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I saw Cocaine Bear this weekend with sober friends, and it was quite a surreal scene. First of all, sober people going together to a movie about a bear on a cocaine rampage… what the hell?
Secondly, an actual movie about a bear on a cocaine rampage exists in 2023… again, what the hell?
Man, it was such a blast. I’ll give you a quick review. If you’re not familiar with this movie, it came out this past weekend and did surprisingly well. It is exactly what it says on the package: a movie about a bear that eats a bunch of cocaine and goes wild in a small town. I’ve heard some people say it is a true story, and that’s not quite accurate. A bunch of cocaine did plummet out of an airplane into the woods in the mid-1980s, and a bear did eat a lot of it. But the movie takes that basic fact and runs with it in a mostly fictional story.
I freaking loved the movie. It doesn’t try to be smarter than it has to be, and just spends 90 minutes trying to meld horrifying violence with dark comedy in a way that I thought worked really well. I found myself laughing and then feeling mortified and then laughing again and then feeling mortified again… it was a great romp.
I think I would have felt that way no matter what. But I also think that my own addiction issues make it extra amusing. I mean, I freaking identified with the bear. The bear got some cocaine in its system and then couldn’t stop. The bear turned into something it’s not, all in the name of getting that next high. Drugs had taken over the bear’s life, and the bear was going to do whatever it had to in order to keep the party going. And guess what, just like I discovered, the bear finds out that for a hardcore user—in the bear’s case, a 600-pound, 8-foot-tall user—there are never enough substances to fill that void.
I never mauled anybody to get drugs or alcohol. But was I capable of that? Maybe. I had gotten increasingly desperate to find more and more painkillers down the stretch of my active addiction, and I was finding it very difficult to get 50 pills from doctors every day. I had resorted to stealing them from peoples’ medicine cabinets at that point, and it was only a matter of time—probably less than a year—till I was desperate enough to go to extreme measures. I sure hope I wouldn’t have ever become violent, but I did think about it when I was still active, and how I didn’t want to get to that point. I think that was a factor in me deciding to rehab.
Spoiler alert: Cocaine Bear did not go to bear rehab. I won’t say how the movie ends, but would suggest you see it for yourself. I have no doubt that you’ll end up laughing, covering your eyes… and wishing Cocaine Bear could find a good meeting and grab a bear sponsor.
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:
OLDIE BUT GOODIE: A little boy became pretty well-versed in AA practices after his old man dried out. One night, the boy greeted his father and said, "I want to show you my report card, but before I do, would you care to join me in the Serenity Prayer?"
(Credit: AA Grapevine, August 2008, by Anonymous)
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