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 had two things pop up recently in recovery that made me sit back and say, “Holy s**t, thank God for our sober founding fathers and mothers.”
First, I read “The Vicious Cycle” out of the back of the Big Book the other day, and it was written by one of the original 12-step members, Jim B. He tells a good story, and I identified with him quite a bit—in my experience, alcoholics in 1940 sure did think a lot like me in the 2000s. It’s crazy sometimes how similar the thought processes are.
That story has some bonkers things in it. First of all, he picked a sponsor who had three weeks sober! But that was pretty normal back then because recovery was a new concept—three weeks was a long time with the pioneers of 12-step recovery. In Jim’s case, he writes about how his sponsor relapsed and died of this disease. Who knows how many other people had similar situations? I feel so grateful that I have met people who have 10, 20, 30, 40, even 50 years of sobriety to choose from as a sponsor.
He also writes about going to meet with a woman who needed help… and he ended up dating her and marrying her. Again, that is wild. My guess is, the phrase “13th-stepping” didn’t exist back then. I’m glad that in the decades since, we’ve learned how harmful that can be, and many members are aggressive in squashing inappropriate advances.
The other thing that jumped out at me was the way he described how contentious early meetings could be, and that he and others often were aggressive in taking other peoples’ inventories. It’s so funny to me how brazen he was about some stuff that wouldn’t fly these days because we have learned so many hard lessons over the next 80 years or so.
The second big thing that popped up for me at meetings was the concept of resentment being the No. 1 offender—that resentment destroys more alcoholics than anything else. Think about that for a second. Our literature doesn’t say that deaths or cancer diagnoses or anything else is the No. 1 thing to watch out for. It doesn’t say that resentment is one of multiple things that trips up the most alcoholics. It flat-out says resentment is No. 1.
When I think back on how bold that statement is, I ultimately spend a few moments thinking about how many people tried to get sober and failed, then tried again and failed, and just kept trying, just kept tracking their progress, just kept laying out what the biggest potholes were to look out for. In my mind, that means a lot of people fell down so that we could stand up, and for that I am so, so grateful. I cannot imagine a life where 12-step recovery wasn’t a tried and true method available in every corner of the United States. What a gift.
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 bouncer threw my drunk buddy out of the same bar 5 times in a 10-minute span.
I patted the frustrated bouncer on the shoulder and said, "I think you put too much backspin on him."
(Credit: AA Grapevine, September 2004)
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.
