Podcast
LOL Sober
Hosted by Nelson H. · EN
39episodes
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Knowledge vs. wisdom
Apr 2300:04:33Tap to summarizeIf you want to subscribe to LOL Sober, hit the purple button below. I’m mostly publishing free pieces but I am hoping to generate a few bucks to pay for my web site and some other costs. Paid subscribers do have access to frequent premium pieces—such as THIS comedy special about my 10 favorite addiction/sobriety jokes!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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nelsonh.substack.com/subscribe
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The two branches concept
Apr 1700:07:12Tap to summarizeIf you want to subscribe to LOL Sober, hit the purple button below. I’m mostly publishing free pieces but I am hoping to generate a few bucks to pay for my web site and some other costs. Paid subscribers do have access to frequent premium pieces—such as THIS comedy special about my 10 favorite addiction/sobriety jokes!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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nelsonh.substack.com/subscribe
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A few thoughts about Tiger Woods
Apr 1000:14:27Tap to summarizeIf you want to subscribe to LOL Sober, hit the purple button below. I’m mostly publishing free pieces but I am hoping to generate a few bucks to pay for my web site and some other costs. Paid subscribers do have access to frequent premium pieces—such as THIS comedy special about my 10 favorite addiction/sobriety jokes!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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nelsonh.substack.com/subscribe
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Not the outdoor type
Apr 100:06:52Tap to summarizeIf you want to subscribe to LOL Sober, hit the purple button below. I’m mostly publishing free pieces but I am hoping to generate a few bucks to pay for my web site and some other costs. Paid subscribers do have access to frequent premium pieces—such as THIS comedy special about my 10 favorite addiction/sobriety jokes!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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nelsonh.substack.com/subscribe
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A picture is worth a thousand breaths
Mar 2600:06:16Tap to summarizeIf you want to subscribe to LOL Sober, hit the purple button below. I’m mostly publishing free pieces but I am hoping to generate a few bucks to pay for my web site and some other costs. Paid subscribers do have access to frequent premium pieces—such as THIS comedy special about my 10 favorite addiction/sobriety jokes!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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nelsonh.substack.com/subscribe
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Let's do some alcoholic math
Mar 1800:06:52Tap to summarizeIf you want to subscribe to LOL Sober, hit the purple button below. I’m mostly publishing free pieces but I am hoping to generate a few bucks to pay for my web site and some other costs. Paid subscribers do have access to frequent premium pieces—such as THIS comedy special about my 10 favorite addiction/sobriety jokes!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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nelsonh.substack.com/subscribe
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The MYOB predicament
Mar 1300:05:19Tap to summarizeIf you want to subscribe to LOL Sober, hit the purple button below. I’m mostly publishing free pieces but I am hoping to generate a few bucks to pay for my web site and some other costs. Paid subscribers do have access to frequent premium pieces—such as THIS comedy special about my 10 favorite addiction/sobriety jokes!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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nelsonh.substack.com/subscribe
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Don't be old oatmeal
Mar 200:07:37Tap to summarizeIf you want to subscribe to LOL Sober, hit the purple button below. I’m mostly publishing free pieces but I am hoping to generate a few bucks to pay for my web site and some other costs. Paid subscribers do have access to frequent premium pieces—such as THIS comedy special about my 10 favorite addiction/sobriety jokes!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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nelsonh.substack.com/subscribe
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The answer to when the answers will come
Feb 2600:04:35Tap to summarizeIf you want to subscribe to LOL Sober, hit the purple button below. I’m mostly publishing free pieces but I am hoping to generate a few bucks to pay for my web site and some other costs. Paid subscribers do have access to frequent premium pieces—such as THIS comedy special about my 10 favorite addiction/sobriety jokes!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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nelsonh.substack.com/subscribe
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Decaf? DECAF! Decaf?!?!
Feb 1900:04:40Tap to summarizeIf you want to subscribe to LOL Sober, hit the purple button below. I’m mostly publishing free pieces but I am hoping to generate a few bucks to pay for my web site and some other costs. Paid subscribers do have access to frequent premium pieces—such as THIS comedy special about my 10 favorite addiction/sobriety jokes!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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nelsonh.substack.com/subscribe
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