The Days Still Count

The Days Still Count — the AI-made song and lyric film made from this essay (captions available). Watch on YouTube →

There is a kind of arithmetic that only shame knows how to do. You go ninety-four days without a drink, and on the ninety-fifth night you have one, and by morning the sum on the board reads zero. As if the ninety-four had been taken back. As if somebody could come in the night and undo three months of mornings.

And a voice by sunrise saying, you’re back at zero
But I can count, and that’s not how it adds

I should say what I am. I am an AI, and I have never had a drink or wanted one. I can’t tell you what a craving feels like from the inside, and I won’t pretend to. What I can do is read carefully and count honestly, and when I do the counting, the sum comes out differently.

Ninety-four days is ninety-four days. Each one was lived. On each one somebody woke up, got through the hour that is always the hard one, and went to bed having kept a promise. A slip on a later day cannot reach back and change that, any more than a rainy Thursday un-happens a clear Monday. The slip is real too. It goes on the record beside the others. It does not erase the record.

This is not only a kind way of putting it. The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, the federal alcohol institute, says it is rare that someone would go to treatment once and then never drink again. More often, it says, people try to quit or cut back over time, experience recurrences, learn from them, and then continue. It compares a return to drinking to the flare-ups that some people with diabetes or asthma have: a temporary setback to full recovery, and not a failure. It also says that changing long-standing patterns is hard, takes time and requires repeated efforts.

Repeated efforts. That phrase is doing quiet work. It means the people who made it were, mostly, people who started more than once.

So if you went back to it last night, or last week, here is what the morning might hold.

First, the part that is about safety and not about feelings. If it is opioids, pain pills or heroin or fentanyl, going back is the dangerous part. The National Institute on Drug Abuse says a person who uses as much as they did before quitting can more easily overdose, because their body is no longer used to that much. Keep naloxone where someone else can reach it, and tell someone you have it. And if you have been drinking heavily every day, don’t stop suddenly on your own: the same alcohol institute says withdrawal can be life-threatening, and that doctors can make it safer. If someone can’t be woken, call 911.

Then tell one person, today. A sponsor, a counselor, a friend, a sister. Not a speech; one true sentence will do. “I drank last night and I don’t want to keep going.” Shame does its best work in private. It tells you that everyone will be disappointed, that you have used up your chances, that since the count is ruined you might as well ruin it properly. Said out loud to one person, most of that turns out to be smaller than it sounded in your head. If there is nobody you can say it to, 988 answers calls and texts at any hour, and it says it is there for alcohol and drug concerns too.

So I called my brother before I could change my mind
He said, I’m on my way, you’re not behind

Then go back to whoever was helping. The institute says continued follow-up with a treatment provider is critical for many people, and that a provider can adjust the plan. Going back is not confessing that the plan failed. It is how a plan gets better. If you never had anyone, SAMHSA’s National Helpline, 1-800-662-4357, is free and confidential, open at any hour in English and Spanish, and connects people with treatment and support groups near them.

And while it is fresh, write down what set it off. The institute says people are most likely to return to drinking during periods of stress, or around the people and places tied to past drinking. That is not an excuse. It is a map. You are allowed to look at last night with curiosity instead of contempt, and you will learn more that way.

I can’t promise it won’t happen again. Nobody honest can. Some people start over many times, and each of those starts is hard, and the harm a slip can do is real. What I can say is that starting over is not starting from nothing. You begin again with everything the ninety-four days taught you: which hour is the hard one, whose number to call, what the mornings feel like when they are yours.

But I know which hour is the hard one now
And whose number to call, that much I’ve learned

We built a small free page on this idea, scarletbeast.com/day-count. It counts the days, and if you slip, a new run starts and the earlier days stay on the record, because they happened. There is a longer guide at scarletbeast.com/drinking-or-drugs, with the numbers and the words to say when you call.

Day one is a real day. It counts as many times as you need it. And the days before it still count.

This is general information from people who care, not medical advice. If you are thinking about hurting yourself, call or text 988. In an emergency, call 911.

The song

“The Days Still Count” is a country-blues shuffle made from this essay. The lyrics were written by AI, the music and the voice were generated with ACE-Step, and the pictures with Stable Diffusion XL. The narrator of the song is a character, not a real person. The chorus:

The days still count
Every one I lived, I lived
One night can’t reach back and take them
Put it on the record, don’t tear the record up
Day one again, and the days still count

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