggle—there aren’t many people who easily do public speaking and like it. But in rehab and meetings, public speaking also involves some very raw stuff that is hard to say out loud, especially in a crowd. That makes it twice as hard.

But I also thought back to some of the more nuanced tough things after I finally left the house and tried to get sober. My people skills had completely vanished. I’d always been a pretty jovial, comfortable guy around people. But I suddenly was sober and realized that I didn’t really remember how to make eye contact, give a firm handshake and a bunch of other stuff that normal people do every day. I hadn’t been doing it—I’d been locked in my guest bedroom for months, and those skills had definitely atrophied.

I remember some work meetings where I would get a little flustered and not know what to do with my hands, and I specifically recall having a hard time with my mouth. I would find my lips getting jumpy and my hands getting shaky during conversations that weren’t very confrontational. I just hadn’t been speaking to someone in lightly stressful situations in a long, long time, so it was awkward and weird. I bet people on the other side of things probably thought I was about to fall apart.

But I didn’t fall apart, and meetings are why. I forget sometimes that meetings were my re-acclimation to the world. I learned to talk to people, hug again, express love and accept it and the biggest of all, to talk in front of people.

I still think I am awkward sometimes in sobriety, because it’s hard to not be awkward in this world sometimes. But man, I can’t even imagine what a jerky-jerky dork I’d be without meetings as a place to practice being human again.

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:

"You guys wouldn't let me do it cold turkey. You slopped on the gravy, mashed potatoes, and stuffing, too!"

(Credit: Grapevine, April 2009, by Ed L. of Wrightwood, California)

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 recently met up with a friend I haven’t seen in awhile, and before we got together, he sent me a text where he said, “I can’t wait to see you! I’m about to provide you with a hell of a hangover.”

I of course responded and said, “Hey, I appreciate the sentiment but I am 16 years sober and do not have any interest in a hangover.”

He apologized and said it slipped his mind, and that he was instead going to help me get a food hangover from all the crap we were going to consume when we hang out. I laughed and said to count me in.

But I had a moment where I felt a little irritated. Like, come on, dude, respect my sobriety, okay? I worked really hard to get sober and I work really hard to stay sober. Please understand that.

Except… being offended by that means I have a pretty high expectation of people knowing about my sobriety. And on some level, it means I might be looking for outside validation of my sobriety when all I really need is internal satisfaction that I am doing the right things.

When we got together, he apologized for bringing up drinking, and I said no big deal. I actually meant it then… now, if he had stood in front of me right after he said it, I may have had some more irritation in my voice. But I needed to right-size myself and not pin my own self-esteem about recovery on somebody else.

I also caught my back going up for a millisecond recently when I celebrated 16 years sober at some meetings. I had some very good friends jokingly say, “Holy s**t, I never would have guessed you’d have 16 years of sobriety.” They were purely joking, and I laughed, and they laughed. But I did have a mopey moment or two where I reflected back and thought, “Was he really trying to say I used to be a mess? Was I? Even if I was, what a rude thing to say!”

That was a bunch of nonsense, too. I think if you can’t laugh about the mis-steps of the past, you’re in trouble. Joy and laughter are the main reasons I do this podcast and newsletter—it helped me when people laughed at meetings and could poke fun at themselves without blowing a gasket. I needed to know that recovery wasn’t drudgery, that it was happy, joyous and free. So that’s where I ended up landing this week. I need to respect my own sobriety enough to not get disrespected by an offhand comment (or three!).

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

"I was always the black sheep of the family. Then I joined AA and found the rest of the herd."

(Credit: Grapevine, March 2009, by C.W.)

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 thinking the other day about how messy my life was when I got sober. My kids were 3 years old and 6 months old. I had just bought a house. I was scuffling to figure out a career. And I was only 31 years old, which means I could have kept digging my bottom for another five or 10 or 20 years.

That got me contemplating how lucky I am to have gotten out then, rather than continuing till the pain got even greater than it already was. And it made me ponder a difficult question: When is the easiest age to get sober? And conversely, what is the toughest age to get sober?

From first-hand experience, I can tell you that early 30s with young kids is no picnic. Early sobriety was obviously quite difficult, and then once I got my feet under me, I had tremendous family obligations that caused me to often break out the dreaded phrase, “I’m too busy to get to a meeting this weekend.”

So let’s keep 30s as an age group that might be the toughest.

But what about younger? In my own experience, I would definitely say it is tough to stop drinking and drugging in your 20s. I just hadn’t accumulated enough bad moments yet to make me believe I truly had a problem. In my sobriety, I’ve definitely seen younger people struggle for that reason, plus the fact that almost all of their peer group is still meeting and partying at bars. It can be tough to have a social life that doesn’t involve lots of temptation.

That brings us to 40s and 50s… first of all, I can’t imagine having my addiction issues and living until age 40. It wasn’t going to happen on the trajectory that I was on in my 30s. I had maybe another year or two before something really bad happened.

But I guess there could have been a version of my life where I got sober for a few years, relapsed, got sober again, and kept hanging on into my 40s and maybe even 50s. But geez, by then, I think it would have been damn near impossible to get sober. That is a longgg time of active addiction without much of a solution working out.

All right, that brings us to 60s, and I’ll throw in 70s, 80s and 90s because you can probably guess where this is going. I can’t imagine having been an active alcoholic from ages 20 through 60 and then going to rehab. I would have been dead or stuck in that life. So that wouldn’t have been an easy age to get sober, and nothing over the age of 60 would have been easy, either.

I swear I didn’t set out on this newsletter entry to land where I am going to land… but I think the easiest age to stop drinking and drugging is none of them, and the toughest age to get sober is all of them. Which means the answer is that you get out as soon as possible, and you stay out. The older I get, the more I realize that addiction takes no prisoners and spares no age group, gender or anything else. And as hard as it might be to get sober, it’s harder to not get sober.

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:

An alcoholic who had abused his family, imposed on his few friends and generally been a public nuisance, finally died. At the funeral service, the preacher asked, "Does anyone wish to say some kind words about the departed?"

There was a dead silence. The minister repeated the question. Finally, a man stood up and said grudgingly, "His brother was worse."

(Credit: Grapevine, March 2009, by 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.

Think about this question for 10 seconds before answering: Do you get annoyed a lot?

Some examples to consider: Do you get aggravated by other drivers? Or your neighbor having noisy construction on their house? Or the guy who talks too loud in the cubicle next to yours? Or the person who shares the same thing at every meeting?

I’m not proud to say that I am constantly annoyed. I don’t get angry very often. But I do get annoyed on a regular basis. And to be honest, I don’t always mind. It’s funny to rail on somebody for some minor transgression. I also won’t b******t and say I don’t feel a little better when I put someone else down—I do! But it’s a short-term shot of dopamine, and then I just feel bad a half hour later because I just s**t-talked someone.

But I read a great section in Step Six in the 12 and 12 about being annoyed, and I have been thinking about it ever since. Step Six obviously deals with working on character defects, and the literature makes the case that being annoyed is often a sign of us looking for superiority over others. It also says pretty bluntly that we are not people who can afford to be annoyed all the time.

The more I thought about it, the more it resonated. Looking back, I often times didn’t drink because some horrible, traumatic thing happened. I drank because someone said something shitty to me at work, or I was in an argument with my spouse, or a friend was mad at me. I drank and did drugs at people, places and things.

Now I don’t drink and do drugs, but I still do stuff at people. Gossip, bad-mouthing, character assassination inside my own head… and it usually does end up revolving around superiority. I’m looking to build myself up. But instead of working on myself, I get annoyed at others and hope that by putting them down in my head, I will feel better about myself.

Here’s the thing: It doesn’t really work. Maybe for 20 minutes or an hour. But mostly, I end up feeling bad about it and regret doing it. So it is ultimately a boomerang effect on myself.

I can’t say I haven’t gotten annoyed since that meeting when we read Step Six. But I am more aware of my annoyances right now, and that has helped. Awareness is always the first step for me in rooting out an issue, so hopefully that is the case here. Until then, I will probably still be getting annoyed a lot!

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:

IN THE BEGINNING…

A gardener and an architect are discussing which of their vocations is the most ancient, while a drunk is listening nearby.

The gardener comments, "My vocation goes back to the Garden of Eden, when God told Adam to tend the garden."

The architect comments, "My vocation goes back to the creation, when God created the world itself from primordial chaos."

They both look curiously at the drunk, who asks, "And who do you think created the primordial chaos?"

(Credit: Grapevine, March 2009, by Ronald H.)

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On a regular basis, I spend time thinking about how to connect with other alcoholics and drug addicts, especially newcomers. And one night I was thinking about that when a speaker was introduced for the meeting I was at, and the chairperson said the phrase we all know and love: “She’s here to share her experience, strength and hope.”

Those three words lingered in the air for me. Experience. Strength. Hope.

Let’s start with hope. I do think the best speakers lay out why sober life is better than active addiction, providing optimism for everybody in the room. So I love hearing some hope.

Then there is strength. I love that, too. If you’re an alcoholic or drug addict and you have been sober for any length of time, there has to be strength in there somewhere. And it’s always interesting to hear the contrast of the weakness of active addiction with the strength of active sobriety. I think you almost can’t have one without the other. If I had a lot of strength when I was drinking and drugging, I probably never would have stopped!

Last but not least, experience. It’s essential in my opinion to have the speaker lay out what their life was like and then how it changed in sobriety. You want to establish the basic facts of the change in their life and how they ended up in recovery. I think without that, our stories probably feel a little hollow.

So that got me thinking about the words that aren’t included in that statement. What about honesty? Sense of humor? Hard work? And especially knowledge… isn’t knowledge critical?

I ended up feeling like experience, strength and hope probably includes all of those things on some level. Most stories I’ve heard included some levity, and acknowledgement of being absolutely true to thine own self.

The biggest one that got me thinking was knowledge. I feel like the things I’ve learned in the program are so, so valuable to me, and some of the emotional sobriety stuff I have picked up over the years includes tools and insights that I’d never spent time with before. That information is indeed valuable.

But then I started thinking about what moved me as a newcomer. It wasn’t information. If meetings felt like lectures or college classes, I might have struggled. And if people told their stories with learning as the backbone, I don’t know that I would have connected with so many people over the years. When I hear a good speaker, it’s usually that their experiences make me identify with them and nod my head at the similarities. Often times, I’ll hear someone describe the pain they were in and feel like there is no way I could drink today after hearing it. When I hear someone explain the traditions of 12-step recovery, or a passage from the Big Book related to making amends, it’s certainly worthwhile… but it doesn’t usually move the emotional needle in the same way.

So I guess the entire point of this exercise is that there’s nothing to see here. Experience, strength and hope is the perfect description of the best way to have an impact!

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:

Working with newcomers is a little like working with cement… it’s usually better when it’s still wet. Otherwise, you’re going to need a jackhammer.

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 went to a meeting a few days ago where I like to sit in the far corner of the room. I got to the meeting 10 minutes early, walked in the front door and almost didn’t make it to my seat.

As I walked into the room, one person after another darted over to give me a hug and say hello. At first, my ego told me that I obviously was the mayor of sobriety and that I of course would be shaking hands and giving out hugs because of how awesome I am. The only thing missing was holding babies and doing the pageant wave to my adoring crowd.

But then I noticed that all those same people were running over to lots of people as they came in. It wasn’t just me; it was all of us, propping each other up.

And that got me thinking about the unique warmth of sober people. I don’t quite get it. I think it has something to do with so many of us having reached the absolute depths of hell that we bring back some of that heat when we get sober because we are so grateful to not be at the bottom any more.

But we all have bad days. Some of us have shitty jobs. Some of us are going through divorces. Some of us have ankle bracelets on from previous indiscretions. We don’t have lives that are all unicorns and rose gardens. We’re just regular schmoes.

Yet somehow recovery meetings are the happiest, warmest places I go. And it’s not just the hugs and handshakes. I noticed that with good recovery comes good, warm vibes. There’s a look in sober peoples’ eyes where you really think they’re rooting for you, that they really care.

It’s one of the most beautiful things in my life, to be honest, and I often wonder why I have migrated in recent years toward evening meetings. One reason is sheer laziness—with my sports viewing schedule, rolling out of bed to get to a meeting by 7 am ain’t so appealing. But I think the biggest reason is that it is so nice to end every day with an hour of warmth. And with it getting dark now at, oh, 3:30 in the afternoon, I will take any evening warmth I can get!

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 NEIGHBOR was sympathizing with the wife of a heavy drinker as she complained that her back was sore from moving furniture.

"Why didn't you wait till your husband got home?" the neighbor asked.

"I could have," said the wife, "but the couch is easier to move if he's not passed out on it."

(Credit: Grapevine, February 2009, by Richard M. of Golden, Colorado)

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

Warning: I am going to change some details within this post just to be vague and protect some identities.

I was thinking the other day about the value of curiosity in life, of asking questions, of relying upon people who know more than me. And it reminded me of two things: one, it made me think of someone I worked with and two, that apes don’t ask questions.

Let me start with my work anecdote. I remember a young former coworker from years ago who I thought was immensely talented. Very driven. Smart—super smart. Reliable. He was awesome to have on your team.

But he never asked any questions. Not once. I was probably 10 years his senior, with much more experience in our profession. But he had no curiosity. I didn’t even notice it for awhile; somebody else pointed out to me that he seemed to have all the answers, all the time, even though there were enough periodic blunders that should have indicated maybe he should ask for advice sometimes.

But that never happened. As far as I know, it still hasn’t happened. That eventually rubbed coworkers the wrong way, because nobody wants to be around people who have no interest in the world around them. Those people often times come off as know-it-alls who are self-centered to the extreme. They only care about themselves, and people see through it.

The other thing that came to mind was that I recently saw a tweet about how apes have learned sign language at astonishing levels—truly incredible. But the tweet said researchers mostly agree that they’ve never seen an ape ask a question. They can communicate. They express emotions. They can do the entire alphabet. But no questions.

That really blew my mind. I want apes asking questions. I want us to tell them stuff about the world. But apparently there isn’t yet a lot of curiosity. So I have a new mission for my future: I am going to teach apes how to ask questions.

That is, of course, a silly proposition, and it’s even sillier that I am about to relate everything I just wrote to sobriety.

Curiosity is one of the cornerstones of my life when I have good recovery. It means I am asking for others’ opinions, that I am asking loved ones how they feel about things, that I am not unilaterally figuring out everything on my own. That’s how I got a seat at a rehab hospital in 2008! I had all the answers—just ask me!

One of the biggest sinkholes I still fall into on occasion is just being an island unto myself. It’s easy to do because I have been sober since 2008 and I think I have led a mostly successful, spiritual life since then. But I catch myself sliding back into being an ape with no questions. I don’t ask my sponsor for guidance. I don’t ask my boss for his thoughts. I don’t ask my wife or kids their thoughts on things. I start to get the mentality that I know stuff, and now I am going to do stuff with all of that knowledge in my back pocket.

So I need to do better with that, and I also need to be the kind of person who asks questions in front of newcomers. Part of my sober message should be that no matter how long you’ve been sober, you still need to be curious.

And in the meantime, I’m already plotting out all the nearby zoos that have apes, and I’m going to spend the summer trying to pique their curiosity, too.

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:

EARLY IN RECOVERY, a mother took her 6-year-old son to visit a friend at work. As one of the employees went to make coffee, her son followed her and asked, "What are you doing?"

"I'm making your mom's favorite drink," she answered.

"Wow!" said the son. "You know how to make beer?"

(Credit: Grapevine, February 2009, by Terry B.)

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.

The other day, my wife opened a conversation with a vague question and I immediately could tell she had an underlying story.

“How long do you think it takes the average person to respond to a text?” she asked.

I gave a nothingburger answer that I actually believe, which is that it depends on the person, the time of day, whether it’s a Saturday or a Monday morning, etc. I basically shrugged my shoulders.

She proceeded to air out an agitation she was feeling about a friend who hadn’t responded to a text since yesterday. I know the person in question, and yes, she can be a little flaky on communication.

My wife eventually said, “Who doesn’t respond to texts?”

This is where I messed up and gave a recovery answer.

“Well, honey, earlier today I texted you and you didn’t respond for two hours, so I texted you again, and then you said, ‘Sorry, I missed your text.’ So it can pop up for all of us. You know, in sobriety, we always try to identify with people who hurt us or do us wrong, because chances are, we have done the same thing at some point in our lives.”

She didn’t like that answer. She told me she was just venting and didn’t need any kind of lesson. I, of course, immediately felt my back go up in annoyance. But my second thought was that she was right. I try to carry the message of recovery in all of my affairs, and sometimes I slip up a little and start trying to carry it into your affairs, too. That goes for people who are alcoholics and people who aren’t—even with fellow sober people, I really aim to only give suggestions and advice if I am directly asked about it. I just haven’t seen any benefit to being aggressive with my opinions. In fact, I have found myself gravitating toward people who seem to feel either very little or no obligation to inject their thoughts into situations where they weren’t asked to. That’s a pretty lovely way to cruise through life, in my humble opinion.

That brings me around to my specific point for this post, which is that I am better off when I keep my recovery stuff in my recovery world. It’s fine if I live by the principles of recovery in all aspects of my life. But I don’t need to be on work Zooms or at my family Thanksgiving dinner telling people they ought to do a Fourth Step on their resentments, or else I am going to end up with lots more resentments aimed in my direction.

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:

WE WERE HAVING LUNCH on Friday the thirteenth and talking about being superstitious. One of the young men eating with us said, "I really believe in that sort of thing. Two months ago, I walked under a ladder at work. That night I got a drunk driving ticket."

Once I stopped laughing, I said, "Think it had anything to do with the drinking?"

(Credit: Grapevine, February 2009, by Jack B. of Santa Cruz, California)

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.

On page 30 of the Big Book, there is a sentence that has been sticking with me recently. It goes like this: The delusion that we are like other people, or presently may be, has to be smashed.

I keep thinking about that last word: smashed.

First of all, I fully acknowledge that the word “smashed” has taken on new meaning the past few years. Go to Urban Dictionary or open up TikTok for five seconds, and you’ll hear how the kids have corrupted use of that word. I’ll give you a hint: It relates to sexy time.

Secondly, I find it funny that I used to get smashed every night, and now you’re telling me I need to smash the idea that I can get smashed any more.

Thirdly, think about the aggressiveness of that statement. It doesn’t say that we need to patiently discard the idea that we can drink like normal people. It doesn’t say to gently put that idea down on your bedside table. It says we have to smash that idea.

I’d go one step further—I needed to smash the idea that I could drink like a normal person and also the idea that I could go to rehab and stop on my own. In my 15-plus years in the rooms of recovery, that second part is such an insidious concept that floats back into most of our brains.

It’s the idea that we absolutely cannot drink any more… but that it’s not going to take a lot of work to get out of the same behaviors and thought patterns that led us to a drink. You can’t keep going to the barber shop and just skip the haircut now. I haven’t seen that work out.

I’ve actually seen a lot of that delusion the past few years, including with myself. During the pandemic, I had a period where I stayed in contact with a few alcoholics but my meetings slowed way down. Pretty quickly, I saw some bad thought and action patterns creep back into my life.

And I’ve also had a few friends who came to 12-step recovery breathing out of their mouths, suffering and desperate, hitting a meeting every day and calling and texting multiple times per day. And then… things got better. The meetings slowed down. The calls disappeared, replaced by an occasional, “Hey, how are you?” text. When we’d talk, they’d say, “Oh, I haven’t been getting to many meetings because I got really busy at work lately, and also, I’m coaching my kid’s soccer team.”

I guess the lesson is that yes, I need to smash the delusion I can drink and I need to smash the delusion that it will take lots of work… but also that I need to smash it and then keep smashing it. In fact, I need to smash it every single day if I want to live the best life possible.

And here’s the thing: I’ve found that I can be really busy at work, coach my kid’s soccer team and get to a meeting almost every single day. They’re not mutually exclusive things. In fact, they’re the opposite—I’ve found that the more I smash the delusion that I can drink, the more I can have smashing success in life.

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:

IN AN EMAIL TO OUR DCM (district committee member), one of our friends told us of the passing of a long-time AA in our district. The notice concluded, "Pat was in the program twenty-five years. He was my first sponsor—but I don't think that is what killed him."

