Last night I heard that a good friend of mine relapsed after six years sober. This morning I thought about how difficult it is to cope with the loss of all that time. I thought particularly about the social aspect of the fellowship. I see an emphasis on time as a measure of credibility that I believe can be demoralizing to someone because it is so difficult to get back.

I also think that this is problematic for other reasons. Often I have seen persons who have extensive clean time not practicing the program anymore or worse yet sharing opinions that are contrary to the principles of the program. I have also rarely heard a person with 10 plus years clean say that they have practiced the program rigourously the entire time or that they have never had self-induced unmanageability. A couple of prominent examples I know of have had psychological breakdowns that required hospitalization but they didn't use so they get to keep their clean time.

Another example is people who quit working the program but don't use so they get to keep their clean time. I believe the measure of credibility or efectiveness of a person in sobriety ought to be how well they practice and communicate the principles of the program, in short quality over quantity. I believe that time is relevent to the the quality of one's sobriety but I think the threshold for this is 3-5 years. This idea comes to me from the fact that this is how much time the founders had when they wrote the Big Book.

I think that clean time can also be an ego feeding proposition, especially if it is announced.

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