Steve, I've seen some stuff on social media. Around sobriety. Dates. Do you keep your sobriety date because. You have relapsed. Do you not? And any time there are things like that that pop up on social media, man, the comments become. World War three. So I figured we talk a little bit about sobriety dates and the. Importance of it, or. Maybe not the importance and the impediment. Tell me a little bit about from. An AA perspective, why do we do sobriety. Dates?
Well, I just think it's that line of demarcation, right? Of of when you you know, when we talk about in a, you know, what it was like what happened and what it is like now. So that date is sort of like, you know, that what it was like that before you came in and and you got serious about your sobriety and you stopped drinking. I just think that's all it is to some people. It's really it's a sacred things. And to other people it means a lot less. I sort of fallen that it means a
lot less to me. I mean, I a day a day is a date, holy thing, and they're very protective of it. So it, you know, I can imagine what the comments looked on social media. Listen, I belong to a a group on social me on Facebook called Pizza Horlicks. And it's about pizza. And it's
Yep.
it's vicious. It's like I can't it's amazing.
Really?
The it's amazing the comments on there. It's just social media but sobriety dates are you know, like I said, there's different people who feel like if you have a sniff of a drink or you you're you know, you're at a a wedding and you pick up the wrong drink that some people will change their sobriety date, they will f it up. But I you know, like I said, well, I have a little bit different view on that.
Well, I won't do my trick that I was going to do on that pizza Horlicks site and throw DiGiorno on there
Oh, people do
just
it.
to screw up people.
People do it all the time. I mean, they'll put some stuff like they'll literally put gas station pizza on there, like, hey, this is a this isn't bad. And it's it's funny, I laugh at the comments because social media is funny because you can't tell when somebody's trying to be funny or they're serious sometimes. So it's
No,
just
you can.
it's just a funny thing. back to the subject. You know, like I said, I we were talking before this and, you know, I've talked about my relapse on here. I had stopped drinking in 95 and in my head, my sobriety date early on. I don't my sobriety date was like the fifth or 6th of August in 1995. And when I finally got back to the meeting, that was my home group at that time. And I finally was able to look back at that old book, I realized I was wrong. Like it
was like August 13th, right? I mean, it was within the right books, but still, like that's I couldn't even remember what my sobriety date was. And I've always felt that way. Like, I've you know, I shared that, you know, my my anniversary now is July 27, 2010. I don't think about it much. I don't think about it much. I am a firm believer in, you know, what's my sobriety like today versus
Yep.
versus, you know, how long I've been sober? Because that's my challenge, right? That is my challenge. and I always need to be careful about how I'm behaving today and what I'm doing for my sobriety today.
That's a much better way of doing it. My sobriety date was much more. Important in my first year. Well,
Yeah,
back up a little bit on this.
sure.
We'll back up a bit. There's even like a debate on what the sobriety date should be. I probably picked the wrong date. My date I picked was the last day I had a drink. There
Okay.
are. Some thoughts that it has to. Be the first day you're completely sober 24 hours after. But
Right,
I picked the 21st of March because I didn't know any better, and they just haven't changed it to the 22nd. It's not
Right,
the big deal to me. There are some people who do it one way, some people do it another way. And then there are some people who get pissy either way. So it is it kind. Of is important to look. Back. It was. Important in my first. Month. To me, it's not as important. It does keep me in check in some ways that I think about. If
right.
I started. Drinking, I would lose that. So
hmm.
it is another tool to keep you on track. I saw something that social media posts that I saw. I know the person and I reached out to them saying, I don't know why you're getting such hate. In a lot of times it is the AA people on social
Yeah,
media like you
I
AA
agree.
people. But those of us be nicer. Be nicer.
Yeah,
Don't be as as rigid. You're not. You're not winning anybody. You're not winning anybody to our cause when you do that. But the AA people can a lot of times be kind of nasty on social media. I have seen some people who have like a one day slip up and they keep their sobriety date. So my thought here is you don't want to be so rigid that it becomes an impediment to coming back. That can be the case. Okay. I lost my sobriety date. Why should I get sober if I'm going to have to
lose that, why come back? That's not good. If
yeah,
you're going to have a relapse, the the preference preferences. It's a one time event one day and you get back on the horse.
yeah. I. Listen, I know people who've picked their sobriety dates, like they. They truly like. Oh, I picked January 1st. Like, literally, they picked that date because whether it's because they're not sure Mm hmm. exactly when that last drink was, but I don't know. But they literally pick a date. here's the other thing that I always like is like I'm a member of AA. If I say I'm a member of
Right.
