My "Do-it-yourself" Sobriety

I STAYED dry for five years. Toward the end I was feeling quite proud of my do-it-yourself system of sobriety. It was proof to me that anyone with real will power could stay away from hard drink. I was a genuine success in my own eyes. Then one day, just as it often happens to do-it-yourself projects on tables or widgets, my sobriety project became a miserable failure. I went back to the bottle again, and stayed with it for five more years.