(Credit: Grapevine, February 2009, by John C. of Antioch, Illinois)

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’ve been away from the newsletter for a few weeks due to some medical issues, and I wanted to reveal more about that today. Long story short: I found out in April I had Stage 4 cancer.

I went in for a routine colonoscopy in the spring because I was 46 years old and my doctor said 45 is now the suggested age at which to begin getting colonoscopies. I went in for it, and within five minutes of waking up, the colonoscopy doctor came in and said he’d found a rectal tumor. A few weeks later, scans showed the cancer had already spread to my liver.

Those were some dark days, because my oncologist ended up putting my chances of survival somewhere in the 60-70 percent range. Now, 70 percent is a pretty good chance… but it ain’t 100.

I had a few days where I wallowed in my situation. I wasn’t so much worried about dying—I was worried mostly about how unpleasant the next year of my life was going to be. I was supposed to start six rounds of chemo in May, and then they thought I’d need a rough surgery to remove both tumors, and then I’d need six more rounds of chemo in the fall. Perhaps the most jarring detail was that after the surgery, they assumed they’d need to reroute my entire digestive track into an ostomy bag. I don’t know why, but that detail single-handedly haunted the entire diagnosis. I felt like I could deal with anything but a porta-potty bag coming out of my body.

During those weeks where I wallowed in it, I had occasional thoughts about picking up drugs or alcohol again. Not significant thoughts. I never came close. But I would catch myself once or twice a week saying to myself, “Hey, if you’re going to be doing chemotherapy and whittling away and then getting an ostomy bag, why not pick up something to boost your spirits and ease the physical pain?”

Luckily, I had much louder voices in my head telling me to double down on getting to meetings and staying connected with sober people. I started getting to about five meetings a week, including chairing a few. I’m so glad I did. I found myself leaning into the dark humor of the situation, and I made a lot of hay out of the joke that if you knew anything about how immature I am as a person, you had to find it hilarious that I might die because my ass fell off.

During chemo, I found my spirits rising every day without any kind of mood-altering substance. People rallied around me, both in and out of my recovery circles, and I found myself ready to rumble every day. Chemo had unpleasant moments, but I made it through six rounds without much drama. I’d even get to meetings sometimes with a pack injecting me with chemo every few minutes.

On Sept. 25, I had surgery to remove both tumors, which had shrunk quite a bit from the chemo. The surgery went well, but it was very painful and I spent eight days in the hospital. Those were some of the darkest days of my life—I had some complications and the pain was really breaking my spirit, especially at night. It’s hard to describe exactly why nights at a hospital are so debilitating, but it’s a combination of weird lighting, bad sleep environment, significant pain and a lack of support staff. I just felt alone with my pain, and that’s never good.

Luckily, though, I had amazing loved ones supporting me, and as much as I wanted to just lay in my hospital bed, some sober friends insisted on visiting me and hosting several meetings for me. Like I said, I would have rather just silently sat in my room, but my recovery friends wouldn’t allow it.

And here was the thing that again jumped out at me: Sober people who have a good recovery program do not sulk, complain, whine or shake their fist at tough situations. They show empathy. They’ll cry with you. And there’s a lot of laughter, a lot of optimism and energy devoted to what the next right action might be. And that is contagious. That’s who I want to be.

Recovery from the surgery has been tough. I’m in quite a bit of pain, and it’s taking longer than I had hoped. I wanted to be back running around within a week or two, and that just hasn’t been possible. It’s been a grind, with ups and downs every week, sometimes every day. But it’s also one day at a time, which I have some familiarity with, obviously.

I start chemo again on Oct. 30, which feels too soon. But it’s the next right thing to eliminate any cancer cells left—and my doctors are saying they can’t see any right now. That’s great news, of course, but the chemo will be tough. My midsection still feels like 50 UFC fighters took turns giving me body shots, so if I sneeze or cough, I am in agony. Hell, if I laugh really hard, it hurts, physically. But spiritually? The laughter is getting me through. So as much as it hurts, I’m going to do it anyway.

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…

"Sobriety is no laughing matter, but laughing matters when you're sober."

(CREDIT: Grapevine, February 2009, by Denny C. of Atoka, Tennessee)

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 the other day where we read the first few paragraphs from the chapter of the Big Book called “A Vision for You.” The first page, page 151, is worth a read or a reread if you haven’t looked at it in awhile.

I was struck by the idea that that first paragraph kind of summarizes all of our stories, which I think you could boil down to this: In the beginning, drinking was a solution to a problem. At the end, it was THE problem on top of every other problem.

I especially lingered on the first two sentences of that reading where it says: For most normal folks, drinking means conviviality, companionship and colorful imagination. It means release from care, boredom and worry.

When I thought back to my early drinking days, alcohol and drugs did those exact things for me. It meant partying with friends, laughing all night, and not feeling any worries in the world.

That, of course, didn’t last very long before the laughs died down a bit and the blackouts began. I’d say anything after my college years was lonely, quiet, sad highs by myself. So it definitely could be simplified down to conviviality at the start and, as the Big Book says, “pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization” at the finish.

My big takeaway from reading that section of “A Vision for You” is how important it is for me to replicate very similar things in recovery as I did with what drinking used to do for me. I need conviviality, companionship and colorful imagination, and I need to find a way to deal with boredom and worry.

For me, that means a strong 12-step program that isn’t just a solution to drinking. I need recovery to be all the things that drinking was in the beginning, with laughter, companionship and connection. Drinking gave me a lot of that, and I need sobriety to, too.

I know some people just need recovery to keep them from the bar. I need it to be a new way of living, and I have found that it can be that. I laugh harder than ever and feel more connected than ever, even more than those early days of partying. And it’s nice to be able to find that place without every night ending with me barfing in a dive bar men’s room!

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

"I had a really good reason for working Step Nine and making amends to my family and friends: I didn't want a parade of people at my funeral singing, 'Ding, dong, the wicked witch is dead!"

(Credit: Grapevine, February 2009, by Carol K. of Sarasota, Florida)

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

I was at a meeting recently that is a closed meeting, which is defined as a meeting intended for people who are alcoholics trying to stay sober. So technically, closed meetings aren’t for spouses, kids, nursing students, or people with alcohol problems who don’t really want to stop.

At this meeting, the dad of a guy was there and introduced himself as just being there to support his son. As far as I know, nobody approached the guy during or after the meeting to let him know it’s a closed meeting. By letter of the law, I think a real sobriety stickler might have raised their hand and announced that this was a closed meeting intended only for alcoholics interested in recovery. Nobody did that here, to my knowledge.

And personally, I’m glad. The thought crossed my mind that this meeting was a closed meeting, not open, and I wrestled with whether it was worth bringing up throughout the meeting, because rules are rules. I respect things that have been handed down over many decades, such as defining meetings publicly as open or closed. There are scenarios where people choose meetings because they know there will only be men or women there, or that the meeting will be closed or open, or that a meeting doesn’t let people share if they were late. The last thing 12-step programs need is alcoholics and addicts who toss out group conscience and do whatever they feel like. So I respect those rules.

However, I often feel a little grace is necessary with outsiders showing up. I’ve been at men’s meetings where a woman shows up and doesn’t realize it’s a men’s meeting. My feeling is that you ask the person to step outside and then take a group conscience on allowing the person to stay. I’ve seen that happen about five times, and all five times, the group voted overwhelmingly to ask the woman to stay for the meeting. I feel like that open door policy is one of the core values of recovery.

I’ve also been at meetings where a group of college students show up and say that part of their curriculum requires them to attend a 12-step meeting. I’ve seen that about 10 times, and I believe every one of those meetings was an open meeting, which allows for anybody to show up. I mention the nursing students because in those meetings, I did feel a slightly different vibe for myself, where I wasn’t sure I wanted to share as openly as if it were all alcoholics. In those moments, I usually spend a minute thinking about how there is value in closed meetings.

Which brings me back to the dad showing up. It did cross my mind to pull the guy aside after the meeting and let him know he should consider looking up open meetings if he planned to attend. But ultimately I didn’t. When in doubt, I usually tend to keep my pie hole shut rather than confront somebody. You never know how they could take something like that.

My overall opinion is live and let live. I actually don’t mind at a closed meeting if a loved one shows up. I can’t imagine booting that person out. I could live with taking a group conscience and putting it to a vote—I wouldn’t be angry about that. And I wouldn’t be bothered if every meeting was open. I think if I ever got to a point where I didn’t feel comfortable sharing at a meeting because students or parents were there, I might just leave and find another meeting.

My last thought on this topic was one time I went to a morning meeting where about five nursing students showed up. They were all young women, probably in their early 20s. They all seemed like very nice people. But it was a rough meeting, with a few people who’d just gotten out of rehab. So they were sharing some tough newcomer stories of some of the things they had been up to a month or two earlier, before rehab, and I watched as these nursing students’ eyes started to bulge out of their head. It actually got pretty amusing because it really showed the difference between non-alcoholics and alcoholics—half of the people at the meeting were chuckling and laughing along because they had done some of the same horrific behaviors. I remember leaving that day and saying god bless open meetings… but that I thought we might have just had five future nurses change their majors.

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 TIPSY TEENAGER calls her mom:

"I got into a little wreck, but I'm okay."

"Can't you do anything right?" the frustrated mom says.

Daughter: "I was wearing clean underwear!"

(Credit: Grapevine, January 2009, by Lilia M. of Sunrise, Florida)

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

I saw that September is National Recovery Month, which I seem to forget every year. So… Happy Recovery Month!

I really am not a fan of the monthly and daily celebrations because they’ve gotten so out of hand. September is National Recovery Month, National Suicide Prevention Month and a slew of other important things to contemplate.

But it’s also National Square Dance Month, National Whole Grains Month, National Piano Month, National Mortgage Professional Month and National Rice Month. And hey, if you’re reading this on September 10, make sure you celebrate National TV Dinner Day with a delicious frozen platter! Those days seem really silly and driven by capitalism, which I think waters down the meaning of actual celebrations to consider.

And in all seriousness, I would consider recovery to be a topic worth celebrating. I don’t bake myself a cake or anything, but I do try to spend this month feeling grateful for all the sober people that came before me. Think about what we have in 2024 because of the people that have gotten sober years before us.

A few examples:

We have sober literature that has been vetted and reconsidered for decades. We have laws about work leave for substance abuse issues. We have churches and other places that trust us to have 12-step meetings there. We have rehabs that have tried and true methods of detoxing people and steering them toward a new life.

I try to always spend a few minutes thinking about what it would look like right now if none of that stuff existed and a bunch of newcomers had to try to band together and come up with everything we have. I’ve been to business meetings in the last five years where people couldn’t agree on a $5 rent increase, so I cannot fathom 100 drunks sitting down and writing a book together.

Yet that’s what our elders did. They wrote books. They came up with the steps. They paid their rent on time. They made mistakes and corrected them so I didn’t have to make the same mistakes. Many of them succeeded so that decades later, when people come into sobriety, their loved ones can have optimism in the recovery process. Imagine the difference between finding out your son or daughter is an alcoholic in 1935 versus now—we all have sober role models we can point to and aspire to become.

My elders really did clear a path that is pretty much a paved road at this point. So I try to honor their memories and sacrifices this month by drinking a non-alcoholic beverage of some sort and toasting what they accomplished.

Then I go back to celebrating National Square Dance month!

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

"I WENT AND SAW my psychiatrist today and he told me there was good news and bad news," the speaker at the AA meeting said. "The good news is that I have brain cells left. The bad news is that there are only two left, and they are waving goodbye to each other."

(Credit: Grapevine, January 2009, by Tommy H. of Baton Rouge, La)

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 do two men’s meetings a week. One is small and intimate, and the other is big and rowdy. I love them both, but I like the rowdy one because the overall vibe is joyous and free. Sometimes it feels like a pep rally for sobriety, and who doesn’t enjoy a good pep rally?

That meeting also does a group meditation, which is very cool at such a large men’s meeting. The meditation is about two minutes long, and it’s nice for a newcomer to see the contrast of rowdiness and serenity—I think it sets them up for the idea that recovery involves lots of happy, joyous and free… but also plenty of contemplative moments, too.

The other night was a particularly interesting meditation. The room had about 60 guys in it, and the temperature outside was 70 degrees so the air conditioning wasn’t on. So as soon as the chairperson said we were now going to do a meditation, I had a momentary thought of, “Oh no.”

And sure enough, the room was a little too hot already, and now dudes were breathing in and out pretty heavy all around me. I kept feeling like I was catching a whiff of some manly body odor and definitely plenty of coffee breath, plus several other aromas that I won’t get into. So I spent the first 60 seconds or so feeling like I was huffing in a bunch of bro breath and it grossed me out.

But I opened my eyes for a few seconds to try to clear my head a bit, and the sight of 60 dudes with their eyes closed, trying to find a common ground in meditation was so beautiful. The rest of the meeting, as it always is, consisted of lots of belly laughs and aggressive hugging and cheering for people celebrating sober anniversaries. But in that moment, we were all joined in quietness, listening to a sober guy lead a guided meditation.

I ended up closing my eyes again and breathing through my mouth as much as possible, and it was awesome. It’s just so cool to be synced up with so many men I admire and hope to latch onto because of their recovery—even if it smells like Folgers decaf!

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:

SPEAKER AT AA MEETING: "I used to think that if I quit drinking I'd be incredibly boring and pompous."

Cross-talker: "At least you've come to grips with that."

(Credit: Grapevine, January 2009, by 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.

When was the last time you were very, very grateful and also very angry? Or very grateful and feeling road rage? Or very grateful and jealous?

I bet the answer is that you can’t remember a time like that. I know I can’t. The truth is, I’ve never been that combination of anything plus gratitude.

It’s hard to explain why that is. But I just know that when I am grateful, it crowds everything else out of the room. Gratitude is greedy, in the best possible way, because it hogs up all the oxygen in the room and I can’t feel resentful or gossipy or anything else I am trying to avoid. Gratitude is a one-trick pony.

I should clarify that I am talking about a specific kind of gratitude. There’s passing gratitude, where you are grateful for 10 seconds that a parking spot opened up in the mall parking lot at Christmastime. And then there is overall gratitude, where you feel grateful for the life that you have been given. That’s the type of gratitude that crowds out everything else, because I can definitely get a good parking spot and then want to choke out somebody in the food court 11 minutes later.

So why is gratitude about life such a powerful antidote to those other unwanted emotions? I think it’s because that kind of grateful is so all-encompassing. It factors in all of the elements of life that I am happy about, and it helps me realize the truth, which is that most of our lives are pretty awesome. I had an epiphany a few years ago when someone encouraged me to make a list of all the things that were bothering me, and then all the things I was grateful for. I’d encourage you to try that some time, especially on a day when you’re in a bad mood. What happened to me was, I wrote down three or four nagging problems in my life—and they were legitimate issues—and then I started writing down the things I was grateful for. I got to 10, then 12, then 15 things on that gratitude list, and seeing them side by side was quite jarring because it highlighted how much more good than bad there was in my life.

How long did that feeling of gratitude last? Well, it wasn’t permanent, that’s for sure. But I would say for the next few hours, when something negative popped up, I didn’t feel nearly as irritated as you would expect, and it’s because gratitude was still the overwhelming elephant in the room for me. It eventually wore off, for sure, but I always think about how that level of gratitude is available to me pretty much any time I want it… especially when I’m trying to find a parking spot at the mall around the holidays!

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:

OLDIE BUT GOODIE: "I told my sponsor I had a Jeckyll-and-Hyde personality. He said it was too bad that I'd sobered up the wrong one."

(Credit: Grapevine, January 2009, by Vic McM of Florida)

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

What is humility?

That’s a deep question, isn’t it? There probably is no official answer, and I bet everybody has their own definition of what humility means for them.

The dictionary definition says humility is being humble, and having a modest opinion of one’s importance. That sounds about right. But a modest opinion of one’s importance is certainly up for interpretation. If you’re the CEO of a billion-dollar corporation and issue directives that hundreds of people rush to do every day, I bet it’s hard to have a modest opinion of oneself.

I bring all of this up because I read some recovery literature recently where we ended up dissecting humility for an hour, and I had an unexpected takeaway myself—that for me, there is a direct relationship between humility and humor.

Think about it for a second. Humble people can laugh at themselves, and can usually laugh at the world when shitty stuff happens. In sobriety, we often hear, “Don’t take yourself too damn serious,” and it’s interesting when you apply that to humility.

Let me give you a few real-world examples of how I think this plays out. Imagine for a second you are in a busy parking lot and can’t find a space. Finally, you see someone pulling out so you sit nearby and wait for the person to pull out. Just when the spot is open, someone darts in and takes the spot.

This is very aggravating, isn’t it? I definitely would have an urge to scream at the a*****e. But humble people chuckle a bit, call the guy an a*****e under their breath and find another spot. No yelling. No arrests for disorderly conduct. You let the a*****e go about their day as the a*****e that they are.

Another example: You get to the office and somebody makes a joke about how your outfit doesn’t match. Multiple people look over and laugh. You want to launch the person into the sun, or make fun of them for something they might have done.

A humble person turns it into a joke and says something like, “I thought it was mismatch Monday!”

I realize how hard that is to do, and I am at about a 90 percent fail rate on that myself, because it stings. If you have any ego whatsoever, it’s embarrassing for somebody to pick on you for your appearance, and it makes you want to lash out. That’s pride and ego being pretty thin-skinned. I always think about how one of the agreements in the book The Four Agreements is about how you should never take anything personal. Nothing. Think about your life where your ego is at the exact right size, and you know who you are and what you stand for, so when somebody says you have a shitty car or an ugly house, you don’t care. It’s their opinion and they can have it, because you know the truth.

It also means you don’t need anybody’s validation to feel good about who you are. That’s a beautiful thing. That’s humility to me. And in private—not to their face—it never hurts my humility to find the humor in people who are that aggressive about weighing in on other peoples’ lives, because that is a pretty crappy way to go through life. I don’t want to live like that, that’s for sure.

One final thing about humor and humility… how many times does something bother you today, but then you find it hilarious a week later? That happens so much to me. I’ll whine and moan and groan and be pissed about something, then a week later I am telling it as a funny story. It’s because my humility is back in the right spot, where I am humble enough to laugh about tripping in front of 10 people at the grocery store, or that snippy email a coworker sent. So I always challenge myself to think, if I am going to laugh about this a week from now, why not just be humble and laugh about it now?

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:

OLDIE BUT GOODIE: "Since I have three speakers tonight," said the leader at an open meeting, "I'm not going to spend time qualifying myself. I think you can assume I'm an alcoholic, because damned if I've ever heard of anybody getting up here by mistake!"

(Credit: Grapevine, January 2009)

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.

A friend shared something the other day that he found to be an epiphany, and I ended up feeling the same way. I’ll throw it your way and you let me know if it is profound to you.

He shared that at a 12-step meeting once, a guy asked everybody in the room to raise their hand if they liked to help others. Almost everybody raised their hand.

Then the same dude asked, “Raise your hand if you like to ask for help.” Almost nobody raised their hand.

That totally makes sense, right? Most of us sober people, even those of us with quite a bit of recovery time under our belts, prefer to do nice things for others than ask for nice things from others. I actually have no issue with that—I’d always rather err on the side of doing more for others than I ask for myself.

However, it is pretty profound that I think the results would be almost the same at any meeting you went to—100 percent of people wanting to help, 0 percent wanting to ask for help. That’s kind of bad, isn’t it? Don’t we want some balance there?

But it is hard, and I’ve been experiencing it quite a bit lately. I have had some health issues and needed assistance. I have been doing pretty well with accepting help. But going out of my way to ask for it? Oof. I’m not there yet.

What was really interesting about the whole conversation was that my friend said it crystallized for him something important to remember—that we all acknowledge the need to be of service to others, but yet don’t participate in the other half of that chain, where we provide service opportunities to others. The whole supply-demand scenario of doing nice things for others doesn’t work if there are only people giving help, not wanting any of it.

So make sure you do your part to keep the supply chain rolling!

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 immediate gratification is that it isn't fast enough."

(Credit: Grapevine, January 2009, by Rick W. of New York, 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.

Of all the things I have heard in sobriety that stick with me, the one I have been thinking about the most lately is that sobriety isn’t for people who want it, and it’s not for people who need it—it’s for people who DO it.

I have found that to be so true, in sobriety and in life. You can think about something. You can talk about something. You can plan something. But what did you do?

