Podcast
LOL Sober
Hosted by Nelson H. · EN
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Addiction steals chapter, not pages
Feb 1500:05:00Tap 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 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. 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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Inputs and outputs
Feb 1000:06:01Tap 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 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. 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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Howdy partner, I'm the sheriff of sobriety!
Feb 200:11:06Tap 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 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. 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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Wow, rejection suckssssssssss...
Jan 2500:07:20Tap 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 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. 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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Getting the easy stuff right in sobriety
Jan 1600:05:42Tap 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 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. 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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My "Jerry Maguire" problem
Jan 1000:09:52Tap 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 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. 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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Cheap laughs, expensive anger
Jan 700:05:29Tap 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!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. 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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An awesome slogan for life
Feb 14, 2025Tap to summarizeIf you want to subscribe to LOL Sober, hit the purple button below. I’m mostly publishing free pieces right now, but paid subscribers do have access to monthly premium pieces—such as THIS comedy special about my 10 favorite addiction/sobriety jokes!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. 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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I have cancer (part 1)
Jan 16, 2025Tap to summarizeIf you want to subscribe to LOL Sober, hit the purple button below. I’m mostly publishing free pieces right now, but paid subscribers do have access to monthly premium pieces—such as THIS comedy special about my 10 favorite addiction/sobriety jokes!I 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 <a target="_blank" href="https://email.mg1.substack.com/c/eJxNkEtuxCAQRE8zLC3A4M-CRTa5BmqgbaPYYPHJyLcPHm8ioUYUUN3...
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A Christmas airport kerfuffle to learn from
Dec 27, 202400:08:58Tap to summarizeIf you want to subscribe to LOL Sober, hit the purple button below. I’m mostly publishing free pieces right now, but paid subscribers do have access to monthly premium pieces—such as THIS comedy special about my 10 favorite addiction/sobriety jokes!Let me 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. 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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