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