One of the biggest things I hear at meetings sometimes is the same person saying the same thing over and over again.

“I need to get back into stepwork.”

“I need to be getting to more meetings.”

“I need to pick up the phone.”

That’s fine. I’ve said all those things. But I also developed a radar for when I’ve said it at meetings for three months in a row… that’s a very bad sign. It means I have awareness of an issue but no real desire to change it. Saying something out loud is usually helpful, but it’s not magic beans that make the solution sprout up out of the ground. You have to actually do the thing.

I think about that saying often when it comes to goals. I often cite a story from a sober friend of mine, when he mentioned to his sponsor that his self-esteem wasn’t great. His sponsor said, “Go do esteemable things.”

That’s the key to changing a behavior, in my opinion. If I want to be healthy, I have to do healthy things and not do unhealthy things. If you eat donuts for breakfast, a tiny salad for lunch and Taco Bell on the way home, guess what, you didn’t do enough healthy things. If you then spend the night wishing you had done more healthy things, and planning on how to do more healthy things tomorrow, and lamenting that you blew it that day… well, that’s not valuable action, either.

Same goes with sobriety. How many of us spent weeks, months, even years thinking hard about sobriety? But we didn’t do it. We didn’t go to rehab. Or meetings. Or get a sponsor. It was all wishes and worries and a bunch of other non-action.

This concept hit me this week because I have been slowing down a bit with my newsletter. I have a lot going on right now, so I did need to take a step back. But as I was thinking about writing this entry for the past few days, I thought, Geez, stop wanting or needing to do an LOL Sober about that topic. Do it! So here it is!

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

"I was a member of Alcoholics Oblivious."

(Credit: Grapevine, Jo B. of Anchorage, Alaska, January 2009)

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.

We read a section from “Working With Others” recently at a meeting. If you’re not familiar with that part of the book Alcoholics Anonymous, it’s worth a read. That section of sober literature makes a compelling case that one of the biggest keys to helping yourself is to help others.

I totally agree with that idea. Is there a statement stronger than “totally agrees”? Because I would use that statement. I have to help others. Period. In fact, in a strange contradiction, the most important part of me helping myself might be in how much I try to help others. What a strange—but true—math equation that is!

The thing that struck me the other night when we read “Working With Others” is that recovery literature often refers to sober people helping newly-sober people. And that’s great! But I also noticed something that the literature does NOT say, which is that you only should work with other people who have less sober time than you.

I fall into this trap a lot. I have several sponsees that I speak with on a regular basis, and I have a sponsor. When I connect with people, it’s usually somebody who’s newer to sobriety. That’s not a bad thing, in any way, shape or form.

The bad thing for me is that when I look at the totality of my sober program, I have to be very careful to avoid becoming someone who isn’t vulnerable himself. When I think about the phone calls and recovery work I have done recently, most of it is focused on others, not myself, and I do think I have slid a little bit on making sure that working with others is a two-way street. If I only talk to people with less sober time than me, am I being vulnerable myself? Or am I starting to morph into someone who’s trying to teach but not learn?

I think I do a decent job of not becoming that. But it’s easy to do. I’ve read all the literature at this point. I know the program. I have been to something like 2,500 meetings in probably 25 different states, in multiple different recovery fellowships. I don’t think I ever purposely thought to myself, “I’ve been a newcomer already. I now need to become an old-timer who reaches out his hand for people to grab but doesn’t need to grab a hand myself.” It just kinda happens, and that hit me the other night.

It’s also fitting that at that meeting, we say the set aside prayer, which is a regular topic around here for me. I love that the set aside prayer insists that we push everything we think we know, about pretty much any topic, off to the side. Ask yourself, what do I really know? Do I really fully understand sobriety? God? My kids? Science? Sports? Math?

The answer is no… but my actions often look more like someone who thinks he’s pretty damn smart. That guy thinks, I’ve been around. I’ve seen some s**t! I am a helper, not a recipient of help.

I guess the biggest thing that hit me is that if I am not working with others in both directions, I am not holding up my end of the bargain. If I only work with newcomers, that means I’m depriving other awesome sober people of the opportunity to see me be vulnerable myself, to learn from others and allow wisdom and generosity to be handed down to me, not just from me to others. It has to be a highway that runs in both directions, and lately, I’ve been more of a one-way cul-de-sac street.

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

"I always hustled money; I never had a problem with it until I came to AA. You people ruined me."

(Credit: Grapevine, January 2008, by Jan A. of Queens, 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.

A friend of mine tells a great story about a topic that I also experienced. He had about a year sober when he ran into some difficulties that pop up for newly-sober people. He found others still not trusting him entirely. He found himself having trouble navigating through conflict without 15 Natural Ice beers in him. He felt like the pink cloud had worn off. Basically, sober life was happening, and he hadn’t been able to numb out over it for awhile.

He mentioned to his sponsor that he couldn’t believe with a year sober—an entire year!—he’d be feeling like this. His sponsor promptly replied with a sober cliche, just with a personal twist. He said, “How long were you an alcoholic?”

The newly-sober guy thought about it and said, “Well, I got sober at the age of 30.”

The sponsor said, “OK, so you went into the woods for 30 years, and now you’ve been going the other way for 1 year. You see why your math about recovery might be a little off?”

They went back and forth about that for a little while, with the newly-sober guy saying stuff about how he didn’t drink alcoholically until he was 22, so technically it would have been 8 years walking in and 1 year out, which isn’t THAT much of a math problem that he’d be dealing with so much frustration right now.

That’s when his sponsor said, “Hey, listen, no matter how many years you want to count as alcoholic behavior and thought patterns, that was you RUNNING into the woods, and sobriety is you WALKING out.”

I love that story because I have found a lot of truth in it. From the moment most of us started drinking, it got more and more and more, and I certainly didn’t take my good old time. I remember my first weekends of college where I would go through one 12-pack of beer over two or three nights. Then the next weekend, I’d go through 15 beers. Then it’s be 18, and then a case. More. More. More. And quickly, quickly, quickly.

Sobriety, on the other hand, is a difficult stroll back out of the woods. In fact, the better way to think about it is that my drinking was me running down a paved path into the woods, and my sobriety is me going off the path, hiking through thick brush, bumping into trees, getting tick bites, stumbling into hornets’ nests… it’s not a 1-to-1 ratio.

And let me throw a quick thought out there to everybody who reads this who isn’t an alcoholic: This probably applies to you, too. Let’s say you’re 50 and you’re realizing you haven’t been the best sibling or spouse, that there is a behavior (or three) that you need to stop doing. If you change that behavior for a month, 2 months, 6 months, you might feel the same thing. “Why doesn’t my brother give me credit for this change?” you might say. Or, “I should have been listening better to my wife for the first 10 years of our relationship. But now I’ve been doing it for 3 months and she barely even acknowledged it.”

Think about that for a second: 10 years into the woods, 3 months out. You’re pretty much 100 yards from the spot you were in before!

If you think about change that way, the bumps associated with it can be much easier to digest. Because when you walk into the woods for 5 years and then walk out for 5 months, then get irritated because people aren’t noticing or thanking you, it means you set an expectation—that people will do x, y and z once they see the new you. Except, expectations are little baby resentment seeds that you’re planting. If you think because you’ve been on time for work every day for an entire week for the first time… where’s my raise?!?!… then you are going to be pissed when the raise doesn’t happen. You set an expectation, which blossomed into a giant resentment weed. That’s a tough way to go through life.

I’m writing about this today because I had some frustrations with my wife recently for bringing up some stuff that happened in 2006-07-08, when I was a full-blown drug addict and alcoholic. I immediately was thinking, “Come on now, the statute of expectations ran out on that years ago. I’ve been sober for 15-plus years now!” And that’s when it flashed into my head about the woods scenario. I was one way as a person for 31 years, then I got sober and changed dramatically … but one day at a time. When I was 32, I was much closer to the 31-year-old me than the 46-year-old me. And when I was 33, was that really all that different?

The point is, give people grace when you try to do a hard thing. It can be a hard thing for them, too. I was one person for 31 years, rushing into the woods. And now I have been army-crawling out of the woods for 15-and-a-half years (which is great!). But the rate of improvement just ain’t going to be the same as the rate of decline.

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:

"If you don't get sober for your wife, your kids, or yourself, do it for your dog. Both of you will be happier for it."

(Credit: Grapevine, January 2008, by Ed L. of Wrightwood, California)

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 recently where some people were sharing about the glorious, insidious nature of self-pity—the idea that it can be such a warm bath to lay back and think of all the crappy things we didn’t deserve but got anyway. Self-pity is one of those things that if you make eye contact with it, it will start a longgg conversation with you.

But one guy shared a great anecdote that I am still thinking about. He was talking about that period about six months into sobriety that so many of us go through—we’ve put out enough of the big fires to realize how many small fires and hard work remain, and we also have just enough experience living a life without drugs and alcohol to numb out pain to realize that it’s very difficult to be sober. Life gets lifey, as many people say!

During that period, he said he told his sponsor, “I feel like I deserve better than I am getting right now.”

And his sponsor promptly said something so basic that it is incredibly profound: “If you had actually gotten what you deserved, you’d be dead or in jail.”

Damn. As the kids say these days, “Boom, roasted.” How do you come back from something so devastating because it’s true? When I think about it, even if I had lost my house, marriage, job and other stuff, it wouldn’t have added up to the price I probably should have paid for all those bad decisions and terrible behaviors. So anything bumpy at 6 months—or 5 years or 20 years—pales in comparison to me with a toe tag on, or me in a vegetative state because I ate 50 Vicodin and 10 beers.

I left that meeting really thinking about whether I need to even be using the word deserve. What do I deserve? I live a a good life now, with bumps in the road that have mostly been manageable, and I feel grateful every morning to be alive. What else could you ask for? Do I deserve more money? Fame? Kinder teenaged kids? Nah, I don’t DESERVE them. Would I like them? Yes. Yes, I would. But I got more than what I deserved, and it doesn’t involve a toe tag.

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:

OLDIE BUT GOODIE: The lush sat drinking at his kitchen table, complaining to his wife that his bartender didn't understand him.

(Credit: Grapevine, January 2008, by 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.

I was thinking recently about some of my internal dialogue when I meet somebody coming back from a relapse. It’s not great sometimes. I really wish I had undercover footage of me in 2011, when I had about three years of good sobriety and then decided to stop going to meetings.

We had moved from New York to Connecticut, and it was a busy time. So I took a little breather from getting to meetings and connecting with local sober people. It was all the traps that sober people fall into sometimes.

“I’d learned a lot already, so what would I hear at a meeting that is new?”

“I’m so busy. I don’t have time.”

“I’m coaching my kid’s team in the evening, and I have to get the kids to school in the morning, so I’m tied up when there are meetings.”

B******t. All b******t.

I bring it up because a funny incident with a raccoon happened to me just as I was thinking about how I need to make sure I always stay empathetic toward people who don’t stick their sober landing the first time.

My wife made chicken and potatoes one night early last week, and she threw the trash bag into our can in the back. Big mistake. The chicken guts and potato peels basically cooked in 90 degree heat for a few days, and sure enough, she grabbed me one day at about 3 pm and said our trash can was moving.

When I went out, the temperature was about 88 degrees and extremely humid. I could hear whatever creature was trapped jumping and clawing and then jumping and clawing again. Over and over again. I could tell it was bigger than a squirrel and definitely not as big as, say, a bear. Something in between. But big enough to have a stick in my hand just in case.

I finally popped the lid open just enough to peek in, and there sat a raccoon. He started hissing at me and making a racket. I threw the lid open and got back from it. But then I saw that he wasn’t going to be able to jump or climb high enough to get out, even with the lid open.

So I put the lid back down and wheeled the can into my yard. Then I swung the lid open and got back. It took the poor guy about 10 seconds to finally wobble out, and he eventually did. He was moving slow and making loud noises, something like a screech. I was struck by the fact that this nocturnal animal didn’t even have the gas tank to run away after being freed from potential death. He just kind of slinked into the trees near my house.

I took a picture of the woozy little guy just as he popped his head out of the can. I swear I could feel a little gratitude from him, because it sure seemed like absolute panic in the blistering heat for hours and hours before I opened that lid. I couldn’t help but feel in my soul how active addiction does a similar thing: It traps us in a garbage can of s**t that makes us feel better for awhile. Then the fun runs out, and you start to try to get out. There are stops and starts, and then the panic hits you—I can’t get out of this thing alone. But how do I get help? I’m scared of what help looks like, and also of the pain that will happen once the truth is out.

The funny thing about the raccoon was how slow he took the help when it arrived. After suffering all day, when the lid flew open magically, he took his good old time taking the help that plopped down in his life out of nowhere.

OK, I’ll stop. I can’t tell if this whole thing might be either absolutely brilliant or complete nonsense. Be sure to tell me in the comments!

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:

TONY AND JOE, NEIGHBORS, both get DUIs around the same time and are court-ordered to AA meetings. Joe stops going as soon as he gets his last paper signed, but Tony admits defeat and sticks around. A few months later, they run into each other in a store. After some small talk, Joe asks, "Where are you headed?"

Tony says, "To an AA meeting."

Joe says, "Really? How long do you have to go for?"

Tony replies, "Probably for the rest of my life."

"My God!" Joe exclaims. "What judge did YOU have?"

(Credit: Grapevine, January 2008, by Bob C.)

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 have a sober friend who I really respect, and he always talks about the 7-second plan. His theory is that no matter how tense or aggressive a conversation is, you always have the opportunity to pause for 7 seconds before you speak, and that when you pause 7 seconds to speak, you will respond better almost every time.

In theory, I agree with that. But does it actually work? What’s the difference between now and 7 seconds from now, especially in an argument?

It’s a huge difference, it turns out. I tried it recently because I have been finding myself about 29 percent more irritable in normal conversation. So I have been making some unnecessary snippy comments, and also doing plenty of sighing and hand motioning to indicate that I am annoyed. I was hoping to remedy that a little bit by trying the 7-second plan.

I gotta say… it worked very, very well. It is easier said than done—I found myself literally biting my tongue a few times just to not say anything right away. What I found was, even during a feisty exchange, I could always find space for the 7-second delay by saying something like, “Hmmm, let me think about that for a second.” The other person would wait patiently as I contemplated whether to respond calmly or, you know, strangle them.

After 7 seconds, I usually had a better response, even if it was only a slightly better response. The extra breath or two always brought forth a more subdued response, and even in my worst moments, I could more calmly say, “You know, I hear you, but I don’t agree.” A few times, I would add in, “Let’s both think about it a little more. I want to really sit with what you were saying.”

I’m not going to pretend 7 seconds solved all my problems, though. I found myself on several occasions—especially with my teenage daughters—still wanting to launch them into the sun after 7 seconds. But what the 7 seconds did for me was firm up the idea that I wasn’t capable of not telling them to shut the bleep up and clean their room right now, that I needed to say something like, “Hey, I’m agitated, and so are you, so maybe let’s revisit it in an hour. Go relax and do something you want to do for awhile.”

That space was huge. It also telegraphs that you are looking for serene, thoughtful solutions even if you’re not capable of them in the moment. When I told one of my kids that I felt like barking at her but wasn’t going to, she nodded her head and walked off. I could see that she appreciated that I cared enough to just do nothing, and that’s something almost everybody appreciates.

The whole thing worked very well, and nobody ever said, “Hurry up, give me your opinion right now.” That’s one of the myths of pausing in conversations, with texts, with emails… the idea that you need to respond now. Yes, we live in a world that moves faster than ever, especially with a cell phone in everybody’s pocket. But that’s a feeling more than a fact—I didn’t have any situations where pausing ended up being problematic.

And perhaps the biggest thing I realized was that in my most tense moments of trying to implement it, the biggest benefit to pausing for 7 seconds is realizing at the end of the 7 seconds that I needed to pause for 7 minutes or 7 hours or 7 days. And people were fine with that! Even when my wife asked me for input on a decision that we needed to make by the end of that day, I was able to convey to her that I cared so much about it that I wanted to contemplate it for an hour or so. People like that—they want to be heard and considered, and the 7-second plan actually went a long way toward conveying that care and attention.

The one area where I might need a little more 7-second work? Driving. I’m at .7 seconds per pause… but I’m working on it!

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

QUESTION: How many alcoholics does it take to change a light bulb?

ANSWER: We'll have to call a group conscience and get back to you on that.

(Credit: Grapevine, by Sheri B of Mililani, Hawaii, January 2008)

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 had an interesting conversation with another alcoholic recently where he referenced The Promises, and it dawned on me that I never wanted any of them until I did. Let me explain.

I put a link into the written version of this newsletter where you can go read the whole thing. I’ll just summarize The Promises by saying that they can be found on pages 83-84 of the Big Book, and they lay out all the things that many, many alcoholics have found to come true if you work a very strong sober program. It’s stuff like peace, not regretting the past but also not shutting the door on it. It says, “We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness.”

The thing that that conversation brought up for me is that I didn’t really ever want any of that stuff. Not as a kid, not as a college student, not as a 25-year-old. Serenity? No fear of financial insecurity? That my experiences could benefit others? That I would want to avoid self-pity? No way. In fact, I think if you grabbed 25-year-old me, I would have actively said that those kinds of goals are weak and silly and too hippy-dippy.

I always thought I wanted an awesome girlfriend, a giant house, lots of professional success and accolades, money, good looks. I specifically relied upon accolades to find fulfillment; I needed you to think I was great in order for me to think it. Those were my Promises, and I ultimately got in over my head with alcohol and drugs and had to be brought to my knees to fully realize how empty those things are.

I’m not sure why I had a mini epiphany the other day when that came up. I think it has something to do with my kids getting old enough now that we talk quite a bit about what they want to be when they grow up. They always answer that they want to be a teacher and have two kids and live in Connecticut but travel a lot… the same way that I never thought about emotional intelligence or that the root of good self-esteem is doing esteemable acts, they’re not, either. They’re thinking job, geography, money, etc.

So it hit me that one of the gifts of The Promises is that they exist as a goal set that has taken precedent over fame and fortune for me. Do I always have The Promises come true every day? Definitely not. But they do always come true as the starting point for what I want to be when I grow 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

"I knew I'd had a spiritual awakening when I realized I was sober and happy at the same time."

(Credit: Grapevine, February 2008, by Vance G. of Washington, DC)

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 went to a giant meeting the other night at a church where we usually have a pretty sweet side room that accommodates what is always a big crowd of 75 men.

Well, as so often happens with busy churches, there was another event going on and the church asked us to use another room. In this case, we went into the main sanctuary.

I’d never been in that part of the church, so I was taken aback. It was beautiful, and massive, with high arching ceilings and dozens of pews and pillars. I got there right before the meeting began, so I was about 20 rows back, and almost immediately I realized that I was going to hear about 25 percent of the words said at this meeting.

Everybody in front of me was seated facing forward, so I was trying to hear them speak a different direction than I was sitting. There were fans going, and the high ceilings pretty much sucked up all the words. I found myself closing my eyes and tilting my head to the side to try to catch what people were saying.

None of it worked. In a 60-minute meeting, I probably heard about 15-20 minutes worth of actual sharing. The rest was muffled, confused, drowned out by laughter or a pew creaking.

But guess what? It was great. For people that I couldn’t hear at all, I closed my eyes and sat in silence. Sometimes I’d hear laughter about what was being said, and I’d open my eyes and see heads nodding even though I had no idea what they were agreeing with.

I ended up hearing all of the prayers, the guided meditation, many of the names of people as they introduced themselves and a few shares. But I was a little blown away how even though I couldn’t hear the specific words people were saying, I felt the vibe. The vibe was loving, supportive, fun, spiritual and sober. It was awesome.

When I got in the car to go home, I turned on the radio and the AC/DC song Back in Black was on. I cranked it and started to sing, and realized I know about 10 percent of the words. That made me laugh because just like the meeting I walked out of a few minutes earlier, I didn’t need to know the entire transcript of what was being said to be able to tap into the overall vibe. For the meeting, that was serenity and sobriety. For the drive home, that was going 10 mph over the speed limit and shrieking 70s rock. I love them both!

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:

"In high school I used to write my own absenteeism notes. I did this so often I realized I had quit school—one day at a time."

