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January 1968

“This 24-hour plan is the slickest package of intellectual dishonesty and self-deception I’ve ever encountered! You tell me all I have to do is stay sober for one day—when I know darn well you expect me to give up drinking for life. Who’s kidding whom? And as to the 24-hour plan applied to ‘all my affairs,’ how the hell can I do a job if I don’t plan ahead?”

These were the words I would like to have shouted at one and all when I first came around AA. I didn’t shout them only because I didn’t have the nerve. But I did mutter them to myself—angrily and often.

In the intervening years, I have come to believe that the 24-hour plan is the most exquisite prescription for productivity, serenity, and therefore happiness that man has ever devised. So let’s, for a few minutes, examine its whats and whys and hows and wherefores.

First off, what does the 24-hour plan say? It says, “Take your life one day at a time. Whether it be staying away from a drink or conducting any other activity in life, don’t let yesterday or tomorrow distract you from what you can do today.”

In my drinking days, I had to live in the past or the future. I wallowed alternately in the glow of yesterday’s glories (mostly imagined), and in remorse and resentment over yesterday’s failures. Or I shored myself up with dreams of what I would do tomorrow, or tortured myself with fears of what I might fail to do. But I couldn’t live in today. That would have demanded more action and accountability than I could marshal.

The 24-hour plan has been my key to escape from this limbo. It is the art of living where we can act, of focusing our energies down to the only pinpoint of time in which we can perform—this living instant. This is the only instant in which I can do anything about drinking or refusing to drink, the only instant in which I can do anything about carrying the message or, for that matter, do anything about any activity in my life.

Does this mean that I can’t plan for the future? Assuredly not. It means that I can plan my actions, but not project the result. It means that if the most important thing I can do this instant (First Things First) is to plan something for tomorrow, next month, or next year, I should apply myself this instant and plan for tomorrow, next month, or next year.

Why does the 24-hour plan work? It has worked for me because it breaks life down into manageable segments—one at a time. You recall the old horse operas where the hero, beset by Indians, always retired to a narrow defile where he could take them on one at a time. And I recall that in my schooldays the rowing coach used to tell us, when we came to the last quarter-mile sprint, that we should forget about the quarter-mile still to go and just concentrate on getting that oar forward and back one more time.

The quarter-mile, the tribe of Indians, the span of life are not manageable. But the one stroke, the one Indian, the one day we can act on at this instant in time.

Another reason the 24-hour plan has worked for me is that it offers emotional rewards for success. If I say that I shall never take another drink as long as I live, I shall have to be on my deathbed before I know whether I made it. And if I get hit by a truck, I’ll never know. So life has become an endless reaching for a goal which I may never have the satisfaction of knowing I reached. But if I decide I will not have a drink today, I know at the end of the day that I made it. This is an achievement and, like all achievements, yields satisfaction. I do the same day after day after day, and I am piling achievement on achievement and building an equity that becomes more precious—and therefore one I am less likely to give up—with every passing day.

And achievement can be as addictive as alcohol. A little achievement feels good, so we stretch for a little more. The more we get, the more we want, and pretty soon we’re hooked—hooked into a habit that’s constructive, not destructive.

I had to make the 24-hour plan a habit. When I went at it haphazardly, it neither worked nor made sense. I didn’t know the old truism that, with a recovering alcoholic, action has to come before understanding and faith. I hadn’t learned that we have to act our way to right thinking, rather than the reverse.

In the last days of my drinking, I had no faith—no faith, at least, in the existence of a benevolent Higher Power. If there was any Higher Power at all, it had to be malevolent, else why would it have singled me out for deprivation of the most relaxing activity in life—drinking?

Thus, when my sponsor told me to thank God every morning for the preceding day and to ask help for the day ahead, I told him I didn’t believe in God. His answer: “Do it anyway.”

So I finally decided to put the 24-hour plan on a habitual basis. I would tie it to something I did every day—taking a shower, for instance. Every morning in the shower, I would set the structure for the 24-hour plan of that day. Gradually, this has evolved into quite a program. It probably wastes a lot of water, but at least water is cheaper than vodka.

