One of the easiest, most practical ways of keeping sober is the day-by-day plan, the 24-hour plan.  Live in today only.  Forget yesterday.  Do not anticipate tomorrow.  You can only live one day at a time, and if you do a good job of that, you will do well.
    You are only one drink away from trouble. Whether you have been sober a day, a month, a year or a decade, one single drink is a certain way to go off on a binge or a series of binges. It is the first drink — not the second, fifth or twentieth — that gets you drunk.
    You know that it is possible to stay sober for 24 hours. You have done it many times. All right. Stay sober for one day at a time. When you get up in the morning make up your mind that you will not take a drink for the entire day. Then go to bed at night, grateful for a day of sobriety. 
    Repeat the performance the next day. And the next. Before you realize it you will have been sober a week, a month, a year. And yet you will have only been sober a day at a time.


Adapted by John L. from A Manual for Alcoholics Anonymous (the “Akron Manual”), first published in 1939 or 1940.  Found in <http://hindsfoot.org>.