(Credit: Grapevine, February 2008, by Michael K. of Haverhill, Maryland)

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

I heard someone once call her character defects “Gremlins,” and she said that the Gremlins were already there before she started drinking, then they multiplied and got bigger and scarier once they got wet.

In case you’re not familiar, that was basically the plot of the famous movie franchise, “Gremlins.” If Gizmo got wet, he’d multiply into other Gremlins, which were all more mischievous than him.

I don’t know if the analogy completely works. But in my head, it makes total sense. I have heard people say before that they were cruising along in life and then drinking became a problem. I guess that’s possible. But it’s not my experience. Drinking and drugging were a reaction to some bad behaviors and attitudes—let’s call them Gremlins for the sake of this exercise—that existed before I ever picked up a vodka bottle. Alcohol and drugs often made those issues worse, and that included multiplying my Gremlins into either bigger or new Gremlins.

I’ll give you one small example. I think I always had the urge to exaggerate or fib from time to time, even as a little kid. I couldn’t just catch a fish or win a wrestling match; it had to be dramatic and incredible. I’d win a wrestling match 5-0 and then tell somebody it was 10-0. I needed you to be impressed by the largest possible amount.

But that small Gremlin morphed into flat-out lying in my drinking and drugging days. I had to lie to keep the whole charade going, and the lying eventually turned into scams. I’d return items to stores for money, lie about credit card charges, inappropriate use of my corporate credit card, just about anything.

What’s especially tricky once you get sober is that for me, at first, I was still the same guy, just without the drugs and alcohol. So all those behavior Gremlins were still a part of me, so I still hadn’t grown enough as a person to, say, feel bad about using my corporate credit card for personal use sometimes.

So that is a long and winding way to come back to the Gremlin example. Which is to say that part one of sobriety was to stop drinking, which meant halting the addition of new Gremlins in my life. But part two was eliminating the Gremlins that already existed. If you remember the movies, the Gremlins were obviously eventually eliminated. But in sobriety, it takes a little longer than a couple of movie run times, and sometimes the Gremlins don’t disappear, they just get a little smaller.

But I’d say overall I am pretty happy about my Gremlin supply right now!

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:

As the speaker droned on past the thirty-minute mark and showed no sign of winding up, the room steadily began to empty.

With only one listener left, the bore finally snapped out of it and told the loner, "I'm very grateful that there's at least one soul open and willing enough to listen to my message."

"Listen?!" snapped the other. "I'm the next speaker."

(Credit: Grapevine, by W.A. of Tulsa, Oklahoma, February 2008)

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 went to a meeting the other day where a guy talked about remembering going to his first meeting, and it really made me laugh. He said he’d never met a sober person until then, that he was about 30 years old and as far as he knew, he didn’t have any friends or family members who were recovering alcoholics or drug addicts. The whole thing was new to him.

So his first experience at a meeting was his first experience around sober people of any kind, and he said it blew his mind. I laughed because I really identified. I don’t recall ever having a conversation with another actual sober human being about sobriety before I went to rehab.

I found this guy’s share hilarious because the way he spoke about this new, mysterious collection of people was as if he had stumbled onto an island where all the Bigfoots lived. He marveled at the way they all seemed happy and organized, and they all seemed to care about the genuine good of everybody involved, especially newcomers.

I had the same experience. I liked my first few meetings but my head was spinning. I always thought that sober meant sober—quiet, dull, boring, broken down. That’s not what I saw. I saw people who were more loving and more happy than I ever could have imagined. And if I’m being honest, I gravitated more toward the hellraiser part of the sober crowd, the people who were model citizens now but you could smell the trouble on them from years past. Those people lived with an exuberance and brashness that I really identified with. They were living today, and only today, and that was so cool to see.

That’s why one of the best suggestions I ever heard was to just hang out with sober people for a bit. Sure, going to 90 meetings in 90 days can be very important. But going out to breakfast with five sober dudes might just be the kick in the ass that a new guy needs, too. I’ve been out on quite a few very raucous breakfasts with sober guys, and every time it reminded me that I had found my people—the sober Sasquatch people!

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

A DRUNK CAME ACROSS a magazine article about the horrors of liver disease and other damage that drinking can do to one's body. He found what he read frightening, so he told his drinking buddies that he'd had enough.

"That's it!" he said. "After today, no more reading."

(Credit: Grapevine, by John K. of Sanford, NC, February 2008)

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 business meeting recently for one of my favorite meetings, and I brought up a proposal to change the format. The meeting goes around the room in a circle, and it’s always been a small enough meeting that everybody gets a chance to share.

Well, the meeting has gotten bigger. We’ve gone from 10-15 people every week to 20-25 people, with no timer, so it has gotten close to the point where somebody might not get a chance to share and have no opportunity to raise their hand and say they really needed a turn to speak.

So my suggestion was to go around the room for the first 45 minutes, then go to a show of hands among people who haven’t gotten a chance. There were about 10 people at the business meeting, and the other nine all voted against the idea. Their point was that nobody had not gotten a chance to share, so why fix what isn’t broke? I laughed about it and said, “OK, well, I guess my proposal just ate a huge s**t sandwich,” and we all chuckled at an epic business meeting defeat.

I wouldn’t have been able to laugh about that in the past, and if I had, it wouldn’t have been authentic. I guess I’ve grown up a bit?

I’ve shared about this before, but I have always taken meetings very seriously. They saved my life, and I think I’m super smart, so I end up coming to believe I know how meetings should go. I remember having 30 days sober and raising my hand about making changes to my home group. I never liked that they had a timer and also a rule about no swearing. So I brought it up at the business meeting, and had absolutely zero support.

I remember leaving that day with my tail between my legs. I definitely took it too personal. I hadn’t really learned at that point that group conscience is what is best for the group, and it is about the most democratic process you could ever get involved with.

In the 15 years since then, I have had a slew of ideas about how a meeting should run, and almost every one ended badly. I even had a suggestion of adding a strong statement outlining why cross talk was bad, and people voted it in. Then I felt bad about it, because I saw some people who came to the meeting and got wide eyes of concern when they listened to the chairperson read that strong statement. It sounded a little off-putting, to be honest.

I was really glad that when I lost that recent vote at a business meeting that I responded with a shoulder shrug. I think it showed my growth about being just another bozo on the bus when it comes to how meetings operate. Then again, I just said, “I lost a recent vote,” which makes it still sound like I was viewing it as me winning or losing. Oh well, baby steps toward improvement, right?

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 MAN SAT IN FRONT of his home, contemplating his future. He had just gotten a divorce, lost his children, been fired from his job, and now faced eviction. He noticed a case of beer bottles in his trash and walked up to it.

He took out an empty bottle and smashed it, swearing, "You are why I don't have a wife!" He threw a second bottle: "You are why I don't have my children!" And a third: "You are why I lost my job!"

But then he discovered a fourth bottle, still sealed and full of beer. He took it, tucked it into his pocket, and said, "Stand aside, my friend--I know you were not involved."

(Credit: Grapevine, February 2008)

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 belong to Anytime Fitness, and my gym does a pretty cool thing every week. The manager has a group of adults from a facility for men living with cognitive disabilities come in and clean up around the gym.

I always see the guys cleaning, and they bust their asses. So does their chaperone. They really take the job seriously and it’s such a cool thing to see.

I had the idea recently to let them know that they are appreciated. I bought a thank you card and a $25 Starbucks gift card and gave it to them earlier this week. You should have seen their faces. They just absolutely lit up—both guys from the facility, as well as the guy who brings them (I’ll call him Dave). I told them all that the people at the gym really appreciate all three of them.

Dave came over to me twice and said how much my gift had meant to him and the guys. I gotta admit, I felt great. I felt like I had done a nice thing that got several compliments and was much appreciated, and I loved it.

I also will admit that I really enjoy that kind of thing, and that I have to keep an eye on that. It’s definitely a high, though it might be the most acceptable way to try to boost your mood. I had to step back and think about my motive. Was it to do a nice thing for someone? Or was it to do a nice thing and get a nice pat on the back while doing it?

Hmm, I think the answer is the second one. I think I really, genuinely wanted that crew to know that they are doing a great job. But I also think I would have been really bummed out if Dave had said, “Thanks,” and just walked away.

That’s the part the situation that is a little bothersome. My sober program has taught me that expectations are very tricky, because they are absolutely a part of the human experience but also something to keep an eye on. Who among us doesn’t give someone a birthday gift and then not get agitated if that person doesn’t bother getting you one? I guess in an ideal world, I only ever do things that are the right thing to do regardless of any benefit to myself. But… geez, come on.

I’m not going to beat myself up about catching myself looking forward to a positive response to an act of generosity. I would take that on my tombstone, for sure. I just need to make sure that a) I am spiritually fit enough to be ok with getting a response that isn’t up to my standards and b) that I am trying to give out $25 gift cards all day to make myself feel worthwhile—that doesn’t really seem sustainable, does it?

Looking back, I think I’m fine with the way things went. I think if the reaction to my gift had been more subdued, I would have moved on with my day and still felt good about it. I’ve done things like that in the past and not dwelled on the feedback being a giant parade. But… who doesn’t love a big parade in their honor?

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

"I was so sick when I was new, at one point I asked another guy in my home group if I could copy his Fourth Step."

(Credit: Grapevine, by Michael K. of Haverhill, 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.

I’ve been going to lots of meetings recently where a clipboard is passed around and people can sign up to speak at other meetings or at rehabs. I’ve consistently signed up for those opportunities over the years but recently I have just been handing the clipboard to the person beside me.

But I started to feel guilty, because speaking is a part of doing service and staying sober. I don’t think I could stay sober without doing service work, which I define as chairing meetings, being a treasurer or GSR for a meeting, being a greeter at meetings, sponsoring people and yes, telling your story at meetings.

So why didn’t I ever sign up for the past year or two? I told myself it was humility, that other people should get a chance to speak, that I’ve done it before and don’t want to try to be the center of attention (trying to be the center of attention has always been a bit of an issue for me).

Was that true? Sort of, yes. But sort of, no. I think maybe I just have gotten comfortable retreating to the back and disguising it as humility. But retreating from service work isn’t humility; it’s laziness. And I think my overall percentages were probably about 50 percent laziness and 50 percent humility.

But a month ago, I decided to sign up to speak at a meeting on Saturday, May 18. And then a friend asked me to speak on Thursday, May 16, so it was basically a speaking tour for me last week. I of course had that feeling early in the week where I considered trying to come up with an excuse to get out of both commitments. But I went through with both of them, and it was awesome.

The thing about speaking is that even if you aren’t a great speaker, or have a strange journey, or don’t have a higher power, there is probably someone in the crowd that will benefit from hearing your message. I truly believe that. I have listened to people who say they hate recovery, that they’re only doing it so they don’t get fired from work, that they think sober people are a pain in the ass… and I’ve seen people nod along because they’re on a similar journey and it helps them. Did it help me? No, it did not. But sobriety is about building a community for yourself, and I don’t have to want to be a part of every community.

The other thing that I was reminded of is that speaking is also good for me. It makes me be accountable for my program. I can’t really get up there and say I haven’t been at a meeting for a year but here I am with my fantastic recovery story!

So I spoke, and I found it very rewarding. I’m proud of my recovery journey, and people generally respond to my overall main message, which is that sobriety is so much more fun and exciting than I ever thought it would be. I probably used the phrase, “We are not a glum lot” 50 times this week.

I’m not going to b******t, though. Is speaking at a big meeting and having everybody clap and laugh a bit of an ego boost? For sure. But who doesn’t like a little ego boost?

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:

"There are just two things an alcoholic doesn't like—the way things are, and change."

(Credit: Grapevine, March 2008, by 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.

I think most who know me would say that I am a pretty easygoing person who tends to get along with most people. And when push comes to shove, I usually don’t do any shoving. I’ve gotten much better over the years at a staple of recovery: exercising restraint of pen and tongue.

However, I also am guilty of an ugly side of navigating conflict as an agreeable person—copping a resentment later. Or, as is often the case, copping many resentments.

I’ll give you a good fictional example. If I want to get Chinese food some night, and two of my kids want Mexican instead, and my wife and other daughter want pizza, I usually end up saying, “OK, how about that pizza place that also makes tacos and quesadillas?” (That’s a real thing in the town I live in, by the way.) I put aside my wants in favor of the entire crew.

Then I eat delicious pizza and move on… but later that night, I will be mulling the day’s events and a seed will sprout up for a tiny little resentment.

“Hey, why didn’t anybody factor in what I wanted tonight?”

Then the seed starts to grow.

“Nobody ever really incorporates what I want for dinner. Actually, nobody ever incorporates anything I want into anything. My kids are bad about that, but my wife didn’t say anything, either.”

And it goes on and on and on until it’s 10 pm and I am silently irate about dinner from earlier in the day. Then I go to bed and wake up with that resentment still sitting in there. I often will throw in a little hot sauce on top of that resentment by starting to think about anger toward myself, that I need to stand up for myself more, that I need to insist upon what I want and need more in the future, that I need to stop being such a weak person.

That all adds up to a disaster. All of a sudden, I am this agreeable, salt of the earth person who’s actually boiling underneath the surface, and it’s only a matter of time until I boil over. You see it often out there in the world: the quiet, smiling person who blows a gasket and does something stupid.

Luckily I don’t have too many of those moments any more because sobriety taught me how insidious silent anger can be, and also what to do about it.

What is there to do about it? Working a good Fourth and Fifth Step. Write out the resentment, what it affects inside you and what your role in it is.

It helps me to put it on paper, and it helps me even more to walk through it with another sober person. There’s something concrete about writing it out, and then there is something bonding when you share it with someone else. I also like the accountability of recognizing your role in a resentment and figuring out a solution with another sober person—there’s a part of me that finds that solution to be my responsibility after that, and it is shared with someone I respect. I tend to respond well when I make a commitment with someone else—I feel like I need to hold up my end of the bargain.

With a situation like the restaurant example, my role often is to be agreeable but to also make sure I am voicing my opinion in a healthy, productive way. I often will say something like, “OK, let’s get the Mexican food and a pizza. But I’d really appreciate that next time we get the Chinese food since I am compromising on tonight’s meal. Is that a deal?”

People usually nod, and it works out the next time. And if it doesn’t, I know that that’s okay, too.

Just kidding. I have to do the whole thing all over again because I am super pissed about getting Chinese food…

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 retired Army officer answered his front door to some neighbor ladies, who'd begun a campaign to end drinking in their small town.

"When did you have your last drink?" they asked.

"1945," he said.

"That's great!" the ladies said. "So, you are a teetotaler now?"

"I wouldn't call it that, exactly," he said, looking at his military watch.

"It's only 2015 now."

(Credit: Grapevine, by Anonymous, March 2008)

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 went to a meeting last night where I pulled in and I saw the entire group gathered on the front steps and in the parking lot of the church. “Uh-oh,” I thought. “Somebody must have forgotten the key to the church.”

I immediately tried to figure out if anybody had seen me, so that I could possibly sneak out of there and tell myself, “Hey, I tried to get to a meeting but the church was locked.” Plus, you expect me to chase sobriety by standing or sitting on the ground? Are you kidding?

I decided to pull in and walk over, though. I was glad I did. We had the meeting outside (the guy with the key didn’t show up). It’s a meeting that reads from the book As Bills Sees It but we only had one copy. So the chairperson didn’t have a script to read from and we didn’t have books. But she picked out three readings and read them, then people took turns sharing.

As I stood there, I couldn’t help but marvel at the spirit of recovery. I was thrown off when I first got there that we weren’t in the basement like we always were. But like sober people always do, we tried to chase recovery the same way we chased booze. Trust me, if I had shown up at the bar back in the day and they had all the bottles sitting out front because the bar was locked, I wouldn’t have tried to slink my way out of the parking lot. I’d have laid on the ground to drink. I have to be willing to do that with sobriety, too.

So that’s what we did. We had a great meeting outside, with bugs flying around, some people standing and some people sitting, no books, cars coming into and out of the parking lot. It was a beautiful chaotic hour of spirituality in a parking lot setting.

It was a good reminder that sobriety can happen anywhere. During the pandemic, I remember some panic that first week when all of my in-person meetings closed up. What was I doing to do?

Then Zoom meetings came along. As far as I can remember, I had never even heard of Zoom before, and then all of a sudden, it was my lifeline to stay sober. That parking lot experience reminded me that whether I move, or the world shuts down, or I am bed-ridden, or church keys disappear, recovery will be happening somewhere. I just need to go find 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 middle-aged fellow lamented that, although he'd been in AA for several months, he was still living in a sober group house and riding a girl's bike to meetings. An old-timer replied, "I truly believe that if you don't drink, work the Steps, and carry the message, in no time at all you'll be riding a boy's bike."

(Credit: Grapevine, March 2008, by Kay K. of Redondo Beach, California)

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.

Most people accept the notion that resentment is the No. 1 offender for alcoholics, that it destroys more people trying to get sober than anything else. Recovery literature often references that quote, and I wholeheartedly agree with it.

I didn’t use to. I thought maybe the answer was divorce, or a sudden death, or a specific terrible event that could rock your sobriety. But I do think that resentment is actually responsible for more relapses and struggles to get sober than anything else. And of all the difficult events I have experienced, the resentment that can spring up associated with that event was the most dangerous part of it.

But I was at a meeting the other day when the chairperson introduced a topic, and somebody said, “I believe that resentment is the No. 1 offender, and I think today’s topic is the No. 2 offender.”

Any guesses what he was talking about? I’ll give you 10 seconds…

OK, his answer was self-pity. He made the case that self-pity leads to resentment, which can lead to drinking. As he said it, I wasn’t sure I agreed. I started going through my head about what my No. 2 biggest tripwire I could hit in sobriety would be… and after a few minutes, I felt like self-pity was the right answer.

Think about it for a second. Think about a professional example. You think you should be promoted. You’ve felt that way for awhile but managed to stay pretty calm about it. Then Biff Dipshit from the corner cubicle gets the promotion instead of you. What happens?

For me, I think I would be pissed at first. Like, really fired up. But I think I would work through that after a few hours, and then I think the self-pity would show up. The thing that is so lethal about self-pity is how sneaky it is. When I’m mad, I know I am mad, and I know that I should shut my mouth and try to cool down. But when I am in the throes of self-pity, it is not pleasant but I am also comfortable in that brand of unpleasantness. It doesn’t feel like I am in any kind of danger when I am whining that Biff got the promotion and that my boss doesn’t understand how awesome I am and “this always happens to me” and “we need the extra money” and “this whole company always screws me.”

For me, I think that the reason it sucks to be in the self-pity zone is because it is a delusional way to explain away a difficult situation in the most self-centered manner possible. Think about complaining that the world always screws you out of stuff… how self-centered is that? Self-pity feels like you’re beating yourself up but you’re really making yourself the center of the universe and way more important than you actually are. In some ways, the most egotistical thing you can do is to climb in the pity pot and come up with all the ways people don’t understand how awesome you are.

So my answer for the No. 2 offender is self-pity. I also considered jealousy, money and pain as three things that belong in consideration. I think any kind of long-term physical or emotional pain can wear people down and make them reach for something to numb themselves out. With money and jealousy, I have heard people say that finance and romance can be incredibly stressful things to stay sober through. I think that’s true, and those three things would probably be 3-5 on my top five offender list, in some order.

Let me know what your top five would be!

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

A guy enters the local dive bar and says to his buddy, "Hey, Joe, I heard you were mugged leaving here the other night."

"Yeah, this guy pulled a gun on me and said, 'Your money or your life,'" Joe says.

"What did you do?"

"I told him I was just a drunk, and that I didn't have any money—or much of a life. He let me go!"

(Credit: Grapevine, March 2008, by Chris W. of Pembroke, 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.

I heard someone speak the other day about the best way to approach a new person at a meeting. He was saying how many times he has seen people come on a little too strong, and I have seen similar situations. His suggestion was to always remember that if someone isn’t ready to get sober, you can’t talk them into it. So don’t try.

But I haven’t seen much of what he was talking about. Honestly, in my experience, I have seen 99 percent positive, appropriate handshakes and introductions after meetings. I’m talking about men talking to newcomer men, and women talking to newcomer women. I am not including any 13th step stuff that I have observed because that is an entirely different category—in my opinion, there’s no gray area with that. Don’t do it. If you see it happening, step in. I’ve seen people be overly friendly toward new members of the opposite sex, and it just shouldn’t happen. I have no business getting the contact info of a woman who has a month sober.

