7,500 x 24 hours…

In learning that my mentor (sponsor) reached Billionaire status in his sobriety I accidentally stumbled upon the fact that today is my 7,500th x 24 hours of continuous sobriety.

While mine is a big deal (at least to me), my friend’s Billionaire status is huge.

So, if you’re curious about what Billionaire status means, sadly it is not related to money. My friend recently surpassed One Billion seconds of continuous sobriety – in years that’s 31.688. Here’s the significance:

When I was just a young lad my father explained the national debt in terms of seconds, actually counting. He said that if I counted from 1 to 1 Billion I would die of old age before I got there. The reason for this is that counting anything greater than 1,000 starts taking more than a second to utter the number (try it with a stop watch)… So even if you figured two seconds per number (which is still fast), you’re looking at over 63 years.

So, more than a decade ago, I tied that little lesson to my sobriety and decided that I’d throw a party when (and let’s face it, if) I hit my 1 billionth second. So we said a little hoorah for my sponsor this morning – it’s a heck of a milestone.

Now, for my 7,500th day, there is no significance to that number, it’s just a neat, big, round number and I didn’t even know until I stumbled on it this morning, hanging out with my friends before another busy day of work. Call it a small nicety and a reason to be grateful for the day.