AA, right, that's the way I treat it. Like if I say if nobody out and nobody else. So if I say I'm a member, then I'm a member. Nobody picks my sobriety date but Mm hmm. me. now the only thing I could tell you that if like you, you're really coming in and you're really beat up, maybe a sponsor helps you work that out. Okay, in the in the program. But the truth is, I'm responsible for that. So therefore, nobody can tell me what's right and
what's wrong. I mean, I'm a firm believer that, like I said, you know, I'm in. I'm not you know, I share, too here. I share it all the time in my meetings. Like, I'm not a big rules follower. So the more you tell me I have to do something that way, the more I'm going to push back and tell, you know, I don't
Right.
have to do that. And especially in AA, where we have all these traditions that spell out, you know, you know what's right and what's wrong and what's acceptable and what's not. So, you know, I, I don't get caught up in that at all, and not even for a second of what somebody's sobriety date or whether, you know, whether they want to, you know, change it. We have a person that we both know who comes to a woman, right. Who both knows who comes from who comes to the Monday night
meeting on occasion. she shared with me, I'll talk to her and you know who she is, but, you know, I'll talk to her after a meeting and stuff. And she told me, like years ago, like she went out and she had a half a drink like, or had a drink. She had a drink, purposely had a drink. And she was bummed out about that, you know, And that was it. She just had that one drink, never got a buzz, but had that drink. She didn't change her sobriety date. She decided afterwards that she was going to
keep her sobriety date. I'm not going to judge her on that. Right. It's like that's up to her,
Right.
you know? So if you if she wants to do that, that's fine. And she you know, she does her program, whatever it is, she helps people. She does everything else. So I'm going to I'm going to criticize her because she picks it. It's it's foolish to me. actually, like you said, it could be detrimental to people coming to our program. Right. getting the help that they need. So if you want to drive people away. Yeah. One of the ways you can do that is be really picky and on little shit like this.
I have been tagged by managers in the past that work as being very black and white, which I was. And because I was so sick of a manager, new managers that I go to is saying, Hey, you're very black and white. I have learned to be open minded and see the grey on everything I've had to train myself in. What's the grey here? Where am I being black and white? And that comes over now to AA. And there is a lot of people in AA who have black and white thinking, and I think
hmm.
I understand it is
Mm.
I have to follow these rules to a. Tee or I will. Get drunk even if
Right.
I'm 29 years sober. I got to follow the path the way it says exactly, or I will get drunk. I don't think that's the case. And maybe it's the case for some people that you got to follow the letter of the law or you're going to get drunk. That's not the way it is for me. That thinking can come through to criticism of other people. That you have to do it this way. If you've had that half a drink. You now have. To start to. Go back. To zero. Not just sobriety date. You have. To start as
though you are brand. New to the program. You got to do a 90 and 90. You have
Mm
to find
hmm.
a new sponsor. You have to get chips every month. You have to start as though you are the same as the person coming out of detox for the first time. The knowledge doesn't go away from even coming in as. A new person. I never saw the relapsing person the. Same as me. I'm learning this for. The first. Time. They know something.
Right.
There's to me, it's a head start. That's way too black and white. And if I. If I relapse and I got. To start to zero, back to zero. Is, though I'm a brand new newcomer, I'm much less likely to stop drinking again.
You know, a relapse or a slip or whatever you want to call it, or this, this, this person that we're talking about.