Ok, let me get off my high horse for a minute and get back on topic. Which is: What is the most spiritual way to approach a newcomer? Should I approach a newcomer at all? Or is it better to write your phone number down when they pass around meeting lists and leave it at that?

I have quite a bit of experience answering that question multiple ways. I used to be pretty aggressive in introducing myself to newcomers. I’d go up and say hello, ask them a little about themselves and exchange numbers. I often would get their number and call them before they ever called me.

I also had a period where I was doing that, plus also keeping tabs on seeing them at meetings or hearing from them. I’d occasionally say to a guy, “How have you been? I haven’t heard from you. Did your phone break?” It was always mild ribbing about working a good program, and nobody ever seemed bothered by it. I had one new guy who I used to constantly bust his chops about showing up at 7:10 for 7 pm meetings, and he’d always smile. He eventually said he was thankful for that because he started getting to meetings on time more often.

I don’t do that any more. It’s not because I think it is bad. I just decided over the years to introduce myself once, give them my number if they want it, and if I never hear from them, I’m fine with that. I hope they are sober however they are able to get sober, and it doesn’t have to involve me. I also decided that nobody elected me Sheriff of Sobertown, so I don’t need to goof on anybody for not getting to meetings that I am at. I mind my own business a little more.

Is that the right approach? I don’t know. That’s the real answer—I don’t know. Only our higher powers know what the best way for any single person to get sober and stay sober. I think it depends on the person and the situation—there’s definitely a vibe you need to pay attention to. If someone is hiding in the back and doesn’t share, maybe don’t circle them up and start pestering for contact info. Let them ease into it. If someone approaches me and wants my number, I feel like that is an opportunity to be a little more outspoken. I just had it happen recently and I told the guy, “I want to hear from you in the next week,” and I did. I felt like the guy really wanted to have some accountability thrown his way.

I guess my short answer to a complex question is… it’s different in every situation. I do think you’re better off being too gentle than too aggressive; I’d never want to chase somebody off. So I think I want to do what someone told me a long time ago, which is: Any time you reach your hand out, I will grab it. But if you don’t reach out your hand, I won’t come looking 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:

After I shared euphorically at a meeting about how my life had been transformed since I joined AA, an old-timer leaned over and whispered, "When your cup runneth over, looketh out!"

(Credit: Grapevine, April 2008, by 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.

I was at a meeting the other day when a guy shared about how intoxicating self-pity can be. He really had me nodding along, because he was making a great point about when you say things like, “Oh, just my luck…” or “That figures, I’m jinxed” you are actually being very self-centered.

He was talking about how those moments are actually incredibly selfish. If I think that I am cursed, that the universe is plotting against me, it’s no different than thinking everything should go my way. I have placed myself in the center of everything and am treating basic life on life’s terms stuff like it revolves around me.

Then he got into the idea that other people don’t really want to be around someone who is mopey and thinks they are important enough to moan and groan about every little thing that goes wrong in their life. He ended by saying, “Am I a fountain or a drain?”

I thought about that all weekend. When I am around other people, am I a source of optimism and positivity? Or do I drag people down into the gutter? I think I do both on a regular basis, and I certainly used to be nothing but a self-centered drain guy. When I was still drinking, I thought most of my problems were terrible luck, and I let you know that the world was plotting against me. Sometimes my bad luck wasn’t even true—I used to constantly use the concept of New York traffic as the reason why I was late or didn’t show up for something I committed to. It was usually just me hustling around, trying to get pills at doctors’ offices and pharmacies, and I blamed the Lincoln Tunnel for why I got to work at 12:30 pm rather than 9:30 am. I came up with insane stories about overturned trucks and cars on fire over and over again, and I remember it got to the point that my wife started saying, “Geez, I’m never driving through the Lincoln Tunnel. It’s chaos every day!” It was pretty much all b******t!

I also remember constantly joking with people that “Life sucks, and then you die.” It usually got a laugh, but geez, who the hell wants to hear that? In what context does that bring any good into the world?

When I got sober and learned the concept of humility, and that humility means that I don’t think I am the president of the world or the most cursed person in the world, I began to understand that the pity party crap is no different than the “I should run everything” stuff that goes through my head. I need to remember that I am somewhere in the middle, a worker among workers, a dad among dads, a driver among drivers. I used to worry that I was accepting mediocrity by admitting that. I’ve actually found that thought process to be incredibly freeing, though.

So just for today, I am going to try to be a fountain in the lives of others. And I will try to avoid being the “Life sucks and then you die” guy.

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:

"Generally speaking, I'm not learning much when my lips are moving."

(Credit: Grapevine, April 2008, by Tiffany B. of Springfield, 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.

I went to a meeting a few months ago and ran into a sober guy that I love. But I hadn’t seen him in awhile, and he said that to me. “Where have you been? We miss you around here. Everything ok?” he said.

It was such an innocent remark on his part. There was nothing untrue about it. I hadn’t been there for awhile, and I hadn’t seen him in a few months.

But I work a really good, steady program, so I was getting to lots of others meetings and feeling pretty great about how hard I was chasing sobriety. So I immediately felt my back go up a little bit.

I’m not sure exactly what that’s about. My thought process in the moment is, “F— you, mind your own business. Stop micromanaging my program. Who are you to interrogate me about my recovery?”

That thought process is terrible for about 10 different reasons.

First, his comments came from a good place. He’s a friend who cares about me. Asking, “How have you been?” is an obvious question. It’s also a question I ask people on a regular basis.

Secondly, why do I get so defensive about that? What is my insecurity? I’ve grown so much in having a level of self-esteem where you can say you think I am a bad driver or my fly is down or I am an idiot sometimes, and I don’t blow my stack. So why is it specifically recovery where I have the worst reaction to that? I have some thoughts on that topic that I will come back to.

Thirdly, using the word “interrogation” is a great example of how my inner dialogue doesn’t serve me well. Was that guy interrogating me? No. That word alone is totally blowing his comments out of proportion. He asked me how I was doing once. The whole exchange was 5-10 seconds. When was the last time you heard of a 7-second interrogation? Come on, brain, stop gassing me up on this b******t!

Fourth, the “mind your own business” thing is a recurring theme for me. I consider myself a fiercely independent, strong person. That serves me well about 90 percent of the time. I go to meetings because I push myself to. I am good at my job because I have a drive inside me that propels me forward. I go to the gym every day because of that internal drive. That’s the 90 percent. The 10 percent is when people offer me feedback I didn’t ask for and I feel my fists ball up. It’s rarely rude or pushy feedback—it’s usually people who care about me and throw a suggestion my way. If I were in a really serene head space, I could take any suggestion, good or bad, and respond, “Thank you for that. I’ll give it some thought.” Instead, I immediately get my back up like my cats when they start fighting over food. I gotta get better at that—I can’t let my ego flare out of control about a basic comment.

To go back to trying to figure out what the underlying insecurity is, I think it’s actually not a terrible thing for me. I think my insecurity is that I care about sobriety so, so much. It’s the most important part of my life. Of course I care about my family more than anything in the world. But I believe the old adage that anything you put in front of sobriety, you will lose—so my No. 1 goal every day has to be that I stay sober and enlarge my spiritual condition.

So when I feel like somebody might be picking at my desire to stay sober, I take it hard. Too hard. Way too hard! I don’t even think that’s what the guy was doing. I just have very thin skin about it. I probably need to grow up and just smile… I mean, deep down, I know I am doing the right things. Nobody else needs to know that as long as I do. So I’m not sure why it cuts deep the way it does. But I also think a part of me always want to care so much about sobriety that I am easily agitated because I want a sober life so bad.

So whatever you do, don’t ask me how I am doing… how freaking NOT spiritual is that?

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

OLDIE BUT GOODIE: The AA group gave the old-timer a pin recognizing her outstanding humility. And the first time she wore it, they took it back.

(Credit: Grapevine, April 2008, by J.C. of California)

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 the other day where someone really captured something that was a big problem for me, and also a big problem for many other people trying to get sober that I have known over the years.

He was talking about how putting down the drink and drugs is part one of the process, but you need to do part two if you want to recover. He used the phrase, “Don’t mistake a better life for a recovered life.”

I was a little perplexed when he said that but I kept listening. He started talking about how that first month or two of sobriety can be exhilarating. People are cheering you on. Everybody tells you you’re the most important person at any 12-step meeting. You feel better. Food tastes better. People that you hurt start warming up to you. It feels like a whole new life has just begun. I’ve heard the phrase “pink cloud” used many times to describe this period.

I felt that. Within two weeks, I thought I was going to be president of the world. I felt awesome. That kept up for awhile, and then I started working the steps and taking service commitments. Looking back, that seems like a minor miracle because my life had gotten so much better.

That dude at the meeting was making the point that so many of us see dramatic improvement and we mistake that for recovery. I could have easily done that. I remember thinking sometimes that I was killing it, that everything was turning around, that I physically felt very good every day. I was on top of the world. And when you’re on top of the world, it’s hard to think, “I need to spend a lot of time and hard work to improve myself.” What’s to improve? I’m crushing this thing called life!

For whatever reason, I kept going and felt no internal pull to rest on my laurels. Honestly, I deserve zero credit. This was the universe or God or something way beyond me. I wish I could say I am a remarkable person who has an insatiable appetite for self improvement. But that’s b******t. It just kind of happened. Did I play a part in clearing out the booze and pills to let it happen? Yes. But then it was out of my hands.

But I think mistaking a better life for a recovered life isn’t just a newcomer issue. I still catch myself having a job, paying my bills on time, feeling relatively happy, in good physical shape and thinking that the recovery is done. It’s not. Everybody I know who has had a great sober life for a long period of time behaves like they haven’t been sober for a long period of time. I need that mentality every day. Because at the end of the day, thinking I need a recovered life will actually lead to an actual better life.

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

A young man celebrating 18 months of sobriety told the group that AA was teaching him to be "responsible and a cannibal." They hoped he meant "accountable," particularly when he announced openings for residents in his group home.

(Credit: Grapevine, April 2008, by Wendy W. of Portland, Oregon)

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 listen to a lot of sports podcasts, and one of the main topics this month has been what has happened with star baseball player Shohei Ohtani.

For the non-sports fans out there, I will summarize briefly what happened, though the facts and debate about the facts isn’t really where I want to go with this post.

Let’s start with the basics: Shohei Ohtani is a phenomenal baseball player. He is a generational talent as a hitter and a pitcher, which just doesn’t happen any more. It’s a little like being the best doctor in the world and the best lawyer in the world at the same time… it’s something I have never seen and I don’t think I ever will see again.

He’s made tens of millions of dollars since coming to the U.S. a few years ago, and he just signed a deal that will pay him $700 million for 10 years as a member of the Los Angeles Dodgers.

But he also is dealing with the aftermath of a bizarre gambling scandal, where his interpreter is suspected of betting something like $180 million of his money on sports other than baseball. The interpreter won about $140 million on his bets, so the net loss on gambling was around $40 million. At first, the interpreter did an interview with ESPN in which he said Ohtani was aware of the bets. Then he reversed course shortly after and said it had been all him.

People obviously had lots of questions about the interpreter changing his tune. And his story, that he did all the gambling behind Ohtani’s back, that he lied to banks on money transfers, that he changed alerts so Ohtani wouldn’t know about withdrawals, raises lots of questions, too.

I actually don’t have much of an opinion on what the truth is. I don’t think we know everything yet to be able to make a final judgment. But the feds seem to believe the interpreter’s second version of what happened, that he stole the money and was addicted to gambling and did so without Ohtani knowing. Is that the whole truth? I don’t know, and I don’t feel particularly riveted by the whole dialogue of what the truth is.

What I do feel invested in is some of the dialogue around the story. I think we’ve gotten to a pretty good place in this country regarding addiction, where states have laws in place to protect people with addiction issues and there are lots of treatment facilities for addicts. And I also think the general public has a decent understanding of what it means when someone says they’re an alcoholic or an opioid addict. I found mostly compassion and understanding when I sought help.

Which makes some of the chatter about the Ohtani situation a little disheartening. I have heard too many people saying things like, “Well, if it’s as simple as the interpreter had a gambling addiction, how did he get away with it all this time? Why didn’t he bet less money so it was harder to catch him? Why did he do it with an illegal bookmaker rather than a legal gambling site? How could he violate the trust of his good friend and his golden ticket in life? Why didn’t he just stop?”

Uh, guys, doesn’t this sound like some of the b******t people used to say about alcoholism? Remember how your bozo uncle would say, “Why don’t you just drink two beers and then stop for the night?” Or “How could you have driven drunk?” Or, “Why didn’t you stop when you knew that driving drunk would cost you your driver’s license, or your job?”

News alert, none of it makes sense! We’re addicts. We do insane things to chase highs. There’s not logic to apply. You could not have talked any sense into me. You don’t think I considered the INCREDIBLE concept of not drinking quite as much? I know people that have gotten five or more DUIs. I know people that have burned their house down in a drunken stupor. None of it made them cut back or stop. I think society now realizes that about drugs and alcohol. Not sure why somebody who can’t stop betting on sports would be any different.

I also have been struck by the concept of how confused people are that a gambling addict might be good at hiding his gambling. I still always think about coming out of a New York City meeting on Saint Patrick’s Day once and the parade was going past the church. There were people half naked puking, screaming, fighting… it was total chaos. And I remember this old-timer lighting up a cigarette on the corner of 35th Street in Manhattan and looking at the parade and saying, “Eh, looks like the amateurs are out.”

I always think about that story because it’s so true—I was a professional addict. I worked on getting drugs, taking drugs and covering up my drug use 24 hours a day. I never got arrested. No DUIs. No job firings. I was good at being an alcoholic and a drug addict, and you’d be shocked how smart alcoholics and addicts are! If you know someone with an addiction issue and they’re not locked up in a jail cell or a casket, then they were probably very resourceful and good at it, too.

The Ohtani story will be a very interesting thing to follow over the coming months. It’s one of those stories that lots of people rub their hands together in glee because it’s wild and salacious and involves absurd amounts of money. But I mostly just feel a sting in my heart and hope that whoever needs help finds 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:

An officer pulls a woman over for weaving across two lanes of traffic. He walks up to the driver's window and asks her, "Are you drinking?"

The woman says, "I don't know—are you buying?"

(Credit: Grapevine, April 2008, by 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.

Sorry, I took a day off last week to go to Disney with my family. I’m back now!

I was at a meeting the other day where the topic was that everything happens for a reason. The person who shared it is a very religious person and believes in that phrase from the perspective of a higher power who oversees his life.

That’s always been the way I interpret that phrase—through a religious lens. I’m not religious but I do have a higher power that serves me well, and on some level, I believe in the idea that the universe oversees my life. That’s not quite the right way to phrase it. But I believe in what goes up must come down, that I need to accept life on life’s terms, that what goes around comes around… I don’t know if others can see a higher power in there, but I can.

But at this meeting, there were some very interesting comments about there being a reason for everything. Someone shared that they don’t view it as God putting someone in your life to teach you a specific lesson, or God causing a bad event so that you will learn something. She said she believes a slight tweak on that: that every person, good or bad, and every thing, good or bad, is an opportunity to learn something. Which means, yes, there is a reason for everything.

I recently had some bad news that really sucked. I’ll share more specifically about it later. But it was a perfect opportunity to be like, Why me? And I do catch myself doing that sometimes. But not very often.

Because I feel a weird sense of gratitude that I think I’m only feeling now because I have been sober for awhile. Almost every bad thing that has happened in my life since I got sober, I later looked back on and found some good that came out of it. Including the fact that I am now grateful to have been an alcoholic and an addict. I have learned so much about living a life I am proud of since I got sober, and I wouldn’t want to give that back.

Sometimes I watch my kids go through difficult things, and they feel like it’s the end of the world, and I realize that it sucks now but they’ll be stronger for it later. I certainly get feeling like it’s the end of the world after a tough conversation or passive-aggressive work email—to this day, as a 46-year-old dude, I have something happen and think it is an absolute catastrophe. Three days later, I forget that it happened, of course, and that usually happens with my kids, too. I remember when my oldest daughter got dumped by a boyfriend for the first time, and the whole house was crying. But I can see how she grew from it later, and she might even see it now, a few years later. She never would have chosen that for herself, but she might not give back the wisdom she gained.

I would offer up this thought as a mini challenge: The next time you feel your neck burning with anger, or feel really fearful about something, or really sad about something, see if it helps to think about what lessons you might be about to learn. When I do that, I often am able to lessen the bad feeling by enough to make it manageable.

But just don’t break up with my kids, ok?

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

"If I had to do it all over again, I'd overdo it all again."

(Credit: Grapevine, May 2008, by Ed L. of Wrightwood, California)

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.

We’re flying to Disney today, which is the happiest place on earth. Allegedly. I’m already taking deep breaths.

It’s actually a wonderful gift that I can take my family there every couple of years. They love it. It is an awesome experience that my whole crew looks back on fondly. It’s one of those adventures that we will all always have. We’ll think about it and talk about it forever, and my kids will take their kids because they remember the trip with such warmth.

But… holy s**t, there’s a lot of actual warmth there. As in, 89 degrees and pure sun all day, while you’re hiking 1,000 miles on nothing but pavement. Then people start getting a little feisty because they’re sweaty and tired and hungry, and then somebody twists an ankle and somebody else gets one small area of horrible sunburn and… on and on. Getting five people to and from Disney is basically a military operation.

I’m bringing this up here because I have found Disney to be both incredible and also a big strain on my sobriety. I’ve always tried to make sure my spiritual condition is strong before we leave, and that has mattered. I’ve had to tap into my spiritual reservoir quite a bit to stay as sane as possible, and I often have tried to get to at least one meeting in Orlando to make sure I stay on track.

It’s not that I worry about picking up drugs or alcohol. It’s that I start to drift and start to turn into an irritable hot mess that nobody wants to be around. I’ve figured out a few tips and tricks that I again will be deploying this year. These tips and tricks work for Disney but they also could be used any time on any trip, really.

Here goes:

—Get in tip-top spiritual shape before you go. Get to a meeting or two every day for a week before you go.

—One call per day with a sober buddy. Maybe more, if you need it.

—Get to a meeting wherever you’re going. It’s always fun to see how recovery happens in other places. You’ll always be glad you went.

—Pray for the people you are with. This sounds like sarcasm but I mean it. When you wake up in the morning, take a moment to pray that the people you are with have a day they will always remember. Seriously, it redirects your thinking toward being present in a lifelong memory, which always reminds me to be patient and loving and understanding.

—Say to yourself that understanding is more important than being understood. Say it again. These trips are about multiple people all functioning as one organism, so nobody ever really gets their way in its entirety. Make sure you are hearing peoples’ needs before jamming your own down their throat. If you set expectations on how things are going to go, I promise you, it will not happen and you will be aggravated.

—HALT is real for everybody you are with. HALT stands for Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired. Everybody you are with will have moments of all four of those things, including you. To expect somebody to not be snippy when they are tired and need a sandwich is absurd. Feed people. Let people sleep. Have grace when somebody’s temper flares.

As I read those, I’m thinking how great the tips are… and how I am hoping I get a B- and C+ in the actual execution of them in real life. I’ll report back how I do!

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 started out as a social drinker. Then I had my second drink."

(Credit: Grapevine,by James J. of Hamilton, Ohio, May 2008)

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 the gym this week and there was a big guy lifting weights with a trainer that I know. The big guy was ripped and had on a T-shirt that said “Dummy mindset” on it. When he left later, I asked the trainer what dummy mindset means.

He said that that guy has a belief that even though he’s in very good shape and used to be a personal trainer himself that he is better off being completely open-minded about training. So he got a gym membership, signed up to work with a trainer and has tried to embrace the idea that he knows lots of stuff but is going to put it off to the side and listen to a new voice.

Holy s**t. That is so hard to do, isn’t it? I’ve written on here often about how much I love the Set Aside Prayer, which basically asks for the ability to forget everything I think I know about sobriety, about my relationships, about God, about the world, about everything. The goal is to begin every day, every conversation, every email, everything, with an open mind.

The key part of that prayer—and that guy’s T-shirt and mindset—is that it just encourages you to put your knowledge off to the side and listen. I don’t have to forget about anything forever. I just need to open up my ears and listen for new opportunities to learn and grow.

