Days of thunder (1990) Tom Cruise

Milestones

I was talking to my partner last night about the different milestones of abstinence and she is the film buff not me. I wanted to see what milestones mean to me and others in this community. I was going to go for either Independence day or Judgement day or the horror movie which I think is 30 days or something. She suggested Days of thunder so I've gone with that. 

This topic really interests me as everyone has different views. I realise some people don't even want to count the days as it adds pressure which I fully understand. Many don't count days but know their day one date. I wonder if it's linked to where you start like ending up supporting the same football team as your Dad, liking the same newspaper as he read or voting for the same political party as it's what you've been bought up with. Ive noticed people with long periods in recovery calling out the number of days and it's of course, each to their own.

I've always been a numbers person. I recognise my date of coming into recovery as when I self excluded. I had one last go on an online casino and signed up at 1134am on 19th November 2025. That was going to be the date I would never forget. A couple of days later my partner found Gamcare which I signed up to and Gamban on the same day. A few months later I stumbled across the get Evive app which is amazing of course. So Gamcare and chats in the chatrooms got me counting days from the start as does Evive with a daily check-in. Gamban starts that way but once it hits a month it's switches to months and days. I like the day count full stop but also have called out in GA meetings the number of minutes and in four days time I hit 250,000 of those one day at a time.

So I'm wondering what is important to other people on here. Is there a point when people stop counting or looking at milestones ?

As a numbers person there are various numbers I like. I recognised that 30, 60 and 90 days are important but also 11, 22 etc and numbers like 123. Maybe I'm just greedy as I like to treat myself on milestone days with something small. I know when I hit 100 a half expected fireworks to go off, one thousand WhatsApp messages and a cake delivered to the house but none of that happened. It's what you feel inside that counts. 

My initial milestone has always been 200 days. Not six months or anything before, simply 200. Yes I'm amazed after 44 years of addiction that even day one was impossible to imagine. When I hit 150 I started counting down to 200 as it was a lesser number and made it more achievable. I guess I've done the same with other milestones thinking I'm only 7 more one day at a times away from 50 days for instance. I also think it's dangerous for me to look at milestones to far away and it's better to have smaller ones. A week on Monday I hit 180 days at one of my home GA meetings and the next day will be six months which falls on my main home GA meeting which is lovely as these people have been there all the way and this community. 

The other thought train is that I'm only ever going to be one bad thought followed by one bad action away from my next bet so isn't every day, day one ? The only thing that really matters to me is not gambling today. 

I had the pleasure last night of being in an online zoom with someone celebrating 49 years off a bet. I can't make that without some incredible development in medical science but will try