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!
For the entire pandemic, I s**t-talked Zoom meetings. I’d say things like:
“They’re not the same as in-person meetings.”
“It’s harder to hook up with newcomers, and the newcomer is the most important person at any meeting.”
“I miss walking into meetings with someone from the parking lot, and then out of the meeting and into the parking lot with another person.”
“It takes two or three Zoom meetings to equal the spirituality I get from one actual meeting.”
It was all true: Those are some of the best parts of in-person meetings. And I do need to say how incredibly valuable community is for a recovering addict, and I build better community with people that I hug and say hi to in person.
However… I might need to make amends to Zoom meetings. Is there a Mr. or Mrs. Zoom that I can apologize to? Because Zoom meetings are pretty awesome. Part of my bad-mouthing of Zoom meetings was also some “good ol days” b******t, where I am remembering the past with a fondness that might be a little overblown. Trust me, if I went back in time to February 2020 and talked to myself about the local in-person meeting scene, I bet I would have been moaning and groaning about a bunch of stuff. In recovery, we often say, “I won’t regret the past nor shut the door on it,” and perhaps in this case I should be saying, “I don’t regret the past nor shut the door on it… nor salivate over a rose-colored reality that didn’t actually exist.”
In fact, I recently caught myself logging onto a Zoom and thinking about a few things that in-person meetings can’t provide. Stuff like:
“It’s 10:30 pm on the East Coast and the last meeting in my state ended an hour-and-a-half ago.”
“I’m sick of the same people saying the same things at the same meetings in my town, and I don’t have many other options.”
“I don’t like that one guy who I see at meetings. He rubs me the wrong way, but I always see him.”
“I am really crunched for time, so I can’t get across town to the meeting.”
Guess what? Zoom can take care of a lot of those problems. There are Zoom meetings 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If you wake up at 3 am with a craving, or it’s 3 pm and your work day went off the rails, it takes 10 seconds to find a Zoom meeting.
If you’re struggling with personalities in the actual rooms, you can log onto a Zoom with a bunch of people you’ve never met before, and you don’t necessarily have to meet again. I especially enjoy hearing people talk that I have never heard before, and Zoom is a good solution to that.
And wow, for convenience, logging onto a 7 pm meeting at 6:59 and logging off at 8:00 is awesome sometimes. I also like if you gotta run to the bathroom or answer one of your kid’s questions, you can either bounce from the meeting and rejoin five minutes later, or mute yourself and turn your camera off and take care of business.
So, as with most things, I am trying to have balance in my recovery. The truth is, Zoom meetings are a tool none of us had for the first 80 years of trying to get sober. Now we do. I should be thankful and appreciative of that!
I try to hit 2-3 in-person meetings and 2-3 Zoom meetings per week. I have found that to be the right mix of principles and personalities, and it’s nice to have a few evenings where a meeting is literally 60 minutes long and I never leave my recliner.
So, Mr. or Mrs. Zoom, if you want to just let me know what I can do to make this right, I would be happy to do that! Your meetings are a fantastic part of the foundation of my sobriety!
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: “The closest I ever got to a 4.0 in college was my blood/alcohol level.”
(Credit: AA Grapevine, July 2002, Dave S. from Ithaca, New York)
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.