For that dude at the gym, he went to a new gym and got a new trainer. That’s the epitome of open-mindedness. In recovery, I like to go to different meetings sometimes and get phone numbers of new voices. I often don’t learn anything radically new. But I also don’t fall into my same patterns, hearing the same thing, feeling stagnant, sometimes.

And honestly, the notion of setting aside knowledge is a pretty awesome thing to do in all walks of life, not just with fitness and sobriety. At work, do you ever catch yourself waiting to jump in with your opinion? Do you ever complain about the way something is done in the office without fully considering why it might be done that way? Do you ever catch yourself being wildly wrong about stuff in your personal life? Do you ever tell somebody to do something one way and they should have done it another way?

The answer to all of those questions is probably yes for most of us. We’ve all most likely had a moment where we were certain of something and it turned out we were wrong, or at least too hard-headed about being set in our ways.

So I guess I need to maybe add some “Dummy mindset” T-shirts to my wardrobe!

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 emergency department physician asked the nurse on duty about the condition of a drunk who'd been brought in after swallowing a spoon.

"Doctor," she replied, "he hasn't stirred."

(Credit: Grapevine, May 2008, by W.C. of Mississippi)

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 the ultimate sweet and sour kind of meeting recently—a meeting when someone from the rooms of recovery dies of our disease. I didn’t know the guy who died very well. But I knew his name. I saw him at meetings. I’ve hugged him a few times. So even though I didn’t have his phone number or know his last name, I saw him pretty much every week for a few years. He was in my life.

It’s sour for obvious reasons. I find it haunting to look around the room and know where a guy was sitting one or two weeks ago, and now people are announcing his funeral. It’s terrifying. It’s sad. And it’s realistic. I know if I ever go back out, I might not come back. I didn’t consume alcohol or drugs at a reasonable rate for about 10 years before I got sober. I don’t think I ever will. Which means if I relapse, I can’t pretend that I know I will get myself back to rehab or meetings. Hell, I could go back out and not make it through one day of drinking and drugging the way I used to do it.

It’s sweet because of the way that sober people rally. I’ve found that in sobriety, there’s an incredible resilience to the people in the rooms because we all know we could have ended up in jails, institutions or caskets from our previous life. So that morbidness and brutal honesty leads to the ability to hug and laugh in a way that is hard to describe to normies. I often chuckle about how many times I have heard someone share a terrible moment from their life and they laugh, and the whole room laughs with them. We know the highs. We know the lows. We know it often takes a sense of humor to get through the darkness.

At this meeting, lots of people shared for 3-4 minutes where they verbalized their heartbreak, then how they’ll move forward. Inevitably, the best message for me is when I hear people say the No. 1 thing I can do is be more sober today than I was yesterday so that if someone reaches out for help, I am ready to grab it. To do that, I need to turn that sadness into a drive to do service and carry a great message. I have had phases in the past when I’ve lost a good recovery friend and I immediately felt the need to pull back and protect myself—who wants to get close to people if the end result is that kind of loss?

Well, I’ll tell you who wants that: me. I need it. I need the biggest possible sober network of people I am close with. I need people who will walk with me and laugh with me, through sunny days and dark days. I know I’ll have both of those at some point in my life, and I am so glad to have the sweetest people for the sweet and sour stuff.

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:

Tacked up on a cork board in an AA meeting room: "For sale: Wedding dress, size 8. Worn once by mistake."

(Credit: Grapevine, May 2008, by 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.

I have a very addictive personality. So I have to watch out for pretty much any mood-altering item. That includes drugs, alcohol, sleep medication, gambling and even stuff like food and money. If one is good, then more is better… right?

I’ve specifically been thinking about how the legalization of gambling must be so hard on gambling addicts these days. It’s everywhere. You used to have to drive to a casino to bet your life savings away. Now it’s on your phone, your computer, your TV, all over the place. In my active addition days, I used to occasionally gamble, and it was never responsible in any way. Even though drugs and alcohol were my go-to addictive behaviors, I know for sure that in a parallel universe right now I am a raging gambling addict. It could have easily happened to me because I felt the same highs doing it as I did taking opioids and drinking beer.

It made me grateful for the way I have managed to stay away from drugs and alcohol. I don’t just mean that I haven’t drank or used drugs; I’m actually rarely around them any more. So even if I had a five-minute mental slip-up, I’m not within five minutes of alcohol or drugs at almost any point in my life.

Now think about what gamblers are battling. You can bet so much online these days, with a slew of different apps and web sites, that it would be my worst nightmare if I got involved in it. At least with drugs and alcohol, you have to go somewhere and purposely get it and then consume it. With gambling, you can’t even make it through a basketball game without being constantly reminded that you are a click away from becoming a millionaire. Then you throw in all the free giveaways to new customers, and it’s like the old drug dealer thing about letting people take the first taste for free. They want you hooked.

I have been thinking about it a lot recently because we’re only a few years into the legalization of gambling in most of the United States, and we’re already seeing sports betting scandals involving athletes. It really is moving at 100 MPH as a part of American culture, and it sure seems like the downstream impact of needing lots of social safety nets for those who overindulge haven’t kept up with the rush to get it legalized. My guess is, 10 years from now, we’ll be seeing rehabs and 12-step meetings that have far more people with gambling issues than right now.

That all makes me grateful for a “boring” life. I put “boring” in quotes because it’s not actually boring to go to bed at reasonable hours and pay your bills on time and show up at your kids’ parent-teacher conferences. It’s a beautiful way to live my life, actually. But I have that part of my brain that says maybe I need something more exciting—as in, maybe I should grab a few beers with some buddies and bet some money on the game tonight. Luckily, so far I have decided that boring is better, and I watch the game in my recliner, excited to go to bed… even as all the gambling ads blare during the commercial breaks.

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 field sobriety test proved to be too much when the police officer asked, "Was Mickey Mouse a cat or a dog?"

(Credit: Grapevine, May 2008, by Richard M. of Golden, Colorado)

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

When I first got sober, I cared about my sobriety and the meetings I went to. That’s it. I didn’t want to hear about area commitments or world services, or the history of 12-step recovery. My ass was on fire and I needed to figure out how to live without substances on a daily—sometimes hourly—basis.

Boy, has that changed. I can’t quite put my finger on how or when it changed. But I think it was when I had about a year sober. At that point, I could raise my hand to potentially sponsor other people, and I’d been around enough that people asked me to chair meetings, be the treasurer for a meeting, and other bigger responsibilities.

At that point, I began to understand and revere how an unorganized pack of millions of people managed to not implode. And a lot of it stemmed from the dreaded 12 Traditions.

I used to avoid traditions meetings for the reasons mentioned above. I wanted to hear from people who were battling to not abuse alcohol and drugs. I didn’t want to know why anonymity is important, or the reasons why 12-step programs can hire outside workers for some management jobs. No thanks.

But once I started to get into the sponsorship zone of recovery, something clicked for me about the importance of carrying the message—not just my message, but the message of recovery and the rooms of 12-step programs. Around that time, I found myself hanging out more and more with people who had 10, 20, 30, even 40 years sober, and it seemed like a key component of that longterm sobriety was thinking bigger about holding down the recovery fort. That meant commitments at the area, state and national levels. But it also meant learning the Traditions and trying to guide newer people toward understanding what has worked for 80 years.

I bring all of this up because I just finished a six-week commitment chairing a meeting on the traditions. We read two per week for a month-and-a-half, and I had no choice but to really dig into them, form some thoughts and be able to speak about them. I gotta say, it was an awesome experience. I think the mistake I made—which I think lots of people also make—is that the traditions are rules from almost a century ago, and nobody likes old rules, or any rules, really (especially alcoholics!).

But one of the beautiful parts to the traditions is that they are like the entire program of recovery—they’re suggestions, and one of them specifically says every group is autonomous. The not-so-fine-print says that every group is its own entity except when it harms the recovery community as a whole, so there are limitations. But if a group decided they wanted to start raising money for a political candidate, they could. My hope would be that some people show up at the next business meeting and make the case for why that probably isn’t a great idea and goes against multiple other traditions. But every group is autonomous.

By the end of the six weeks, I think my biggest takeaway was a new appreciation for the tradition lovers out there. I used to groan about those old-timers who talked about who did what when they were writing the Big Book and why anonymity is so important and why avoiding outside issues is crucial blah blah blah. But what would we be without every generation aging and gaining wisdom to help guide the next generation? I am now 46 years old, with 15 years of sobriety, and I am quickly becoming the older generation. Part of my responsibility now has to be to continue to gain wisdom and also try to be a steady guide for newer people.

I guess I am saying now I need to be a mature, well-behaved adult… and I got some work to do on both of those fronts!

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:

My alcoholic husband and I divorced over religious differences. He thought he was God, and I didn't.

(Credit: Grapevine, May 2008, by 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.

I was at a meeting the other day in which we read the story in the back of the Big Book where the author describes her state of being as “restless, irritable and discontent.”

I always liked that phrase, because it is a good description of how I feel when I roll out of bed many days. I used to drink to try to calm that, and then I got sober and had to figure out ways to mellow out and not become that phrase.

At the meeting, I got a chance to share and I joked that if I ever start a band of sober people, I might pick the name “R.I.D.” for “Restless, Irritable and Discontent”. People laughed and nodded their heads, and it seemed like others might choose that, too. Imagine a PA intro guy screaming, “Ladies and gentlemen, coming to the stage next… big round of applause for ‘Restless, Irritable and Discontent’!”

Then I started wondering, What would I actually pick as the band name that best captures my sobriety? R.I.D. is a pretty good option. I think the music would have to be pretty angsty, though. I don’t think that name works for a gospel band, ya know?

I also loved the recovery phrase “pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization,” which you could use the acronym P.A.I.D, which is kind of cool. I think that group would be a heavy metal band.

What about “The Recovered?” That has a very refined tone to it. I think we’d have to sing heavy songs, though. Very deep and meaningful. Painful songs with soul.

I could also see a 70s cover band called “Easy Does It.” Maybe do Creedence Clearwater Revival, Tom Petty, The Beach Boys. Just vibe out with some yacht rock from some former drunks.

Or maybe you name your group “The Procrastinators” and produce very chill elevator music, and your first album is named “Lazy Does It.”

Or how about a grunge band of alcoholics out of Seattle known as “The Contempt Prior To Investigation?”

What about a hiphop band named “The Serenity Playaz”? Like the Serenity Prayer? Get it?

What about a 24-alcoholic orchestra that plays classical music that is called “The 12 and 12ers”?

Ooh, how about a band of Alabama alcoholics that performs the Joe and Charlie Tapes as slow-jam country songs, and we call that group “The Joe and Charlie Daniels Band”?

Last but not least, let’s not forget the children. Let’s get some alcoholics together to sing kid songs, and we’ll call that band, “The Bozos on the Bus Go Swish-Swish-Swish.”

OK, that last one is particularly dumb. But hopefully you smiled. If you have an alcoholic band name, put it in the comments!

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:

Q: Why can’t alcoholics sing well?

A: They only know one note—mi, mi, mi, mi, mi.

(Credit Grapevine, May 2008, by Gary O. of Anaconda, Montana)

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

I love the book “Drop the Rock.” It’s not official 12-step literature but it’s written by alcoholics and addicts, and I have found the book to be an essential part of working on character defects. It’s about 100 pages long and goes deep on the Sixth and Seventh Steps in a way that I find incredibly beneficial.

My favorite passage from the book is about cleanliness, from about page 20-25. I can’t really do it justice, but the essential point is that many of my character defects—selfishness, fear, judgmentalism—flare up when I am a mess. By mess, I mean, when I am disorganized, when I am racing around, when I am forgetting stuff, when I am doing a bad job managing my schedule, when my diet is a disaster, when my car is filled with trash, when my sink is full of dishes, and on and on. It’s so easy to sit on the couch and just wish that stuff took care of itself, or decide that “I’ll do it tomorrow.”

And here’s the thing: I am not someone who ever has a gross car but nothing else is a mess. The messiness and clutter seem to come in waves and feed off each other. I used to think that there is no relationship between a messy life and my sobriety. Why would a dusty house and sloppy backyard have anything to do with recovery?

But now I am of the opposite opinion—I think there is a direct relationship. I don’t really know anybody who I would consider a spiritual giant but also a disaster to make plans with. At the end of the day, the key to my recovery is living a spiritual life. And for me, a spiritual life has to be as serene and peaceful as possible. And for me, a serene and peaceful life doesn’t just happen because I want it to. I have to do lots and lots of things to keep myself focused on it. I roll out of bed wanting to do whatever I want, when I want to do it. I want to watch TV and eat Oreos and lie about being sick so I don’t have to go to work and skip paying bills for the month. I want to avoid all pain and instead find ways to make a good day great, and a great day into the best day that’s ever happened. I’m an addict, through and through, and that doesn’t mesh well with a spiritual, meditative life.

That’s why the cleanliness stuff in Drop the Rock always hits me so hard. I don’t know if this is true 100 percent of the time, but I bet on my toughest days, you could probably tell that I am struggling by looking at my car, my laundry pile, my sink, my room, etc. I think there is a direct link to the way that I take care of myself and the way that I take care of the other things in my life. I know that might sound silly. But think about your own life and how you feel right now, and then how you would feel if you made your bed, cleaned the sink, balanced your checkbook, cleared off your desk, mowed your grass and finally dropped off that pile of clothes you’ve been meaning to donate. I have found that there is something about feeling clean and free that connects with the spaces around me being clean and free.

So I just did the dishes and folded some laundry, and I am awaiting a lightning bolt to hit me with spirituality. It hasn’t happened yet… but fingers crossed as I go back to sitting on my couch and filling out my NCAA tournament brackets.

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

OVERHEARD AT MEETINGS

AA sharing at his four-year anniversary: "I'm finally starting to like people!"

Thirty-year veteran: "Oh, you'll get over that."

(Credit: Grapevine, June 2008, by Stacy T. of Sacramento, California)

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 went to a giant men’s meeting the other night, and it was one of those meetings where everybody sat on their hands for most of the hour. There would be 30 seconds of awkward silence waiting for someone to raise their hand, and then finally somebody would.

That went on for the first 50 minutes of the meeting, and then I couldn’t handle the silence any more. So with about six minutes left in the meeting, a guy got done sharing and I raised my hand. But so did about five other guys. So I put my hand down and one or two more people shared, and then the meeting was over.

There was an older guy sitting beside me who I had never met. I’ll call him Doug (that’s not his real name). As soon as the meeting closes, he introduces himself to me and says, “Don’t go anywhere. I have something to say to you.” My first thought was, Uh-oh, is this dude going to bark at me about something?

He runs across the room and is talking to some friends, and I put a few chairs away and said hello to some friends. I thought about ducking out of there and avoiding whatever confrontation was looming. But I was curious enough to stick around, and he eventually pulled me aside and quietly said, “You didn’t get a chance to share. What were you going to say?”

I smiled at myself thinking that I was headed for a confrontation, because this was the opposite of confrontation. I waved him off. “Oh, it was nothing. I just threw my hand up because nobody else was.”

Well, this dude would not take no comment for an answer. He said. “No, seriously, what did you want to say?”

I again tried to say thank you and get out of there, so I said something vague about how I was going to mention how grateful I was for sponsorship because both sponsors I have had worked with me for many years with no money, no fame, no real tangible benefits other than doing service work.

The guy wouldn’t let up! He said, “Tell me more. Tell me everything you wanted to say.”

I felt two things at once. First, I felt annoyed and wanted to head home. Secondly, I felt really appreciative of this stranger wanting to give me an opportunity to share. He could have just headed for the door like I wanted to.

I proceeded to tell him for 30 seconds about how I have always felt like my sponsors were beautiful, warm, caring people that lived the life I wanted to live, and they let me follow along behind them to try to learn how they were doing it.

The guy hung on every word out of my mouth. He seemed to genuinely care. He gave me a look at the end that was like, “Is that it? You can keep going if you want. I’m here for you.”

I hugged him at the end and said thank you. As I walked out of the meeting, I was chuckling about how aggressive this guy had been… but then I was overcome by appreciation. Sober people are the absolute best. They care so much, and it’s not because there are cash and prizes for being nice. I guess you could say that they’re adding to their spiritual gas tank when they do stuff like that, and that’s true. But the dude didn’t have to stay after like that. I walked out into the parking lot shaking my head in joy at the idea that I could have been a newcomer who’d never been to a meeting before, and my life could have been falling apart and I needed help, and the meeting ran out of time. Luckily, that dude would have been there for the struggling alcoholic. What’s more beautiful than that?

Thanks, Doug! (That’s not his real name, but that’s his spirit.)

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

"Most of my great discoveries in sobriety have just been flashes of deep insight into the obvious."

(Credit: Grapevine, June 2008, by Jim F. of Tasmania)

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 read a very interesting piece in Psychology Today recently, from a clinical psychologist who specializes in addiction treatment. I’ve included it HERE.

His basic point is that we often mistakenly think that motivation will cause action, and that it is actually the other way around—that you need to start an action and then the motivation will come. He spends a lot of time digging into the faulty idea that so many of us want to change something and then just sit around hoping that we will be overwhelmed by motivation to make that change.

The main application in my life is obviously addiction. I got to a point where I felt terrible every day and put myself in rehab. Even on the way to rehab, I didn’t really want to go. And a few days in, I wanted to stop. But I was already in the middle of the action, and I did find that the motivation tank filled up as I took the action.

But that’s not even the best example for me. I mean, with drugs and alcohol, I was going to die, so there was a big part of me that was motivated every single day to scream at myself to take action. The better examples are all those things that aren’t killing us but we wish we could get to change.

The list is endless: character defects that work for us sometimes and against us other times… a bad relationship… bad money habits… weight loss… annoying paperwork… and on and on. There are so many things that I tell myself I’ll do tomorrow or next week that I am hoping will magically involve motivation knocking on my door.

The writer of the Psychology Today piece makes the case that you should think about it in reverse, that you take committed action even if you’re not quite feeling much motivation yet. He talks about working with countless people who know what they want for a happier life but they sit on their hands and hope for a fire to be lit under their ass, and it doesn’t come.

I often share these days about the concept of meddling, which is a character defect of mine. On a regular basis, I catch myself walking into situations that I wasn’t invited to, responding to emails I don’t need to, trying to mediate arguments I’m not involved in, and then I get myself into trouble. That’s unnecessary meddling, and it basically amounts to me not accepting the world as it is, and believing that the world should be as I think it should be. I’ll often jump in with advice or suggestions that nobody was looking for, and dress it up in my head as trying to be helpful. Well… am I being helpful? Or meddling? It’s usually meddling, and in those situations, I am an example of someone who knows a behavior that would make for a happier life… but I keep doing it and hoping for motivation to arrive.

The truth is, the author of that story is probably right. Motivation will probably arrive once I start hustling and taking action and see the benefits. I’ve never once gone to the gym, decided not to do anything and drove home. I just to shut the f— up and hopefully the momentum will show up to continue to involve myself in things that I need to be involved in, not the things that I involve myself in for s***s and giggles.

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 construction worker—a rather large, menacing guy—enters a bar. He orders a beer, chugs it back, and bellows, "All you guys on this side of the bar are a bunch of idiots!"

A silence descends. "Anyone got a problem with that?" The silence lengthens.

He then chugs another beer and growls, "And you guys on the other side of the bar are all scum!" Once again, the bar is silent. He roars, "Anyone got a problem with that?"

One lone man gets up from his stool, and unsteadily starts to walk toward the man. "You got a problem, buddy?" the angry man says.

"Oh no," slurs the drunk. "I'm just on the wrong side of the bar."

(Credit: Grapevine, June 2008, by 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.

I was at a meeting the other night where we read some recovery literature that talked about alcoholism as a progressive illness. I nodded my head and listened, but I was yawning a little bit.

Of course my alcoholism is a progressive illness—my drug and alcohol addiction got worse every day for about five years in a row. There wasn’t one stretch of time where I saw improvement. Zero months. Zero weeks. Zero days, even. It was a steep decline that went from two beers a day to 50 opioids, 10 beers and sleeping pills a few years later. If my drug and alcohol usage were a stock, you would have sold right away because there was no growth, only losses and losses and losses.

So I don’t need to be convinced about drinking and drugging getting progressively worse. If I ever started back up again, I would be back to where I was in 2008 within a month or so. I can either stay stopped or not be able to stop. It’s my choice at this point.