And I am. And to clarify, I am talking about that type of relapse of the one
Right.
day job. Maybe not even getting drunk. I've got the beer on in front of me
right.
and I realize immediately I've made a mistake. This is not like a six month run,
I will say that is probably something that if you're serious about your sobriety, you need to look at. Right. I don't think there's any question is like you would ask yourself, why did this happen? And you may want to do some work again. And we're talking about our program basically sobriety dates, you know, typically an AA thing, but I'm sure other programs have them, too, and
they use them too. But in our program that we would say, hey, you need to figure out why that happened, why you need to find the underlying
right?
cause. We talk about it all the time. I thought my problem was that I drank too much and I realized that my problem was more sophisticated than that. There was just underlying emotional stuff that I drank to cover up and all that kind of stuff. So today I realized, like, the drinking is a solution to my problems or what I think is the solution to my problems, not the problem. So if I pick up a drink or I have a slip or even, you know, hopefully for me, I start thinking that a drink is
possible for me. I need to think like, what? What's going on? Like what? Why am I feeling that today? So there is work to be done, but I agree with you 100% that I don't need to start from the beginning. No. Now maybe I'll choose to. Like maybe as a may a person, I'll choose to say, you know, something to spend seven years since I've gone through the steps, let me talk to my sponsor or another trusted member in AA and I'll go through
the steps again. All right. Like that's B, but again, that's on me,
Right.
right? That's that's my choice. If I want to do that. I've had some behavior stuff going on recently that is got me thinking that maybe I need to I certainly it's got me thinking I need to do a little bit different. Something's different in my sobriety and I've been a little bit resistant to that. I'm not sure why, but eventually I think I'll come and do that. But you're right. And the other thing, like our Friday night meeting last night, there was a lot of talk about just what you
said. People like talking. I need to follow this program exactly. Or else I'm at risk of drinking. Right. I don't feel that way either. I feel like I need to really pay attention to it, and I need to address certain things. But I didn't come to AA to be just constantly thinking about AA. I then I came here to sort of do it, figure it out. I have some tools, you know, just an analogy. I have a whole bunch of tools. I have mechanic tools, I have carpentry tools, you know, I have tools that I
need when I need them. I don't walk around a tuba all the time. If I need them, I can go get them. That's that's my program. If I need these things, I'll go take them out and I'll try to work on them. And hopefully that's for me that's going to happen before I pick up a drink. it's an interesting concept, but like I said, it's such an individual thing that we need to be, you know, our program's about attraction, not promotion, right? So, Mm hmm.
so we need to talk to people and let people come in and let them find their way. We and our Friday night meeting, we got like three or four new guys, three or four guys with under a year sobriety. And matter of fact, last night we had this brand new guy. I had never seen him before and he comes in and sits down and I shake his hand and say hi to him and he sits down. And first he was sitting away from the group and then he joined the tables where we got
him. And then probably a quarter of the way, a third of the way in the meeting, he got up and left and I was like, That's interesting, right? Never, never really said anything and got up and left and I have no idea why. I hope he comes back. But something wasn't working for him last night. I mean, we just have to be open to people coming in and going and maybe he's not ready to come in and be, you know, be receptive to how other people feel about these things. and there was another guy there
who's too talked about. He's like, he said, he's he's been in and out of these rooms for he's been he said, I don't know how many 24 hour chips I've had in the last 18 years to tells you how long he'd been trying to get sober. Right. I don't know. You know, I mean, he needs to find his way. He needs to pick a sobriety date, and he needs to find his program like the rest of us did.
That stuff's fascinating to me.
Yeah,
This is one of the things that I love about the 12 step program is one of those things of the study of the people. It doesn't work for or the people it doesn't work for. Yet they continue to go. For years and. Years. And years. Why is that? Or or somebody who is constantly sitting on the. Outer rim. Never gets involved or leaves halfway through the meeting.
right.
I don't feel. Judgment for somebody like. That. I'm just honestly curious
Me too.
what what is it that repelled you?
And, I don't know, maybe this. Maybe this person had a phone call, but I didn't see him check his phone or anything. Maybe
Give
this
me.
maybe person had something he had to go do, Right. It just seemed odd to me. I don't. You. Don't you see that? yeah. Like I said, I love you know, for me, when I go to my meetings, one of the things I've been, you know, a little bit, um, it's been bothering me is like my two main meetings. I go to the Monday night and the Friday night. There hasn't been a lot of new people coming in. Do we? We haven't gotten a lot of new
people Monday night. We had them for a while, and lately I haven't seen some of our new people come back. Come back. it's really nice to see new sobriety come in and to watch Mm hmm. people go through the growth of getting sober changing, changing their life, right? I mean, it's really, really a nice thing to watch. So I've enjoyed that. it's been, it's been important to me to see some of that. And it makes for me, it makes going to these meetings a
lot better. It just adds, it adds a a vibrant, you know, to that, to a meeting that you don't get when it's always the same people who have, you know, upwards of 5 to 10 or 15 or 20 years of Mm of sobriety. hmm.
