Joking/Humor about our past?
 

Haven't posted in a while, but I try to read through the forums a few times a week. Anyways, got a question for those of us that have been sober for a while and are finding ourselves more comfortable with it: Is it bad taste to joke about being a former alky? For example, the other day at work someone made a comment about drinking too much at a social function. Without thinking I made the smart-assed comment of:

"Yeah, I tried making a career out of being an alcoholic. There's no money in it.... sponsors are hard to come by!"

Bad taste? Good humor? Discuss.

I think it's fine once you're far enough on the other side of the fence in sobriety. If I'm still engaged in it or don't have much sober time it's well, not! :-)

I think that could make people uncomfortable and there's no need to out yourself at work to prove you're cool with who you were.

I couldn't possibly joke about being an alcoholic, unless I was still actively in denial and actually believed I was beyond it.

There's no humor in the disease part of it.

But certainly, laugh at your stupid younger drunk self who got in to absurd situations.. before it got serious.. or poke fun at yourself here and in the rooms about the insane stuff alcoholics do.

I remember this one guy talking about when you start picking up empty beer cans to see if there's anything left and you find a little bit of beer in one and so you drink you, and end up swallowing cigarette ash. That made me laugh, because I've done that. Everyone in the room laughed. But to others, that's just weird.

So I guess that's why I like AA meetings.

For me, if I feel far enough removed from it to look back and scoff at the alcoholic I used to be.. I'm dangerously close to convincing myself I can drink again. Just my two cents.

Craig Ferguson makes jokes about alcoholism



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kI-BhQGwDO8

I'm constantly joking about it. As much as a lunatic as I was, I almost have to...

to have to take this head on 24/7 with a serious note all the time would drive anyone s#it a$$ crazy .

When I was in rehab, I made the substance abuse director laugh so hard she had to excuse herself. I have this uncanny ability to deliver some one liners that can make just about anyone laugh when I'm saying some of the most guy wrenching s#it I've been through and never miss a beat.

I think joking about ourselves- in general and as alcoholics- is an important part of both recovery and just being a decent and humble person in general. I know I laugh a LOT at my home group, often because people joke about "what it was like" and we all relate! Like any kind of jokes, what "material" I use depends on my audience.

People seem to think I am pretty funny ;)

I think a healthy sense of humor is a good thing. I can joke about my past, yet I find it's also important to remember the pain. It's the latter that keeps me sober today.

personally i think that was pretty funny, steve.
i couldnt laugh about it when i was drinking because i didnt see the insanity.
now that im sober i can see how insane i was and can laugh at a lot of it.

Humour can be cleansing. To use humour - to laugh at fear and anger- at pain and damage helps me understand the alcoholism no longer controls me. So long as humour is about me- not others, is respectful and never harmful.

Humor is healing for me. To be able to have a good laugh takes away the power of painful/fearful things. It lightens the darkness.

Everything has a place, including humor :)

at my local AA group we joke a lot and have a lot of laughs about the stupid stuff we did - and I like that a lot, seems to be a certain sense of dark humor that only recovering alcoholics would understand :D... among other people i do not joke about alcohol, i rarely even talk about alcohol at all, if I can avoid it - I don't want to bring up the subject for the ones I love, who suffered from my drinking - and other friends or work collegues do not even know i am a sober alcoholic

Just thought of this....I remember describing 2005 to people as "the year I had to laugh, or I would die crying" as I went through a ridiculous divorce. Same thing applies to my sobriety as far as remembering my drinking days. Now that I have done step 4 and 5, and work on my list of folks in Step 9 and live in step 10, humor helps me keep my past misdeeds in check.

I think humor definitely plays an important part in all of our lives. Specific to addiction and sobriety I think you need to be tactful and respectful of others though as it's a difficult subject to talk about. There are certainly some things I can laugh about now that I've done, but there are also a lot of things that were serious/bad enough that I'd never joke about.

Yeah, I don't make jokes about my drinking history. It just wasn't particularly funny.

As far as making a joke about being an alcoholic in the work place I don't feel it's appropriate.

At an AA meeting or on this board it's all good.

But otherwise I never bring up the subject of my drinking history.

If someone wants to talk to me in private that's fine but not otherwise no.

Really depends on the situation and who you're joking to and how well you know each other, I think, so it's impossible to say. I can joke about it now, some of it anyways (other aspects are just not funny), and I do sometimes with people who understand and weren't involved (like at a meeting), but I probably wouldn't with co-workers. Most people have never been addicts and will never understand addiction, and they probably won't understand how it could be funny. ;)

What better way to heal?

Like...did you hear about the alcoholic, agnostic, dyslexic? He stayed up drinking and thinking all night wondering if there really is a dog.