I know I am not supposed to be telling anyone what to do but…

Although counting days and getting medallions is a wonderful way to celebrate days of sobriety in AA, in my experience, it is not such a good idea in OA.  My first time around in program, getting that one-year medallion meant everything to me.  Every day I would mark-off another day of abstinence on my calendar.  I had a big star drawn on my one-year anniversary date, and as that glorious day approached, I started the big count-down and would talk about it to anyone who would listen.  When the day finally arrived, I got my medallion and was scheduled to be the guest speaker at my home meeting the following week.  The day before my “victory speech,” I caved-in to the temptation of half-priced Halloween candy and binged my brains out.  The next evening, I sat in my car outside the meeting, sobbing.  I wanted so badly to go in there and lie and act like nothing ever happened, but I knew I couldn’t.  And yet, the idea of starting all over again at day “one”  was devastating to me.  The time to go in came and went and there I sat.  Finally, I drove away…and didn’t go back for at least 2 years.  I think I repeated variations of this same theme about five different times over my 24 years in and out of program.  This is why the whole counting-days-thing leaves such a bad taste in my mouth, so to speak.

During this, my latest (and longest) stretch of abstinence, I have decided not to count specific days, although I know that I got “clean” some time in the beginning of February, 2010.  I use this information to keep track of years rather than days.  In fact, I just recently decided to choose a specific anniversary date, so I asked my favorite AA “old-timer” if I could use his sobriety date, and he graciously agreed.  But keep in mind that this was well into my second year of abstinence, and by that point, I really felt that I was in no danger of going back to that all-consuming obsession with the numbers of my disease.  Today, for me, it’s all about THIS 24-hours.

REMINDER: All of this is just my opinion, based upon my limited experience.  If counting days is working for you, keep it up!