Counting Days

Counting days can be helpful in terms of keeping ourselves grounded in reality. I got into the habit early on of making sure to let people know how much time I had when I talked in meetings. You see, I have always been great talker and "look-gooder" in my life -- but when I came into AA, it was important to me to let people know that while I might sound good and/or wise, I wanted them to know that this was more appearance than substance. I was 15 or 20 days sober....not 99 years. It helped me to keep my sharing "temporally" linked to my sober time. Most important though, the counting of days was something that got me focused on today, not yesterday or yesteryear, not tomorrow or infinity and beyond. Today.

Counting days can also be quite depressing, especially early on in the recovery process, when we seem totally unsure and/or incapable to stringing many of them together in a continuous line of days. I remember seeing people's names followed by numbers up on the Sobriety Birthday board at the Lafayette Hut shortly after I got sober: at first glance, I thought all of the numbers represented days, 6, 30, 48.... It wasn't too long before I realized that while some of those numbers represented days and some months, most represented years! Early in the process, I didn't really believe people who had years, especially lots of years. I only believed and trusted those who had days and months. They were like me. It didn't take me much longer to realize that all of these folks were like me and that they all had a first day, a first 30 days, etc. Some, but not all, had only one first day, one first 30 days, etc. But we all shared that we had some number of days and weren't ashamed or fearful of letting people know how many days we had sober. We let them know so that they could get to know us better and could be more helpful.

I heard someone say (or maybe this is my own original thought, who knows...plagiarism has become quite a habit in this program) that it's best to count days backwards. That is, instead of saying that I have 7 years, 6 months and 27 days.... It's better to count them backwards, starting with now.

I'm sober today, 26 days, 6 months and 7 years. And while I'm proud of the months and years --- today is the only one that really matters to me.

I'm sober today. Start off with that. Always!

Take care!

Mike L.