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!
A few months ago, I was really bothered about something in my professional life. But I kept telling myself that it wasn’t a big deal. But I had decided it wasn’t a big deal, on my own, despite how it was making me feel. I didn’t share it with anybody in my sober network because it seemed too small for a 45-year-old adult who’s been sober as long as I have been.
I prayed about it, and I ended up remembering a lesson about humility that I had gotten from about 10 years ago that I really needed to remember in that moment. Here goes:
I went to a meeting at a treatment facility about a decade ago. There were maybe 40 people there. About 10 of those people, me included, had some sobriety and were coming into the facility just for the meeting. The other 30 were all people in treatment. So lots of people with 3 days sober, 10 days sober, 1 month sober.
The chairperson started the meeting by announcing that he was there in place of the normal chairperson, Hank (not his real name). He proceeded to tell the story of why Hank wasn’t there. Hank, it turns out, had relapsed and was holed up in a motel with other addicts, all drinking and doing meth. He described the scene in the motel room, and it involved drugs, alcohol, sex workers, dirty rooms, old food containers… just all-out debauchery. He said the topic for the day was going to be don’t drink or drug, no matter what, and he spoke at length about how the bottom looks, which involved lots of details about Hank.
In the moment, I was moved by the story because it was so vivid. But I did feel a little pang about somebody sharing someone else’s relapse story, and it’s not like it was a relapse story from five years ago—Hank’s relapse was happening right then. But I didn’t think much else about it until he stopped speaking and opened it up to the group.
Almost immediately a guy raised his hand and said he was celebrating 14 days sober, and that he appreciated the speaker but that he thought it was not cool to have put Hank’s situation out there like that. He spoke for another two minutes or so and he wasn’t gentle and he also wasn’t mean—he actually had a lot of humility in his voice as he reprimanded a dude with a lot more sobriety than him. He had a difficult message to the replacement chairperson, and as he shared, I watched the speaker’s face to try to figure out what he was thinking and what he would say.
At the end of the guy’s share, the speaker said something unexpected. “Thanks for sharing,” he said. “I need to really think about what you said, because I think there’s a good chance you’re right. I’m going to pray on it and try to explore what my motives were in sharing that story, and if I need to make amends, I will. I really appreciate you bringing that to my attention.”
I think about that exchange a lot, especially when I have times that I am thinking I am too wise to be vulnerable. There were so many powerful things that happened in that exchange. One is that a newcomer had such fearlessness and clarity to be able to call out somebody with much more sober time.
Another is the chairperson. I think he deserves a lot of credit for in the moment being able to admit he might have been wrong. I still have the urge to duck and cover during criticism and then try to defend myself, without pausing to reflect upon what I am being called out for. In a situation like that, where it’d be easy to go straight to “What the hell do you know? I’ve been sober for five years and blah blah blah.”
But instead, that dude said maybe he was wrong and that he was going to spend some time sitting with it. I never saw the chairperson again, but my feeling as I left that night was that he meant it and he was probably going to end up coming to the conclusion that it wasn’t his place to air out Hank’s business like that.
So I was thinking about the amount of humility shown by everybody involved that night, which could have gotten ugly. I have to always remember that vulnerability isn’t the same as weakness—one of the biggest mud puddles I step in on a regular basis is thinking that I am too old, with too much recovery time, to be thrown off by so-called small things or “luxury problems.” The truth is, if a luxury problem is causing you to think about drinking or to act like you’re already drunk, it’s not a luxury problem—it’s just a problem.
I put an image at the top of the written post of a meme where Leonardo DiCaprio is making a toast with the words “I take great pride in my humility,” and as funny as that phrase is, it’s kind of true for me. But to take great pride in my humility, I gotta share things, big or small, when I am off the spiritual beam.
Humility, humility, humility, humility, humility…
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.
