Today, I have a track record of 2,500 days of alcohol-free hydration. In May I will celebrate 7 years of sobriety, but since I’m greeted by a day counter whenever I look at my phone, I couldn’t resist a moment of reflection.

2024 was a year of experimentation. I decided to go for the mocktail option during a handful of date nights, and even drank alcohol-free wine at church.

In a moment of company-wide celebration I tasted non-alcoholic champagne. I say tasted, because the moment it hit my tongue I began to understand the weight of a quarter of a percentile.

I’m back to where I started: non-alcoholic drinks are for non-alcoholics.

The champagne encounter made me Google Philip Seymour Hoffman. My favorite actor and a man who famously died with a needle in his arm months after breaking his 23 years of sobriety with a single beer.

Many people who relapse do so by first developing a habit of drinking non-alcohol alternatives. I learned that in 2024.

Giving up on the non was not a challenge for me. Not drinking has not been a challenge for me at all, which is surprising, given the habits I had developed.

There were moments in the past 2,500 days when I felt illegitimate. If I have no problem not drinking, should I even call myself a recovering alcoholic? I’ve wondered whether I was taking it all too seriously. But then I think of Philip.

I learned in 2024 that 5-10 years into sobriety are the hardest precisely because of that little voice that says “I have no problem not drinking, I surely could have a beer, right?”

The other day, I was watching The Curious Case Of…. It’s a bad mix of true crime and reality TV. The episode was about Bam Margera, that guy from Jackass. His addiction has landed him in conservatorship.

Steve-O was there, same old raspy voice, quite handsome at fifty when not covered in excrement. “When Jackass started, Bam had a good skating career and I was a homeless drug addict”, he recounted.

“In the time we’ve known each other, we’ve had almost a complete role reversal. I’m fifteen years sober today”. During that last sentence, his face showed the calm level-headed contentment of a person pleased to finally have come around to experiencing the dull stability of making a healthy choice, day after day.

The day counter is there, on my phone’s lock screen, because I think I should be able to take delight in the longest streak I’ve ever had in anything. Seeing Steve-O’s interview made me happy to continue to be a part of our club.

Onward, upward.