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I try to have some humility about it, but I obviously like to hear myself talk. In case you’re keeping track, I do an anonymous newsletter about the funny side of sobriety, and I perform standup comedy, and I’ll argue with you about college football for free at the grocery store if you ask me. Just pull me aside in the crouton aisle and LET’S FIGHT!
So, yeah, I am a bit of a class clown. One of my biggest battles since I stopped drinking and drugging is to stop being full of s**t. I used to lie and cheat and spin stories to get me off the hook for things, or to look better, and it’s not like you subtract the drugs and alcohol and that behavior goes away.
I need to say that out loud, because even though our recovery literature talks a lot about not having to be the hole in the donut when we get sober, it also doesn’t say, “Always put on a great show at recovery meetings!”
I’m bringing this up because I got asked to share my story at a meeting a few months ago, and I said yes… but honestly, I have this side of me that immediately thought, “Everybody has heard my story lots of times, including me. We’re all sick of hearing it. What could I do to spruce it up? Maybe I could do like TV show writers in their sixth season, where they have add new guest stars, maybe drop in a cameo or two, maybe have a big twist at the end. HOLY S**T, IT WAS ALL JUST A DREAM!”
I didn’t do that, and I don’t want to be doing that. In recovery, we’re encouraged to talk about our experience, strength and hope. Nowhere does it say, “Make sure you liven things up a bit once you’ve been sober for a little while.”
It also encourages us to not be a glum lot, though, and not to take ourselves too seriously. So I do think that gives me a little leeway to tell my story in a way that carries my favorite message—which is that, for me, sobriety has been a joyous, hilarious ride that is ever-evolving. That’s an important point for me: the evolution within sobriety.
You know how at every meeting somebody says, “Geez, I’ve read this chapter 100 times and don’t remember that sentence right there!” I remember saying that to myself once and then realizing that it wasn’t that I didn’t read it before, or didn’t remember it—it’s that I am a different person day to day, month to month and year to year. There are certain things in recovery that just don’t resonate when you’re a newcomer, or don’t resonate when you have been sober a long time.
For example, my first time through the steps, Steps One Four changed my life. I thoroughly admitted I had an unmanageable problem and needed help to deal with it, and then I worked through everything that made me angry about the world. Total game changers.
In recent years when I went through the steps, I found Steps Six and Seven really jumped out at me. I have character defects that have lingered for years now, and there were multiple parts of that process where I felt like I had read something or heard something for the first time. That wasn’t really true—I just hadn’t been ready to hear about character defects my first time through.
So here’s where I landed on how to tell my story: I did it truthfully, without any extra car crashes or bonus director’s cut footage to make it sexier. I don’t want to be in that business.
But I did tell it my way. I prayed for guidance and felt like that was the response I was guided toward. I drilled down a little bit more specifically on two angles—I spoke specifically about the phrase “we are not a glum lot” and how that has helped me get sober and stay sober. And I spoke about how I have been thinking a lot recently about the various stages of recovery and what I learned during each one. For instance, I’ve discovered some cool things during the pandemic that have been awesome supplements to a sober life.
Did I end up hamming it up a bit? Nah, no way, not me! I would never do such a thing!
In case you missed it, I put together a fun mini comedy special about my 10 favorite addiction/sobriety jokes. Check it out HERE! (It’s behind a paywall)
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:
"I was in and out of AA for fifteen years, and I finally realized that AA is a 12 Step program, not a 12 stand still program. So I started working the Steps."
(Credit: AA Grapevine, June 2006, from Bill M.)
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