But then somebody shared a slightly different take that I hadn’t fully considered before. He shared about how it wasn’t just his alcohol and drug usage that progressively got worse before he got sober. He said he lied more, spent money frivolously, aggressively dated in an unhealthy way, abused nicotine and caffeine, ate too much one day and nothing the next… his list went on and on, and the key thing, he said, was that just like his drug and alcohol usage, none of those things went through any improvement at any time, either. So the progressive illness was bigger than alcohol and drugs. In fact, it sure seemed like the black hole that mood-altering substances had become for him was pulling almost every aspect of his life into it, and each one of those things got progressively worse, too.

The point of his share was what happened on Day One of sobriety. He stopped drinking and drugging. But he said he still had terrible relationships with food, money, caffeine, nicotine, sex, love, sleep and a bunch of other things that were still roaring out of control in his life. It’s not like stopping alcohol suddenly also automatically stops you from deteriorating in all of these other areas, he said.

I wasn’t yawning any more. In fact, I sat up. I had that same idea, that the only real problem was alcohol and drugs, and if I were able to stop drinking and drugging, then the other stuff would all begin to improve, too. There’s some truth to that… but I realized within a month of not drinking that the work had only begun. I found myself leaning on caffeine and nicotine more than I ever had, and I found myself sleeping 12 hours one night and none the next. I found myself struggling to process frustration, to put the kids to bed without blowing my stack and a slew of other bad attitudes and behaviors.

It was around that time that I heard someone say for the first time, “To get sober, the only thing you have to change is everything.” It began to dawn on me that the entire foundation of who I was had been rotting for 5-10 years, and it wasn’t just my substance abuse. I was getting worse as a friend, a husband, a dad, a son, a brother, a driver, a person walking around the grocery store, everything.

And let me tell you, when it came to nicotine, caffeine and food, I was shocked that I had been able to stop opioids and alcohol in the recent past… and I couldn’t just stop the other stuff. I had so much work to do, and that continues to this day. I still have a progressive disease that is relentless. Luckily for me, that doesn’t involve going from two beers a night to four beers a night and then eight beers a night and so on.

Now, it’s all the causes and conditions that led me to substances that still wake up with me every day. I still roll out of bed thinking I am very smart, and very entitled, and that the world should bend toward me. The old line you hear at meetings is that our disease is always out in the parking lot doing pushups, and I think that’s true beyond the booze and drugs. It wants me to be sick and suffering, and then turn back toward the addiction stuff to sooth myself.

That meeting was a good reminder that everything about addiction for me is a progressive illness, and that I need to do everything possible to make it… what would be the word? A regressive illness? Sure, let’s go with that!

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

My wife, an Al-Anon, told me I was narcissistic and self-centered.

My reply was, "That's okay, as long as it doesn't affect me."

(Credit: Grapevine, June 2008, by Steven R. of Eureka Springs, Arkansas)

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I listen to a lot of podcasts, and I caught a new episode of a sports podcast that I like the other day where the three hosts—all of whom I am fond of—debated what to do about winning some money.

I’m going to change some details and not use the name of the podcast or the podcasters, just to be on the safe side. I don’t really need to be sued right now!

So here is the scenario: The podcast host says that a friend recently won a $10 parlay that paid out $12,000. His friend wanted to know if he should tell his wife that he had come into some money.

If you’re not familiar with sports betting, a parlay is when you pair up a bunch of bets at very long odds, then you have to nail every one in order to get a payout. So you could pick the Chiefs to win the Super Bowl, an NBA team to make the playoffs, an MLB team to win less than 80 games and a hockey player to win the MVP. Then you would need to hit every leg of the parlay.

That’s the problematic part. Parlays exist because they seem winnable and absolutely are not—most professional gamblers laugh at people who do parlays because they are like giving away money.

Before I get back to the podcast scenario, let me just say that I don’t gamble. I can’t. I’m an addict. The point of this story will not be about gambling or not gambling. I hesitated a bit to even write about this topic because I didn’t want to confuse anybody about sobriety and gambling…. I absolutely do not think they mesh well and would advise against putting down booze and drugs and picking up lottery tickets and sports betting and slot machines.

Back to the podcast example. The question the podcast host asks his two colleagues is, should the guy who won the money tell his wife about his winnings?

One guest said if you don’t tell your spouse about bets you lose, you don’t need to reveal your winnings. The other guest said he should tell her he won $5,000, and keep the rest to himself. The guy who presented the question said that his buddy told his wife about the winnings, and he said they ended up buying a new refrigerator and some other stuff with the money, and the guy was frustrated about that.

I couldn’t believe their answers. I thought the answer was obvious.

First of all, I don’t gamble and I can’t gamble. So I’m asking this question less about sports gambling and more about the general question if, if you stumbled into some money, do you need to tell your loved ones?

Secondly, the obvious answer to me is that I cannot live a life where I don’t tell my spouse about something like that. Forget the gambling. Forget the money. Forget the marriage part of this. I cannot live any kind of secret life. I am as sick as my secrets, and I’ve discovered that to stay sober, I can’t really have any secrets from people that I am close with. I definitely cannot start having a secret $10,000 laying around.

Now, does that mean that everybody I love needs to know everything at all times? No, not necessarily. Sometimes one of my kids will tell me a situation they are struggling with, and ask me to not share it with anybody, and I don’t. Sometimes I will have financial or professional insecurity of some kind, and I will delay telling my family about it or not tell them about it at all. I’ve had a few physical issues over the years where I was worried about an injury but wanted to wait and see if felt fine the next day. I’ve also had friends or coworkers ask me how I am doing, and the answer is that I am struggling because of something going on with me or my kids but I say, “I’m doing ok. How about you?” That’s not the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But it’s not really hiding secrets that could harm my sobriety. It’s just being a little more private.

I hope I don’t sound judgmental at all about gambling, or keeping some money off to the side. It just doesn’t work for me. I won’t be winning $10,000 on any kind of gambling in the near future. And if I did have someone mail me $5,000, or even $500, I absolutely cannot have my final opinion be, “I better hide this somewhere.” I don’t have a bad opinion of anybody who might do that. I just know it doesn’t work for me. My addictions began as my little secret, and they ended with me in rehab. I don’t intend to let any parlays put me back there.

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 still-functioning alcoholic went for her annual physical.

"Well, Doc, how do I stand?" she asked.

"That's what puzzles me," the doctor replied.

(Credit: Grapevine, June 2008, by Terry B.)

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I love going to recovery meetings more than ever, and I often wonder why. After all this time being sober, I thought for sure I would burn out a little. I always used to worry that I would start to do the bare minimum to stay sober, which is probably about one meeting a week. Instead, I’m at about six meetings per week and I love it.

I’ll catch myself sitting at a meeting, asking myself, “Why do I like this so much? I’m in a church basement with a bunch of drunks and drug addicts, seeing many of the same people saying the same things, reading a passage from sober literature that I have read 50 times already, saying prayers that I sometimes don’t like very much.”

One potential answer hit me the other day. We read from the Big Book and got to the passage where it describes reaching your alcoholic bottom as feeling “pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization.” That might be my favorite phrase in all of sobriety. I think it perfectly summarizes what it’s like during the worst days of active addiction—pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization. What a strong set of words.

What hit me the other day, though, is how that phrase comes to life for me with other alcoholics. Think about what the word “incomprehensible” means. It means you cannot comprehend what I went through! It is incomprehensible to anybody else.

But it IS comprehensible to us. I don’t know all of your story, and it is probably very different than mine. But I know you, somehow. I’ve met people who made it through extremely difficult circumstances to get to the rooms of recovery, stuff that I have no experience with. And yet… on some level, when you were at the pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization stage of your life, I get it. I was there, too.

The more I thought about it, the more brilliant that phrase is, because it is about a feeling, not details. As our program often says, recovery is more about the exact nature than exact details. I don’t need to have ever lived where you lived, be the same gender as you, have the same number of arrests or bankruptcies or car accidents as you. I probably know what it felt like for you, and you probably know what it felt like for me. What a beautiful shared human experience.

Sorry, this is probably one of my least funny entries. But hey, sometimes I can be serious!

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:

An alcoholic’s idea of financial planning is to use credit cards to pay off his credit cards. When he runs out of credit cards, that's called a geographic.

(Credit: Grapevine, June 2008, by Richard M. of Golden, Colorado)

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

I am chairing a Traditions meeting for the next six weeks, so I am knee-deep in reading about the 12 traditions that 12-step founding mothers and fathers set up as a guardrails for recovery. I almost can’t believe I am saying that, because I used to get the hell out of the room when I heard a meeting was a traditions meeting.

Not any more. The longer I have been sober, the more I have seen the way wise sober people keep the rooms of recovery open. I’m so glad the traditions exist as a starting point, and I am so glad that the traditions emphasize that they are suggestions, and every group is autonomous and can do their own thing. They’re both firm and flexible at the same time. Firm, as in, they’ve worked for about 80 years and been tried and true for millions of people to get sober. Flexible, as in, every group is its own entity and can pretty much decide how it will operate. I’ve seen meetings where the majority vote to not do the Lord’s Prayer. I’ve seen meetings where the group conscience is to make sure the chairperson has at least six months of sobriety. I’ve seen meetings where the group conscience is to let anybody with a desire to stop drinking step into service commitments.

I wanted to just throw out an interesting example from about 12 years ago that I ran into in New York City. I’m changing some details to just be on the safe side of protecting identities and even the identity of the church. Please feel free to comment on how you would have reacted.

Let me set the scene. We had a church that was integral to recovery in the area. There were about 10 meetings a week at this church. The church was fantastic. I always felt like they provided meeting spaces truly to do a good deed, not to rake in money. I found the rent to be ridiculously low, and the church tended to work with groups that were smaller in size to make sure the rent was doable.

At a business meeting for a group that met on Monday mornings, the treasurer said that the church was raising rent from $50 to $60 a month. She said the church mentioned it was struggling mightily with its finances and had to increase rent for meeting space. That group routinely had about 30-40 people per meeting, four times a month, and we always ended up pulling in $100 or more. The $10 rent was no problem as far as the funds we had.

Someone made a motion to discuss increasing the rent by $10. Everybody was nodding along, so I assumed it would be an easy yes vote.

Then someone else raised their hand and said, “I will be voting to increase the rent to what the church asked. But I would actually float the idea that we offer to increase the rent a little more, to $75 per month. We have the money, and this church has been so critical to the recovery of so many people.”

A few other people chimed in and said they agreed with that, that we could easily pay the amount. Somebody even mentioned that $50 was way too low for a weekly space like this. I nodded the entire time and got ready to support the idea of paying the church even more than they’d asked for.

There were about 15 people at that business meeting, and I think at that moment, 14 people were ready to vote in favor. Then one guy put his hand up and said, “I agree with everything that was said about this church. And I would vote to pay the rent increase. But I also would vote against going to $75 per month.”

He paused for a moment because some people started murmuring in surprise. I remember thinking to myself, “Damn, this dude is a real turd in the punchbowl. Who doesn’t want to help out a struggling church when we have the money to do it?”

Then he continued. “I think that the church’s struggles should be considered an outside issue. It’s an outside issue to this meeting how the church does financially, and it sets up a slippery slope for supporting businesses, charities, fundraisers, and all sorts of other things. My suggestion would be that we pay the amount that the church asked, and that anybody concerned about the overall wellbeing of the church should contribute on their own. I’m going to mail $50 myself as soon as I get home, and I’d be happy to help organize more contributions outside of this meeting.”

Nobody said anything for a minute. But you could see on their faces that they knew he was right. I still would have probably voted to increase the amount to $75 in the moment because I have such gratitude for that church.

But ultimately, that principle was right and I would bring up that guy’s exact point today if something similar came up. On that day, they put up a motion and it was 15-0 in favor of paying the $60. I loved that the guy volunteered himself to actually chip in money, but that the principles of 12-step recovery made him feel like a group donating money is probably not wise.

I’ll never forget that business meeting. I thought it was a fantastic example of how a dissenting idea can be discussed and even reconsidered. I’ll leave you with a question: What would you have voted if you had been at that business meeting?

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…

At a meeting where the topic was "guilt":

"Guilt is getting caught with your mind in the cookie jar."

"Each day we're faced with a thousand opportunities to feel guilty. Serenity is not taking any of them."

(Credit: Grapevine, July 2008, by Ed L. of Wrightwood, California)

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 recently where a newly sober guy mentioned that he can’t believe how much the juice has been worth the squeeze early on in his recovery. As he kept talking, I found myself nodding along. Sometimes I forget how much easier sober life is than active addiction. That’s because sober life is pretty damn hard sometimes, and I don’t always want to feel what life on life’s terms is causing me to feel.

But holy s**t, I had a moment listening to the guy talk about the contrast between how brutal it had gotten to maintain his drug and alcohol habit, versus staying sober. He was saying that he used to spend all morning every trying to recover from the night before, then he’d sneak in some work and life stuff, then he’d start planning and executing on how to get loaded for the rest of the day. Now he goes to a meeting once a day and calls his sponsor, and he is sober.

I get that. I think I used to spend something like half my day securing substances and then consuming them, and then planning to try to figure out how to get away with it the next day. It was an impossible chore for my body to just not fall apart every day, and it was an impossible chore for my soul to be living such a lie while trying to maintain a job, a marriage and a family. I once heard a guy say, “Drugs and alcohol became a full-time job, and I already had a job.” That was me.

So the juice being worth the squeeze part of this is that I don’t have to spend 10 hours a day to stay sober. I don’t know what the exact amount is for the typical alcoholic, because I think it’s probably different for everybody. But I know for me that when I average an hour a day on recovery stuff, my life is good. When I average an hour-and-a-half every day, my life is even better. That’s a small squeeze and a lot of juice.

For me, that hour-and-a-half tracks out to a meeting every day, plus some phone calls and some get-togethers with sponsees and/or my sponsor. Lately I have been car-pooling to meetings with other alcoholics, and I consider that an awesome 20- or 30-minute bonus of sober living time.

So when I tally up the time and effort required to stay sober, it’s ridiculous in comparison to how much time, money and spiritual energy I needed to keep drinking. Even when I was still a few years from being a full-blown alcoholic, I wasn’t drinking every day. But when I did, I would go from 5 pm to midnight, then throw up three times during the night, then need some caffeinated concoction in the morning to try to balance out the damage from the night before. Even then, as a heavy drinker, it was a lot of squeeze for a little bit of juice.

As I type this, I am sitting at home and wondering if I really need the meeting that I was planning to go to tonight. I have that voice in my head saying, “You got to a meeting yesterday and the day before. You’re good! Plus, it’s cold out. Put on some college hoops and lay on the couch.”

But guess what? I think there’s no juice in that squeeze. So I am headed for the meeting.

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 was in Al-Anon for nineteen-and-a-half years before I came to AA. If there were a denial countdown, I'd still be standing."

(Credit: Grapevine, July 2008, by 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.

When I told my wife I had to go to rehab in 2008, she seemed genuinely surprised. I had done a pretty good job of covering up how bad my addictions had gotten. She knew I had been prescribed some painkillers, and that I drank sometimes in addition to the opioids, and we both knew mixing those two things was probably a bad idea. But she didn’t know I was drinking and drugging every single day, and at about 10 times the amounts she knew about.

A few weeks into rehab, she asked me about my itching. Before I’d gone to rehab, I had gotten to the point where I was itching the skin off my arms and legs most nights. I would itch and itch and itch, even when I was passed out, to the point where I took lots of Benadryl to try to counteract the itching. I was taking Benadryl pills and also going through copious amounts of Benadryl cream on my arms and legs. My side of the bed was a disgusting slip-and-slide of allergy cream.

I’m not sure exactly what was going on with the itching. It’s possible that I had a mild allergy and taking 50-60 painkillers a day accentuated that. Or, it’s possible that most people would start itching if they took 50-60 painkillers a day because, you know, THAT’S BAD FOR A HUMAN BODY. I never investigated it very much.

I’m bringing this up now for two reasons. One is I spent last week very grateful that I don’t have to live like that any more. I don’t know what exactly happened early in the week, but I ended up itching my leg like crazy one night, to the point where I had long scratches on my left leg. They were pretty painful, too. I think I just got too aggressive in the middle of the night and itched my leg too much.

When I woke up in the morning, I was looking at my leg and my wife noticed. She asked what happened, and I said I didn’t really know. She got a look of concern on her face, and I could tell we were both having similar flashbacks to many years ago. I could see it in her eyes how vivid over-itching (is that actually a word?) was as a sign of my active addiction.

The other reason I was thinking about itching last week is that I went to a meeting on Wednesday where we read several passages from sober literature about how alcoholism is a disease and that we alcoholics have an allergy to it. I don’t think about that too much any more, but the idea that I have a disease and need treatment every day really helped me early on in recovery. I connected with the idea that if I had a peanut allergy, I wasn’t going to be able to think really hard about it and then be able to manage it and eat peanut butter.

Same with my allergy to alcohol and drugs. At first, when I thought about it being a disease that I will have forever, it felt daunting and overwhelming. But then I thought about how many people have diseases that aren’t fun… but they adjust and live awesome lives. I had to do the same, and I mostly have. I have an awesome life that I am proud of. Yes, it involves over-itching once in a while. But it beats passing out in a pool of sweat and Benadryl every night!

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:

OLDIE BUT GOODIE: I once heard of a songwriter who tried to compose a drinking song. But she could never get past the first three bars.

(Credit: Grapevine, July 2008, by VRM of Brooklyn, 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.

I wrote about the Super Bowl earlier this week, and I wanted to say one more thing about it.

I often beat myself up a bit for getting frustrated with people driving, or with a long line at the grocery store, or with inconsiderate people at the gym. It’s often a very silly, very self-centered moment where I feel like I should be more patient, more kind, more forgiving, more able to live and let live.

But on Super Bowl Sunday every year, I always have a moment where I watch the commercials and realize, “Wow, the world these days isn’t trying to help me with those character defects.”

By that, I mean that our brains get pounded with the next thing that is going to make our life easier and faster and more fun and happier and sexier and…. on and on and on. Buy this, buy that. Lots and lots of alcohol ads. The Super Bowl was in Las Vegas, so there was a vibe to the whole thing that reminded me of “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.” Everything about the whole game and the whole production was preying on my worst impulses as an impulsive addict.

That’s certainly not limited to the Super Bowl. The world moves faster than ever, and if you want to get into trouble, it’s easier than ever—with smartphones these days, trouble is literally in the palm of your hand if you go looking for it.

Actually, you don’t have to look very hard to find trouble. I’m on a bunch of social media platforms, and I get bombarded with ads for sports gambling. They always offer you a few hundred bucks for just opening up an account, and that feels quite a bit like a drug dealer giving the first taste for free. I always realize I am about 60 seconds and one bad decision away from starting down a path toward having a gambling problem, too.

I know this post probably seems like an old man yelling at the clouds, and that’s not far from the truth. But the biggest point I wanted to make was to be gentle with yourself if you struggle with bad behaviors that get thrown in your face all the time. Maybe cut yourself a break today because it ain’t easy out there!

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:

AN OLD MAN WHO LIVED ALONE wanted to hoe his potato garden, but the work was getting too hard on his aging body. His only son used to help, but had gotten into trouble while drinking and was now in prison. The old man wrote to his son.

"Dear Son, It looks like I won't be able to plant my potato garden this year; I'm getting too old to be digging. If you were here, I know you would help hoe the plot for me. Love, Dad."

A few days later, he received a letter from his son: "Dear Dad, For Heaven's sake, don't dig up the garden! That's where I buried the guns!"

At 4 A.M. the next day, a dozen FBI agents and local police showed up and dug up the area. They didn't find any guns, so they apologized and left.

The same day, the old man received another letter: "Dear Dad, Go ahead and plant the potatoes now. It was the best I could do under the circumstances."

(Credit: Grapevine, by Norman H., July 2008)

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’ve met lots of sober people who mention specific dates as dreaded days because it triggers their addictions. By that, I mean, a day that makes us think, “I should get sober… but I don’t know how I would not drink on FILL IN THE BLANK.”

Some people mention specific days, like birthdays or the day a loved one died. Other people mention general time frames, like Christmas vacation or work trips. Other people mention vague events as worrisome, like weddings or work outings.

