Various treatment and recovery institutions will often have traditions or practices that in some way “mark time” during the recovery process of an addict or alcoholic. This is usually some visible emblem that can be carried and shown off by the recovering person and denotes some amount or block of time. The item is a visual of the “clean and sober” time accumulated by the affected person.
In Alcoholics Anonymous, this practice is a “chip system” that denotes periods of time. When the length of time reaches annual periods, the time slice becomes known as an AA birthday. Chips are provided for earlier and shorter periods of time as the early days of sobriety for all addicts and alcoholics passes quite slowly.
Different recovery groups will provide various colors of plastic or tin chips for short periods of time. For instance, most AA groups will have a chip for the first 24 hours and in South Carolina, this chip is a white plastic chip resembling a common poker chip. In other states, this same chip is sometimes a tin silver chip but the meaning is the same in all groups.
Within the first year of sobriety, several other colors of chips are used for different blocks of time such as; thirty days, sixty, ninety or six months, nine months and the colors may be red, green, yellow, blue or purple.
When an individual reaches one year of continuous sobriety, recovery groups will begin supplying “birthday chips”. These birthday chips have a very distinct meaning for recovering addicts and alcoholics far beyond the shorter term chips described above. In order for a person to have life time and permanent sobriety, alcoholics anonymous states they must undergo a “psychic” change. The annual birthday chip is denoting AA birthdays from the first day of sobriety or the “psychic” change for an individual. This AA birthday is in contrast to a person’s original birth birthday. As time passes in the recovering person’s life, associates often notice a completely different person in the sober person’s life and this transformation, at least within AA, is often thought of as a miracle!
AA Chips and literature can be purchased for cost at Columbia’s Intergroup office located at:
3014 Devine Street, Room 103
Columbia SC 29205
(803) 254-5301
www.area62.org
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