"How much time practice you have?" is the question y'all almost always get when you walk into an Alcoholics Anonymous coming together.  Some meetings even start with members introducing themselves past get-go names and their sobriety dates, meaning the last day they consumed an alcoholic beverage, or for some "a beverage or a drug."

What counts equally a drug is not entirely articulate, since while AA as a whole discourages members from "playing doctor" in its pamphlet "The AA Member – Medications and Other Drugs,"1 many AA members withal discourage the utilise of prescription psychiatric medications, and most highly respected rehabs consider legal medications such as benzodiazepines "drugs" and those who use them "not sober."  Narcotics Anonymous famously does non consider anyone on Medication Assisted Treatment (MAT), the medically recognized gold standard for opioid dependence handling, "clean."  Meanwhile, caffeine, sugar, and i of the deadliest drugs of all, nicotine, are regularly consumed and encouraged within "the rooms."

Still, it is long standing practice to count sober days, gloat anniversaries with java, block and coins, and even phone call the solar day you took your last potable or drug a "birthday."  Every yr in September, National Recovery Month, my Facebook feed is full of people posting their sobriety dates.  Newcomers to AA await eagerly for their xxx twenty-four hour period coin, then lx, then 90.  The feeling of accomplishment from going 90 days without a substance that you once could non imagine even a day without is astonishing.

Many jobs, especially in the recovery handling industry, require counting.  If you get to the websites of most whatsoever major treatment center, y'all volition see a phrase similar, "If in recovery, two years of continuous sobriety preferred."

Why Counting Counts

The reasons for counting vary, but the nigh obvious is that not wanting to lose "time" tin can provide a reason to stay abroad from that first drink or other drug that could lead to more.  Seeing those days of sobriety rack up on the Sobriety Calculators that are now on many people's phones tin be gratifying, and go along people motivated to do what it takes to achieve their goals.  Reporting sobriety fourth dimension in meetings tin can exist a happy occasion.  The congratulations one receives on every day, every month, and every year may be the only positive reinforcement that some people become when their lives accept been and so destroyed by the wreckage of drug utilise and the stigma around it that they feel proud of footling other than their "time."

But What Happens When Yous Skid?

About anybody slips.  In AA, at that place is no difference between a slip, significant one drink or even a few sips, and a full blown relapse.  SMART Recovery makes this departure very clear: a cursory skid need not turn into a total blown relapse.2  A relapse is a return to problematic employ behavior that has very negative wellness, social, and/or employment consequences.  SMART stresses that the guilt over a slip tin turn into a full blown relapse if a person views a lapse every bit a personal failure.  This is what Alan Marlatt called the Forbearance Violation Issue.3 Rather, it should be seen every bit an opportunity for learning almost triggers and planning for how to maintain abstinence in the future.two

The Alcoholics Anonymous Approach to a Slip:

In AA, fifty-fifty a few sips of alcohol is regarded every bit a relapse.  Even a person with 30 years continuous abstinence from alcohol is considered a "newcomer" if they drink fifty-fifty one drink.  You lot "lose all your time."

That requires going back to Step One in the Twelve Step process, a procedure undertaken at to the lowest degree once by serious AA members and often repeatedly over a lifetime of AA participation.

Why, I asked, does one sip of alcohol or one drink, require going back to the starting time?  Practice you really lose all you've gained in recovery as a result of one moment, even if no harm (such as drinking and driving or hurting self or others) came from it?

Since there is no cardinal authority in AA that adjudicates such matters, I posed this question to AA members.  Here are some of the answers I received:

"The rationale is that if y'all accept taken 1 drink, you don't believe you are an alcoholic. Yous don't believe you are powerless over alcohol.  If you go back through Footstep 1, hopefully the testify will suggest that you are and therefore y'all will non adventure yourself again."

In response to my second question, "How do you respond to those who say that taking a sip or two of a drinkable should non cause them to lose all their time and endure the public humiliation of going back to stride one and identifying every bit a newcomer?"

The respond I got was: "I would simply say that pride and dishonesty kill alcoholics. Go to the meeting, admit exactly what has happened and get the assistance you need. Yous are in trouble spiritually simply every bit much if you take two sips equally if you lot continue a full blown bender."

I followed up with: "What do you say to the people who say that a few sips has caused no damage, especially if the person poured the rest of the drink downward the drain, only that the sense of failure tin can cause the person to proceed drinking because they've already 'lost their time?'"

The long term AA fellow member responded: "They are responsible if they have a sense of failure – no one else is responsible for their feelings. Don't try and blame it on AA because the proffer of AA is entire forbearance and they oasis't been able to proceed to information technology. In terms of the i sip: a relapse is about a lot more than just taking a drink. If yous accept a sip you are in merely equally much trouble spiritually as if you drinkable a bottle. In fact, mayhap more considering there seems to exist totally denial of the severity of what has happened. For an alcoholic to risk sipping a drink they have to exist very spiritually unwell."

Only I Thought an "Alcoholic" Couldn't Have But One?

It'due south a common theme throughout the Big Book and AA meetings that once one is an "alcoholic," it is impossible to maintain command of alcohol consumption after fifty-fifty one drink.  If this were the case, and so counting days and living in fear of losing fourth dimension would be rational beliefs.  Anyone who gets to the stage where alcohol or other drugs threaten their health, relationships, livelihood and fifty-fifty safety and freedom does not want to adventure losing control once again!

