Web Exclusive: The Laugh-Out-Loud List

I was just over a year sober, and Nicole and I were lying on the floor of my living room. The first year of my sobriety was propelled by me getting really involved, doing the steps and going to a lot of meetings. I was good. I was living sobriety and breathing in a new way.

So we lay there on the floor with paper and pen, because I had just gotten the wild idea that we should make this list. Let’s call it the Laugh Out Loud list, I told her. We’ll make a list of all of the things that make us laugh out loud when we think about them. This way, if we’re ever in a depressing place, in a bind, stuck in indecision, we can have this on the refrigerator, take a look at it, and break out laughing.

What a higher power-inspired idea. As we made our lists, we were cracking up and busting a gut, just by remembering things that were funny. As the weeks and months went on, we added to our lists. We referenced our lists. On the phone with each other, after sharing a particularly funny incident, one of us would demand that it go on the list.

It was on a piece of notebook paper, and through adding to it over time the list became wrinkled and faded. But the idea prospered. I made a new one. I made another one. I made one for work too, and at the end of the work year, I typed it up for my department and we had a get-together where we went over it and just kept cracking up.

I can’t relay any blinding light experiences that came from this, but this “spiritual experience of the educational variety” has made it a readily available option for me to stop in a bad moment, think of something hilarious, and change my thought. My understanding is that this is what being truly sober is about: changing my thinking through divine inspiration.