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As I’ve mentioned before, I am a big fan of Just For Today, a short daily reading for addicts. (You can subscribe to the daily emails here.)
I was struck by the May 21 reading (called “Keep coming back!”) that digs into the importance of meetings. And that reminded me of an old standby in the rooms of recovery, “Meeting makers make it.”
It’s just always really hit home for me. I’ve found that on weeks where I go to more meetings, I am more patient, understanding, calm and spiritually fit. On weeks when I don’t get to enough meetings, I am the opposite of those things. That’s just how it is for me. I am a 4-5 meetings per week person, even with 10-plus years of sobriety.
Do I feel cravings for alcohol if I only go to 2-3 meetings? Nah, I usually don’t. But I do start to run into problems where I am more “dry” than “sober.” And that’s not good for anybody!
That May 21 reading discusses how critical meetings can be, and I regularly catch myself wondering, “What is it about meetings? Why do they help me so much?”
I think the answer, for me, is a few different things.
I love seeing people before and after meetings, hugging them, checking in. I love quietly sitting together in a room, with no TV on in the background and no fantasy football boxscore updating on my laptop.
I also didn’t realize how much I love saying prayers with fellow 12-steppers. It’s nice to say them together, in unison. I have been at a few Zoom meetings where 30 people say a prayer and are at 30 different spots in the prayer, and it’s just a big ol’ beautiful dog pile of voices.
I love the last line of that May 21 reading, which says: “Just for today, I will attend a meeting to remind myself of who I am, where I’ve come from, and where I can go in my recovery.”
I especially was captivated by that last thought, about where I can go. I almost always find great role models sitting across from me in the rooms. I want to be sober in an aspirational way, where I don’t rest on yesterday’s recovery and that I am constantly trying to grow. So it helps to constantly be able to find people a little farther on the sobriety journey who I can try to learn from. And guess what? I don’t find those people sitting in my backyard—I need to go to meetings.
And that’s really what meetings ultimately do for me. You guys are my people. There are so many people that I have met along the way who have been impactful in my life… and I have almost nothing in common with them other than alcoholism and a passion for recovery. But our literature does tell us that sobriety is about the exact nature of our disease, not exact details.
So it doesn’t really matter what you do for a living, where you were born, how much money you make. Like, do you want to stay sober together? Cool, let’s do it… we’re on the same team!
When I think about the number of places I go to in life—could be work meetings, could be doing standup comedy, could be at the grocery store—where nobody’s really rooting for me, where it’s survival of the fittest, I am always reminded of the one place I feel most comfortable in the world… at meetings.
What beautiful gift.
ALCOHOLIC JOKE OF THE DAY
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. Here goes:
A drunk is stranded on an island with no food or water. But he finds a lamp and rubs the dust off the top. Suddenly a genie appears and offers three wishes.
The drunk doesn’t even hesitate. “I want a bottle of vodka that never runs out.”
Poof, a bottomless vodka bottle appears in the man’s hand. He drinks half the bottle in one big gulp, but watches in disbelief as the bottle immediately refills to the top with vodka.
“Do you know what you would like with your second and third wishes?” the genie asks.
Lifting the bottle into the air, the man yells, “Yes… I want two more of these!”
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