There is, still, no scientific bear witness to support this conventionalities.  On the opposite, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism reports that "Twenty years after onset of alcohol dependence, about three-fourths of individuals are in full recovery; more than one-half of those who have fully recovered drink at depression-risk levels without symptoms of alcohol dependence."4  On the basis of a multiwave study surveying thousands of people, the governmental authorisation charged with studying alcohol use disorders has concluded that the vast majority of people who were ever booze dependent practice recover, and of those, more than half drink safely.4  And then it is merely not the example that people who have been booze dependent tin can never control their drinking.

The belief that an "alcoholic" loses control tin can, however, become a self-fulfilling prophecy.  According to the developers of the Self-Stigma in Booze Dependence Scale (SSAD), a survey designed to measure out the degree to which one identifies with negative stereotypes about those who drink also much and how much harm these beliefs do to the person's self-esteem, the worse you experience about yourself because of your drinking, the less likely you are to be able to decline a drink.5

A Different Approach:

Tom Horvath, PhD, , founder of Practical Recovery and President of SMART Recovery for 20 years, said this of counting days: "In SMART, I have observed that virtually seem to count, merely in their ain fashion. So I hear statements like 'I started my journey about iii years ago. I've had two relapses and three slips along the way. I tin't guarantee that there will be no more slips in the hereafter, but I recollect I'm past the relapse stage. And I notwithstanding use pot sometimes, only I was never concerned about information technology to begin with. Someday I may attempt moderate drinking, but my programme for now is no drinking.'"

Kenneth Anderson, MA, is the founder and Executive Director of Damage Reduction, Abstinence and Moderation Back up, an international organization defended to helping people change their drinking.  HAMS supports all goals, from complete abstinence from booze to moderation to safer drinking.  On counting, Anderson said, "In HAMS information technology is up to the individual to make up one's mind whether or not s/he wishes to count days. Some people observe it a useful tool and we back up them in choosing to count and post their counts if they so desire. Other people discover it counterproductive and nosotros back up that decision, also."

When Does Counting Help, and When Does It Hurt?

Practically speaking, a person should count days if information technology helps them reach their goals.

Counting helps when:

  • It provides motivation for sticking to one'south plan.
  • It gives a sense of achievement for achieving one'south goals.
  • If a person decides to share their count, they enjoy social support and encouragement.
  • The private is counting out of excitement at beginning a new life, not fear of falling back into quondam patterns.

Counting hurts when:

  • A slip becomes a full blown relapse because the person figures, "I've lost my time anyway, may as well go all out!"
  • Fear of public humiliation deters a person from seeking help and support subsequently a slip or relapse.
  • Counting is imposed past an exterior dominance, which will eventually lead to rebellion.
  • A person bases their unabridged self-worth on the number of days on the sobriety calculator or the number of AA/NA fries collected. Just as dietitians recommend confronting basing feelings of self-worth entirely on the number on the scale, professionally trained therapists (not those whose only grooming is participation in 12 Step programs) warn confronting assertive that more sobriety equals being a better person.  Or worse, that having a drink or drug reduces a person to worthlessness.  Such feelings can pb to astringent relapse and even suicide.

And so Should I Count?

Should you count?  What should yous count?  Who should you tell about your count?

Information technology'due south upwardly to you.  Unless you lot are in a program where y'all are drug tested on a regular basis and required to share your count with someone to stay out of jail or maintain your professional license, y'all are under no obligation to count.  Virtually all "sobriety dates" are self-reported, and I'grand certain I'm not the first to wonder if anybody who reports many years of "continuous sobriety" in or outside of AA is telling the whole truth.

If you love waking upwardly in the morn to see the number on your sobriety counter get upwards, if you're committed to abstinence and have a clear vision of what that ways to you, and if yous have a programme to survive a slip without losing your cocky-esteem, then by all means, count.

If yous're counting because your parents, spouse, dominate, doc, or AA sponsor and home group expect you to, you're probably being set up for failure.  If you wake up in terror that y'all drank the night before, even though y'all know you didn't, and you achieve for your sobriety calculator to reassure yourself you lot're even so worthy, you may be putting as well much accent on the day count and not plenty on finding ways to love and intendance for yourself, regardless of the number of days.

Counting days should be a tool, non a moral compass.  Recall – no matter what your day count – You lot count!

References:

i  Alcoholics Anonymous.  The AA Member – Medications and Other Drugs.  https://www.aa.org/pages/en_US/aa-member-medications-and-other-drugs

2  SMART Recovery: Stopping a Slip from Becoming a Relapse.  https://www.smartrecovery.org/stopping-a-slip-from-becoming-a-relapse/

3 Larimer ME, Palmer RS, Marlatt AG.  (1999)  Relapse Prevention: An Overview of Marlatt' s Cognitive-Behavioral Model. Alcohol Research and Wellness.

iv NIAA Spectrum.  Alcoholism Isn't What Information technology Used to Be.  https://world wide web.spectrum.niaaa.nih.gov/archives/v1i1Sept2009/features/Alcoholism.html

5 Schomerus M, Corrigan Prisoner of war, Klauer T, Kuwert P, Freyberger HJ, Lucht G.  (2011)  Self-stigma in alcohol dependence: consequences for drinking-refusal

self-efficacy. Drug and Alcohol Dependence.

______

Photos Courtesy of Shutterstock