I, I agree as well. I like seeing new people, and I like seeing them stick in seeing their growth. That means a lot more to me. It's nice to see you, Steve, at the meeting, but I know your story,
Yeah.
and I know the things that you're going through, and it's not as impactful for me anymore.
Right.
I'm close to ten years. I've got the experienced. Person. Aspect of it.
hmm.
I need to be reminded of what those feelings were like up front. That's
Mm.
where I feel the most at home and motivated. I look at the chips here this way, so a lot of people get stuck on the the sobriety date with the chips. For the most part, they're not really about you. I
Mm
would say that first year. Is about you.
hmm.
It's a goal set to get to. The first year. After that, it's really about the newcomer.
Yeah.
If you've got a 35 year chip. It's not about, yeah, I got. 35 years. It's for you to. Show the newcomer you can get 35 years, nights and weekends included.
Yeah. I agree 100%. Listen, I've said it, and I don't say this as a as bragging or anything. I really don't. Maybe the first time I don't remember, like I said, I remember my first sobriety date, so I. Maybe I don't remember at all, but I don't remember ever taking monthly trips. I don't. I certainly never took them when I came back. They just didn't mean enough to me to take I mean, I just felt like, I don't know if it was I felt like, Oh, I should be sober. I don't know what it
was. It was just something I never collected. I agree that, know, there was something about getting that first year and, you know, the second year and really doing it. But today I really I you know, I really don't play a lot of attention. And I'm one you know, I like to I like to pick up a couple a couple of chips, a couple coins, whatever you want to call them. And I like I like to pass them on to guys I have sponsored. That's
what I do. Like when some of the guys have sponsor have anniversaries, I will typically give them one of my old coins. Like I always try to keep a couple of them, you know, and then when they do it and I try to do that as sort of a tradition or something like that, but other than that, I mean, my coins, I have an area like when I work with another alcoholic, I have a partially finished basement. That's where we go. And I have
Mm
an
hmm.
old secretary's dust down that has all my stuff in it right? I literally like I have extra big books, extra books. I have Joe and Charlie formed for doing the steps. I have all kinds of stuff and it's all down there. And that's where my chips are, right? They're not. They're down there. They're in there in that thing. I don't keep them out, you know, I don't keep them on a chain. I don't keep them on a book cover. They're just downstairs. So. And that's me again, that's a personal thing.
I know people do it. They proudly display them like they have the book covers for, you know, the big book and the 212 and 12. And there's spot for your chip. They probably do that or they put it on a keyring or something. That's just not how I roll with my stuff. It's just it's a little bit less important to me than it is other people.
Minor in a draw.
Yeah.
The moment I get them, I throw them in that drawer, and that's where they stay. And I don't even think about them. I still have my monthlies. They're in there, but I never look at them, ever. I'm thinking about this now because I have a big anniversary coming up in a couple of months. That'll mean a big thing for me. Getting to ten years is sort of like that. Next big thing you got to somebody told me early on that you're a newcomer until you're you're sober for ten years. And he was
kidding around. But I thought about that of like, okay, I'm in a different class. Once you get to ten years. The likelihood of. Relapse is much. Lower. But I think this is. Worth a conversation. Around what's the quality of the sobriety, not what you date. I know some people who've got 20 years and they have. The worst sobriety ever. I don't want to be that person.
right.
I'll tell you an app that I use, I use the because I have an Apple Watch now, I use the Apple Health app a lot. And one of the functions in there is you can log your mood right now and
Oh.
then it'll log it in the past.
Hmm.
