If you want to subscribe to LOL Sober, hit the purple button below. I’m mostly publishing free pieces right now, but paid subscribers do have access to monthly premium pieces—such as THIS comedy special about my 10 favorite addiction/sobriety jokes!
I think I have mentioned this before, but this newsletter is not my full-time job. In my full-time job, I use my real name but I am a writer for a pretty big company. So my stories end up getting a nice-sized audience.
Well, about a year ago, I wrote something about my own addiction and recovery, and lots of people read that. I ended up getting lots of emails and responses on social media, and I also got quite a few handwritten letters from people.
One letter, in particular, caught my attention. It was basically a form letter from a major drug company, and it said that they had been notified that I had had an issue with one of their painkiller drugs. I’m sure drug companies are obligated by law to reach out to people who say they’ve had an issue with a drug they make.
This letter was hilarious, though. It had boxes to check about whatever issue you had. There were boxes for allergic reactions to the drug, high blood pressure from the drug, and on and on. And then there was a box to check about addiction, with a small space to write out what your addiction issues were.
It’s a serious topic but I had to laugh. Yeah, let me write about my addiction issues in 33 words or less on three tiny lines on a standardized form. That ought to be easy!
I stared at it for a long time and was considering filling it out. Would it do some good for somebody? Maybe the drug company would change any bad behaviors in marketing or selling the drug?
I ultimately just chuckled and folded it up and put it back in the envelope. I’m not sure my comments on painkillers would really change the world much, so I decided to not respond.
I have spent some time sitting with my feelings about the way drugs and alcohol are marketed and sold in the world. Same with nicotine products. There probably are some adult conversations to have about that.
I ultimately fall back on the idea that yes, there are some things that are shady and destructive that should be addressed. There’s a documentary called “Crime of the Century” that’s out right now about the Sackler family and their role in the opioid crisis. I was going to watch it but I just couldn’t bring myself to open up that wound. Because as brutal as this is to admit, I was a part of the opioid crisis. I was using and abusing painkillers (and alcohol) for that entire time period when opioids were really starting to creep into the world on a big scale. I was doctor-shopping and stealing painkillers at a time when the market was taking off, so like it or not, I contributed on a small scale. That’s not something I am proud of.
But in my life—I’m just talking about myself here—I didn’t become a raging alcoholic and drug addict because I saw a cool poster or an ad. I was always going to go down that path, and there is no single company or marketing campaign that could have really started that for me. I was on that road already. I think if you ran a computer simulation of 10,000 versions of my life, I think I would have ended up in rehab all 10,000 times. But 6,000 times might have been for painkillers, 2,000 times for alcohol, and 2,000 times for some other drug that I got hooked on during that simulation.
All that really matters in my sober life is that this is one of the times I got hooked on both painkillers and alcohol, and in this version, I got sober. So I’m not going to spend too much time looking backward on who did what to get me addicted. I just want to spend my energy on being thankful for this sober life… unless this is a simulation?
Hey, wait a minute, am I in a computer simulation right now…
This newsletter is a place of joy and laughter about the deadly serious business of sobriety. So, as I will often do, let me close with a joke:
HEARD AT MEETINGS
“This disease tells people they don't have it, and then, after they make it to AA, it tells them they are cured.”
(Credit: AA Grapevine, December 2008, by Jim F. of Tasmania)
Please spread the word to a sober friend! Find me on Substack… or Twitter… or Facebook… or Instagram… or YouTube. And introducing my web site, LOLsober.com.