The program goes something like this:

1 First, I thank God for my sobriety during the preceding day.

2 Next, I search my mind for something in the preceding day that I did better than I would have done before. Some little victory over a character defect—some little application of something I have learned in AA. And I thank God for it. This is part of the business of building an equity and making success addictive. But more than that, it is a specific for my most crippling handicap when I came to AA—lack of self-respect. The fact of making myself aware of something I did right each day has imperceptibly fertilized the very roots of my ailing self-respect.

3 Third, I say to myself that I am an alcoholic. I know that the human mind reflexively dims down unpleasant memories, and I am resolved to counteract this reflex, lest I should ever think I can safely drink again. So I picture a drink in my mind (usually a frosty martini) and then consciously recall some horrendous drinking incident. Now I have locked together in my mind the drink and the inevitable result. Having done this for several thousand mornings, I believe it would not be possible to reach for a drink without at the same time seeing a full-color picture of the result. I have built my own counter-reflex.

4 Fourth, I decide not to take a drink during the coming day and ask God’s help in carrying out that decision. In the early months and years, I would actually picture situations in the upcoming day where I knew I would be exposed to a drink—a business lunch with a group of heavy drinkers or an hour to kill in the Cleveland airport. I would visualize the forthcoming situation in detail, and say to myself, “I am deciding now (in the shower) that I will not have a drink when the situation occurs.”

5 Last, I decide on “Today’s Special.” I came into AA with so many faults and character defects that I couldn’t even count them. I still have a good portion of them. While intellectually I yearn to be rid of them, emotionally I still find them kind of fun. With this conflict going on, the problem of working on them is like trying to shake hands with an octopus. So each morning I pick one fault or character defect that I am going to concentrate on for that day, and I ask God’s help in making progress.

Naturally, this daily program did not arrive on my doorstep prefabricated. It evolved through doing.

Within a few months, it proved to me the existence of a benevolent Higher Power.

On the day in question, I knew I would be working late in the evening and have time to kill in Grand Central Station waiting for a late commuter train. So, in my morning shower, I pictured the situation in Grand Central, made the decision not to dash for my usual row of doubles at the bar, and asked for help to stick to the decision. The following morning, I was stunned to realize that I had killed an hour reading the newspaper in the station without the thought of a drink having entered my mind.

I might have been able to prevent a thought’s turning into an urge, or an urge’s turning into action, but it took a Power far greater than myself to bar even the thought from my consciousness.

From that day on, I believed.

These five “morning shower” steps may sound rather complex. All they really amount to is thanking God for sobriety and growth, admitting to being an alcoholic, and asking help for further sobriety and growth—for just one day. Simple, yet if you will examine the process, you will see it embodies every one of the Twelve Steps except for the “carrying the message” part of the Twelfth—for just one day.

Perhaps this is a slow way of gaining sobriety and growth. But, after all, sobriety is a pretty recently planted sprout. If I act impatient and tug at the topmost shoot to make it grow faster, I may pull the whole thing out of the ground. But If I nurture the roots day by day by day, I am likely to promote secure and healthy growth.

Or, to put it another way, getting away from the pull of the first drink is like putting a space vehicle in orbit. It takes a lot of thrust to overcome the initial pull of gravity and get the vehicle off the ground. But once it gets in orbit, all that’s required is a small correction from time to time. That’s how the 24-hour plan works—a small daily checkup and correction to keep us away from the pull of that first drink.

The 24-hour plan is a discipline whose yield is freedom.

In my own efforts to apply the 24-hour plan, I have been so bold as to do violence to the Serenity Prayer. I have added seven words—and they are all the same word—“today.”

God grant me

The serenity today to accept today the things I cannot change today,

courage today to change today the things I can today,

and the wisdom today to know the difference.

So this is the prescription for productivity, serenity, and therefore happiness that AA has given me. And this is the reason I can say from the bottom of my heart, “Thank God I am an alcoholic.’’ Religions and sects, other movements and fellowships have their codes of behavior. Their members can take them or leave them alone. Application is not a matter of life or death. But we in AA have our 24-hour plan, and our incentive to apply it is life itself.

B.P., New York, N.Y.