And I think of logging that pretty frequently. I think about it more when I'm in a bad mood
Right,
and when you log your mood, it gives you y. And I try and think about it when I'm in a good mood and put it in Y and basically I can do an inventory on the spot and I think about it that way. I'm not in a good mood. Why am I not in a good mood? Gives me an opportunity to log that and not only think about what can I do to improve that. Right now, I can go back into the past and see what are some of the other health trends that were going on. Did I exercise that day?
Right.
Did I get enough sleep that day? It can now go in and I. Can cross-reference of. Other things to figure out what is causing my mood to be the way it is and what helped improve that. So little things like that can help. Improve your sobriety. And you can use tools like that because to me, that. Changing sobriety. Date is not about some catastrophic moment. It's about a bunch of little moments that come together that become a cascade.
just listening to you talk about that app and you using it in the way you do it just shows you like to me. I don't think I'd have the discipline to use that, but it's just such a great way to do it. Like you said, it's such a great, great way for you to be able to look back and go, Hey, I was feeling this way and I was feeling that way because of that. Because the truth is, what we do as a program is we look back, we do a fourth step and we do a
personal inventory. Right. And the in the way that personal inventory works is just what you said. You could do some of that a spot check, right? Is we identify patterns in our life. Right. And that's typically what happens. I'm angry because of this. And if you do so, if you do a really good inventory, you're going to find that a lot of your things are over the same. You're pissed off over the same feeling that you might be having. So Mm hmm.
for you to be able to do that and log it right on a daily basis and you'd be able see, Oh, I'm upset or I'm sad or I'm down because of this, you can find that pattern and you could make subtle changes or big changes in your life that will allow you not to get stuck there. Right. Because that's what we don't like. That's, that's my problem of getting stuck in a place that Mm I hmm. can't see a way out of that I become so down about it or bitter about it that I want
to numb that feeling. That's what I did my And whole life, right? And today I don't want to do that anymore. And today I have other tools. So my tool is going to a meeting and sharing a lot of stuff with with guys, especially my Friday night meeting with, which is a men's meeting, so I can go there and share pretty much anything that's going on in my life. And I felt like I had to do that last night with something. and I told Mike, I don't want to share this, but you know, I will. And it so I'm
able to put it out there. part of that is me just shining a light on some of my behaviors. Right. Part of that is just me saying, you know, I'm not liking this, so I need to change something about it. that that's why I love you know, that's why I love going to these meetings. You know, I don't know. People use and I think it's pretty cool. You remember, you know, Tony from Thursday night, Tony used to be able to tell you that how many days he had sober. yeah, Right? I've been sober
10,133 days. But, you know, because I got on my news today, he had this whole speech and I Yeah, always thought that was pretty cool like that. He would know how many days. Because when you start saying 10,000 days, that's a pretty cool number. And people who run those apps like their guys, people who run that maybe yeah. I'm sure women and they could pull up their app and tell you how long you're at my age today, all my friends, not all my friends, but some of my friends, they have retirement
apps, right? We all they all know when they could retire
On
with full to security
God.
and they'll say, well, I have to work another so, so many days. Right. Because we're all hitting that. You know, for all of us it's it basically is 2024 like, well, somewhere a 20, 20, 20, 24 or 2025, depending on when you were born. So it tells you how you know, how long you have to work. That's that is those are the type of apps that a lot of us guys are using today.
But there's lots of stuff out there that you could do for your sobriety if that's important to you, to log it for you to see that progress, please use it. Please use it. The only thing I you know, I caution against, just like you said, getting stuck on the days, getting stuck on the years and forgetting that today is important in you know, how how you're doing. I always get excited. I'm just I'm sure I've said it on this podcast. I say it my meetings all the time.
If I want to know how I'm doing my program basically all I need to do is ask my wife, right? So
Right.
she'll tell me how I'm doing because she'll tell me how I'm behaving, how I'm acting, what's going on, and if I'm not behaving well, then my program's not going well, plain and simple. I mean, that's just the way it is.
I got to. What's wrong with you? On Thursday night,
Okay?