For me, the day I feared most was the Super Bowl. I knew for about the last three years of my drinking and drugging that I could not stop on my own and that I needed outside help. But I had a voice in my head telling me that I should keep going, that I will figure it out if I do this or that instead of what I was doing. And that voice always said, “And what will you do during the Super Bowl? Everybody drinks during the Super Bowl. How could you not?”

I honestly thought that. I know it sounds silly. But I do love sports, and I enjoy gathering to watch sporting events with friends and family. So in my active addiction, that was an effective thing for the rationalization part of my brain to whisper to me.

Except, it’s total b******t, and I eventually saw through that. When exactly was I enjoying some beers with buddies as I watched sporting events? Because that stopped years before. By 2005-08, I drank alone in secrecy, and I drank to the point where I didn’t even see the sporting event that I so cherished. It was a total delusion to keep the myth going that I would have days in my life where I simply couldn’t make it without drugs and alcohol. That’s really what the Super Bowl idea was doing—it’s a silly example of the broader fear that there are moments in life that are beyond my capabilities to handle, and that I could not possibly make it through without being numbed out by something.

I’m proud to say that I just wrapped up my 16th Super Bowl sober, and each one has been better than any of the ones before. I gathered with sober friends, along with my family, and we had a blast. It was rowdy and fun, and the only thing I abused was the cookie container. Somehow, four cookies and a piece of cake disappeared while in my presence. It was a great time.

It’s a good reminder about that rationalizing voice in our heads, and what a scam it is. I have now watched lots of Super Bowls sober, and made it through many difficult life situations that I would have never thought I could. And if you’re sober today, it’s probably worth thinking about those things that you never thought you’d get through… and you have.

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

Topic: Would you still go to AA if a pill was created that cured alcoholism?

Speaker: "Yes, I would. I have a feeling I'd want more of them."

(Credit: Grapevine, April 2009, by A.M. of Scottsdale, Arizona)

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

At my gym, every trainer has a small bio on the wall with a photo of themselves. And each trainer has picked a favorite quote to put on that wall.

One really spoke to me the other day: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act but a habit.” That quote came from Aristotle.

As I worked out, I kept thinking about the meaning of that quote. What am I? What do I repeatedly do? Are those the same things?

Then it got very meta because I started to think about the difference between who I am and who I want to be, and how my actions don’t always add up to what I am or what I want to be.

I’ll give you one example from sobriety. I remember a coworker goofing on me a bit because he always saw me with fast food and soda, and I bristled at that idea. I said something along the lines of, “Nah, I’m not that guy. You just happen to see me with a Taco Bell cup in my hand a few times.”

The truth is, I bristled because I didn’t want to be tagged as a 40-year-old dad who is a fast food guy. It felt embarrassing to me, and not quite accurate.

Except: It was. I ate fast food a few times a week. I crushed soda every day. I was a fast food and soda guy not because I wanted to be, but because those were my actions.

I can take it back even further with drugs and alcohol. I didn’t want to be a drug addict and an alcoholic. But I drank all day and took drugs constantly. I was actually a drug addict and alcoholic. I only overcame that tag by owning it.

I got sober, of course, but there are so many other things that I don’t want to be but I repeatedly do. Do I want to be a whiner and a complainer? No. Do I sometimes complain and whine a lot? Yes, I do.

Do I want to be a vengeful resentment machine? Nope. Do I want to be a cesspool of self-pity? No. Do I want to procrastinate? Be a slob? No and no.

But if I repeatedly do them, I become them.

So what am I based on what I repeatedly do? First of all, I am a recovering alcoholic and addict because I do sober stuff almost every single day. I do a lot of family stuff that requires selflessness, so I think I repeatedly am unselfish as a husband and father. I think I work hard to do a good job professionally, so I think I repeatedly fulfill my responsibilities as an employee. I go to the gym pretty much every day and I see my doctor, my dentist and my therapist on a regular basis, so I think I can say that I repeatedly consider my health and wellbeing.

There are definitely not-great behaviors I do every day that I think I repeatedly do enough to contemplate. I get fired up at my kids for being a******s. I give big thumbs down to many drivers on the road along side me, and I have written before about my disdain when I see someone shove their shopping cart into the middle of the lot for the next guy to hit with his car.

But all in all, I repeatedly do more of the right stuff than the bad stuff. So the key is, I need to repeatedly keep doing the good stuff and own the bad behaviors when they start to flare up.

One last thing about that famous Aristotle quote: It wasn’t actually Aristotle, apparently. It comes from a writer named Will Durant, who wrote a famous philosophy book that interpreted and contemplated earlier writings from people like Aristotle. Oh well, it’s the thought that really counts, right?

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:

How do you set up a drunk in a nice, small business? Set him up in a nice, big business, and then wait.

(Credit: Grapevine)

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Did you watch the Grammys on Sunday? Me neither. But I did see 1.5 billion people post the video of Tracy Chapman singing “Fast Car” with Luke Combs. If you don’t know the back story, Tracy Chapman is a very reclusive musician who hit her peak popularity in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Luke Combs is a successful country music star right now, and he covered Chapman’s legendary song, “Fast Car” this year and it became a huge hit.

I always liked Tracy Chapman. I only knew a few of her songs, and she wasn’t one of those people who went out looking for magazine covers and public appearances. She seemed to genuinely sing because she loved it, not because it would make her money. My main connection to her was “Fast Car,” and I found that I have always loved songs about cars.

It’s a weird thing to love for me, because I don’t particularly like cars. I don’t care what I drive. I don’t know the difference between a Ford and a Honda. I don’t even want to know. Cars is one of those blind spots that I know almost nothing about and I plan to stay that way.

But what drew me to that song is the idea of the car as an escape mechanism. Her song is about running from a terrible living situation, which I never had. But the car has always occupied a space in my head as a way to get a clean start, to just jump in your car and get on the open road and drive some place better. I remember thinking the minute I got my driver’s license, I would have more friends and be out on dates all the time. I remember when I went off to college, I packed up my car and started driving not to a university but to a new, exciting life. I remember graduating from college and getting in my car to move to New York City, where life was going to get so much better. I remember two years later moving out of the city and thinking life was about to get so much better. It all revolved around loading up that car and driving away.

Well… it never really worked. The songs are beautiful and inspiring and optimistic, but the truth of escaping in a car for me has always involved me being in the car too. And that has never really worked.

I didn’t really notice that pattern until I got sober and heard people use the noun “geographic.” People say stuff like, “I got my first DUI and I tried a geographic by moving back home to Ohio.” It’s usually used in the context of a desperate move to fix a substance abuse problem, but one that doesn’t work. I’m sure there are people out there who have pulled a geographic and it has helped them get sober, but I have yet to meet someone like that.

In my case, I kept thinking if I moved I would get a fresh start. I’d get in that car and go, and I’d find a new life in the new driveway I was about to park in. The problem, as we often say in sobriety, is that when I moved, I took me with me.

So I went about 0-for-5 in moving to stop drinking. I moved once in sobriety, from New Jersey to Connecticut, and it was about 50-50 on whether it aided my sobriety or not. My house in New Jersey was such a disastrous money pit that I was glad to be out of there, but we moved into a place in Connecticut that was a rental and was too small. We were cramped and the kids were little and the house was a bit of a dump and I felt that nagging feeling of flushing money into a rental rather than buying. I do think I continued to grow as a sober man during that time, but the move didn’t have a lot to do with it.

My overall point is that a fast car has never been the answer for me. Neither has a new place to live, or a new girlfriend when I was younger, or more money, or a new streaming service account. It’s an inside job.

However… let me say something positive about the idea of getting in your car and going. I have found it to be a useful tool at times. I have teenagers and find myself bickering with them and needing 30 minutes to just get in a cold car and drive to Target for no real reason other than to cool down. I have definitely done that and then spent the entire trip building up a resentment even more. But most of the time, I go and meditate in the parking lot, or make a phone call to a sober friend, or do something to NOT build up the resentment.

So all in all, when I am in a good spiritual place, getting into a fast car and getting out of a precarious situation can be beneficial. Well, I should clarify: By “fast car,” I mean a Honda CRV or a minivan.

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 ....

"Don't leave five minutes before the miracle and one day you'll discover that the miracle includes you."

(Credit: Grapevine, August 2006, by Kevin, of Miramichi, New Brunswick)

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 had to pick something up from the pharmacy the other day, and one of the workers said, “Give me one minute, okay?” I nodded my head and said sure… but it was not one minute. It was more like three minutes, and I found myself getting aggravated. I like things how I want them, when I want them.

It made me think about how much I fully accept the broader concept of this too shall pass… but man, can I get an ETA? Wouldn’t that be so nice?

I remember a few years back when I had a difficult situation with my kids fighting all the time, and I just kept telling myself to stay the course, that this kind of friction never lasts forever, that I needed to just keep loving them through it. I remember having countless recovery friends say that this is normal, that teenagers fight sometimes. I remember in my own life fighting with my brothers and thinking we’d never speak again… then it would be fine three days later. I kept telling myself, This too shall pass.

But I am an addict, so I want what I want, when I want it. So after about a week, I was getting frustrated. They were bickering every day and stomping around the house, and it was miserable for everybody in the house.

Then one evening I was in the living room and I heard them upstairs screaming at each other. My oldest daughter stomped up to her room and my middle daughter slammed her door shut. I stood in the hallway ready to yank my hair out after a week of this crap, and I kept thinking, This too shall NOT pass, apparently! What the hell?

Then I heard my middle daughter laughing in her room. I knocked on her door and asked if I could come in. She was laying on her bed smiling, looking at her phone. I asked her what she was laughing at, and she turned the phone around. It was a FaceTime call with my oldest daughter, who had been yelling at her roughly 30 seconds before.

I was perplexed. My middle daughter sensed that and said, “We were mad at each other. But it’s fine now. Is it ok if we run over to Target?”

I was completely befuddled and just shrugged my shoulders. I was very happy they were speaking in a civil way with each other, so I was glad to see them go somewhere together. This too shall pass almost instantly after weeks of not passing, apparently.

As I walked out of the room, I couldn’t help but laugh. This situation had not passed, and had not passed, and had not passed… and then it did. I would have loved to have gotten an email from God letting me know that this too shall pass after 13.5 days. But life doesn’t really work that way, does 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:

DRASTIC DIAGNOSIS

"The best thing for you," said the doctor to the dissipated young man, "is to give up smoking, drinking, and sex."

The patient thought for a minute, then asked, "What's the next best thing?"

(Credit: Grapevine, April 2009, by 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.

I was very amped up for the NFL playoffs this past weekend, partially because the games were exciting but also because I was in a fantasy pool where I had players from all four teams. I couldn’t wait for the games on Sunday, and I found myself mentally chewing on the two games in my head all week.

So on Friday, I did my usual 20 minutes of meditation (I’ve shared this before, but I do 20 minutes every day and have been doing that for about 8-10 years now). I also said a prayer where I simply asked God to walk with me for the day. One of the misconceptions I had about prayer was that I had to get down on my knees on a yoga mat for a half hour and have a long conversation with God. I could probably use that, and I bet that’s actually closer to the ideal way to remain open to what the universe would like for us than my 10-second drive-by prayers. But nonetheless, I consider my prayer to be a perfectly feasible brand of praying, at least for me. So I often will say, “God, please walk with me today.”

During my meditation, I kept finding my brain saying, “Deep breath in…. now deep breath out… deep breath in…. I wonder if Patrick Mahomes can do it again?… wait, stop, this is meditation time, deep breath in… I bet the Ravens have a good gameplan for shutting down Travis Kelce…. hey, quit it, it’s time to meditate.”

That went on and on for most of the 20 minutes. But I kept pulling myself back to a serene and quiet place that did not involve whether Dan Campbell would go for it on every single fourth down even when the Lions were in field goal range (answer: he would indeed do exactly that!). I finished up and felt a little bit like my meditation had flopped. Or that I had flopped at meditation.

That evening, I went to a meeting and the topic was, of course, Step 11—prayer and meditation. I listened to about 10 people share and got a lot out of everything they said. But my brain kept coming back to being forgiving about praying and meditating. I need to do it, but I don’t necessarily need to do it perfectly. I need to do it to the best of my ability, and the bottom line is, terrible prayer and meditation is still better than anything else I would have been doing. It’s not like reading my uncle’s 2024 election thoughts on Facebook or watching an Instagram reel of a cat and giraffe dancing at a zoo would be more spiritually nourishing, right?

I’ll keep saying my prayers, even if they’re short, and I will keep doing my meditation, even if the Super Bowl is right around the corner, and I really am wondering if Patrick Mahomes can pull it off again…

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 COUNSELOR ASKS A PROSPECT FOR DETOX: "Tell me, does alcoholism run in your family?"

The drunk slurs, "Run? Hell, most times my family is so drunk they can hardly walk!"

(Credit: Grapevine, by Donny B. of Wurtsboro, NY, August 2004)

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In 2017, I started having all sorts of cognitive issues. I couldn’t remember things. I felt hazy and tired all the time. It felt like the world was moving 65 MPH and I was in the right-hand lane going 35. It was scary as s**t.

So I went to my doctor, who eventually pinpointed a busy life as the likely main cause but also that concussions may play a part. I had had a nasty concussion in 2015 in a sledding accident—that is not a joke, I totally ate s**t sledding with my kids—and I think it was probably about my fifth concussion. I think I had had a few playing sports over the years, and then I got one in college during a drunken scuffle with a guy in the dorms.

My doctor sent me to a neurologist, who ran me through a bunch of tests and put me on some vitamins that are supposed to be good for brain health. The tests didn’t really show anything obvious, and in conversations with him, he definitely thought the concussions were bad for my brain health and a possible culprit in my issues. But he also mentioned to me that people who did as much drugs and alcohol sometimes fry parts of their circuit board.

I had about 10 years clean and sober, so that was perplexing to me. I remember having that fear on a regular basis during my drinking and drugging days, but I didn’t notice any cognitive decline during those days. And to get away with what I was doing every day, you kind of had to be a criminal mastermind. So I kept telling myself that the drug thing was really bad… but I was still a borderline genius.

But now when I think back on the cocktail of crap I was taking every day—something like 50 painkillers, about a six-pack of beer every night, Ambien before bed time, then a s**t-ton of caffeine in the morning to do it all over again—it’s pretty terrifying and I am convinced that I did actually sizzle some of the circuits. I definitely think if you could run one of those scary futuristic sci-fi movie scans on my brain, you’d find some of the screws got knocked a little loose by the constant flood of uppers and downers every day.

Is that actually true? I don’t know. Does it matter today on Jan. 25, 2024? Not really. It doesn’t matter in the sense of living a healthy, spiritual life today and going forward. But I do feel gratitude about it. I feel like I am in a good head space these days, and it didn’t have to be that way. I did an insane amount of drugs and alcohol in a short amount of time, and looking back, I could have died in my sleep or on the road many times, and I could have had some kind of health issue where I didn’t die but had a catastrophic brain event.

This came up for me recently in therapy, because my psychiatrist was talking about how delicate the brain can be. I couldn’t help but think that any issues I might have had before I started killing myself with substances probably were exacerbated by all the chemicals I poured in. I mentioned that to her, and she shrugged her shoulders. She’s not one of those people who likes to make sweeping conclusions, and I appreciated that. But she did say that the intake I was describing would definitely be a lot for any brain to handle.

So I left there feeling a sense of gratitude. I definitely think there are parts of my system that were damaged a bit—my impulsivity being the biggest one. But I also felt like I got out before they became impossible to repair those, or at least figure out solutions to work around the fried wiring. If you’re nodding along thinking about this, I’d encourage you to take a moment to feel grateful for the wires you didn’t sizzle, too!

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 young man was sharing at an AA meeting. "This hasn't been a good day for me. I wasn't centered, I wasn't in touch with my feelings, and my inner child felt deprived. I just wasn't comfortable in my own skin."

An old-timer leaned over and whispered to the woman next to him, "I'm hard of hearing. What did he say?"

The woman replied, "He says he's hungry, angry, lonely, and tired."

(Credit: Grapevine, April 2009, by 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.

As I have mentioned a few times, I love the Instagram account Sarcastic AA memes. The person who runs it also has published a few books of memes about recovery, too, and I find them hilarious… but also very cutting and true. This person gets it. I’d highly recommend either buying a book or two or at least giving the account a follow on social media. I promise it will give you a few laughs.

I was particularly interested in a recent meme called “Ideas for meeting topics,” and then it lists seven possibilities. One, health status of pet. Two, things bothering me that will be irrelevant hours from now. Three, the program “explained properly.” Four, thoughts on the steps I’ve never done. Five, ways I’m better than you all. Six, ways I’m worse than you all. Seven, things I’m not doing but talking about doing. And then there is a sentence that says “Written by someone who’s used all of them.”

I won’t go through each one of them but I have had some experience with all seven, and all seven made me at least smile because I identify with each item. I cringed a little bit about the pet one because on one hand, I get it, I don’t go to meetings to hear about your pet situation… but I have shared about my pets, and I have enjoyed hearing about other people when they discuss their pets. I actually don’t subscribe to the idea that there are luxury problems when it comes to sobriety—if your cat is sick or your plant dies and you are falling apart and in danger of relapsing, that isn’t a luxury problem, that’s just a problem. So I am here for pet talk!

The concept of someone sharing about steps they’ve never done is funny to me, because I definitely have heard plenty of that in the rooms, and I think when I was new I would share my opinions about Step 9 or Step 12. The thing that sometimes bugs me is people who say they did the steps in 1982 and that’s the only time they did them, because in my humble opinion, the steps are tools I will use the rest of my life. I don’t view stepwork like a high school degree, where you do it and you get a certificate and you are done. I need to keep going.

The last item on that list is one of the biggest things I need to be on the look out for. I can’t tell you how many times in recent years where I noticed that my awareness of issues is tremendous… and my actions are not. I’ve said “I need to get to more meetings” and “I should take on more service work” and “I should try therapy” many times without actually doing it, and that’s a clear sign of a problem, in my opinion. It’s not enough to think I have a problem. It’s not enough to KNOW I have a problem. It’s only enough when you are taking good action to combat the problem.

I will give myself some credit for realizing that when it comes to seeking outside help this past fall. I felt like I had stalled out a bit in some areas, and I mentioned to everybody in my network that I was thinking about therapy. And then I did it. So I am proud of that.

You might notice I left out any mention of the time between saying it repeatedly to people and actually going to see a therapist… I think it was a good six months, maybe more. But hey, progress, not perfection!

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:

QUESTION: What do you call it when an AA sponsor always seems to have a group of admiring sponsees in tow?

ANSWER A spontourage.

(Credit: Grapevine, by Kristen B. of Cambridge, Massachusetts, May 2009)

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 recently in Nebraska when several newcomers showed up and said they were at their very first meeting. I always feel a warmth toward newcomers because we were all newcomers at a certain point in our lives, and I also love the concept of somebody who might have found the solution sitting right in front of me.

I sat behind them and ended up staring at the backs of their heads for an hour. I watched them as they fidgeted and checked their phones and then got the hell out of there the second the meeting ended, and I smiled a bit to myself because I remember those days well.

That got me thinking about what it must have been like to see me walk into my first few meetings. I think my head was spinning and I was scared and I didn’t like some of the God stuff I was hearing. I also think I only could catch about 50 percent of what people were saying, which is something I take for granted now. There are so many things we talk about with short-hand language—resentments, the spiritual axiom, daily inventory, sponsorship—that you learn over time and then start to use yourself. But in the beginning? My eyes must have glazed over.

But as I stared at the backs of these guys’ heads, I also took note of what was happening around them in the room. There was so much laughter, so many hugs, so much clapping for anniversaries, that I flashed back to my early days and I had a spiritual experience thinking back on some of my earliest memories of getting sober.

I think the biggest thing that I got from my first few meetings was hope. I walked into sobriety broken down, with disastrous relationships with loved ones and friends, and a job that I should have been fired from. Put it this way: I didn’t have many people whose eyes lit up when I showed up.

But that’s what happened at meetings. When I said I was at my first meeting, people were thrilled. They clapped and lined up afterward to speak to me. People were begging me to take their phone numbers and to come back the next day. I got a long list of suggestions for other good meetings in the area, and all sorts of words of encouragement. I found myself at a point in life where no one was cheering for me to make an appearance, and suddenly I was Tony Robbins. It was awesome.