I went to a choral concert from my daughter, and I just was in a lousy mood the rest of the night. And I think the reason was, as I saw some awkward kids on the stage that I could identify with,
Mm
and that put me in a bad mood. It put me. Back to where I was. In sixth grade. And even though it's been far longer than I'd like to admit that I was in sixth grade, I could feel that feeling again
hmm.
in my daughter is not one of those kids. She is in a different place. But I could hone in on the awkward looking people and it's like, Oh, I'm there again, and it pissed me off. And so I was pissy to people and I was short. And I don't like that conversation with my wife when she has to say, You know, what's wrong with you?
no, it's not fun. My wife said to me the other day, cause I've been struggling with some stuff. She's like, Well, if you're really struggling and happy, you should probably think of going to a therapist, you know? And Yep. I mean that. And that's why I'm saying, you know, we're having those type of conversations since then. You know, I need to pay. I need to pay attention to them. Right. You know, in the past I would just blow them off. But I need
to pay attention to them. And I did tell her, listen, I go to therapy all the time. I, I, you know, Mm I hmm. do group therapy. That's part of my AA going. And some of the stuff, not all not all of my problems are fixable through that program. But a lot most of them are. And I just
Right.
want to touch base, something you just brought to me and I'm wondering if that's been bothering me lately is that I recently joined a Facebook group of the grammar school where I grew up, and when I went to grammar school, there wasn't a middle school, so I went to the same school from kindergarten through eighth grade and got out of there before. Just before my my two younger sisters went to
middle school. But when I graduated, the middle school wasn't, you know, we weren't to a middle school anyway, so and people were posting pictures and they posted a picture of our eighth grade graduating class. And I hated the way I look and that I was this shirt. I look at that and I feel like I'm the I'm the fattest little kid in that picture. Mm hmm. I just and it brings me back, just like you said, it brings me back to that place where I just was not a happy kid.
I was not a happy kid at all. and it's interesting that you said I haven't thought about it much, but I'm wondering if that's been sort of dragging me down, you know, unknowingly, really like bringing Yep. me back to that time of how just like you, I was so uncomfortable. I wasn't happy in my own skin. And that was it, right? I mean, shortly after that, right. You think about I was eighth grade. I was 13 when that picture was taken, I'm sure turned 40 by 15. I was drinking
on a regular basis. now that I think about it and I'd even put those two together within two years, I was drinking and shortly after I was drinking and drugging on a regular basis. Right? So within three years of the picture, I was almost drinking and drugging on a regular on a daily basis, almost not quite the time I was 17. Oh. that's amazing, right? That's amazing. But that tells you what happens, right? That's what we talked about. I hated who I was. I hated how I looked.
I hated how I felt. I found booze and I found I found pot. And man, I loved it. And Mm it hmm. it made me feel a lot better. So, yeah, I got to look at that. I got I always got to look at these things of, you know, what's my sobriety like? I agree. When you get to certain ones, you know, when you get to ten, I agree that you get to a ten year anniversary it should be celebrated. It should be. And not only for, you know, the people in the room, but also for you. Yep.
It takes work, man. For those of us who are really afflicted with addiction of any type, whether it's drugs or alcohol or any of the other addictions out there, for those who are really afflicted with those those diseases, because I do think there are diseases too. yeah, there is something to be celebrated about not doing it right. My nature is to drink and cover up my feelings, not to sit with them and feel like shit. Mm Because hmm. sometimes you do. You go sit and feel like shit because
that's what life deals you. But so for me to be able to put together, I guess same thing, you know, 13 years or 14 years, whatever I'm going on. Yeah, it's a big deal. I mean, I'm happy my, you know, my wife's happy that I'm, you know, that I'm sober. She she likes me a lot more now than she did before I got sober. my kids do you know? My kids do. Although they weren't around, they were out of the house. during my relapse and during my a lot of my bad years, but, you know, everybody likes
having me around. Is sober, Dad. Sober grandpa. you know, for this program and the fact and I need to celebrate that and I acknowledge that once in a while, I can't just blow it
Absolutely.
off. I need to acknowledge it.
Well, we'd like to hear what you want to acknowledge. This is a hot topic for some people. And if you violently disagree with what we have to say, we still want to hear from you. You can email me by going to Sober Friends podcast and emailing me Matt at Sober Friends Podcast. Follow us on Instagram, Facebook and threads. At Sober Friends Pod. Dot com. Steve, thanks again for sharing and making this a great show.
yeah, and thanks for having me.
We'll see everybody next week by everybody.