Is "Acceptance is the answer" part of the main text?
In short:
- No. The famous line, "And acceptance is the answer to all my problems today," is in a personal story, not in the Big Book's program text (p. 417).
- The story is "Acceptance Was the Answer," number 16 in Part II, "They Stopped in Time," pages 407–420 of the fourth edition.
- It's one member's account of his own recovery. The first 164 pages never say it. In the main text the word "acceptance" appears once, in another sense (p. 48).
Where it is
"Acceptance Was the Answer" is the story of a physician who drank and took pills for years, each pill "medically indicated" in his own mind (pp. 407–411), until two locked wards and a psychiatrist got him to A.A. meetings (pp. 412–415). For seven months he went to meetings while still tapering off alcohol and pills (p. 416). Then: "At last, acceptance proved to be the key to my drinking problem" (p. 416). He accepted that he really was an alcoholic, "And it's all right with me. Now, what am I going to do about it?" (p. 417). From that moment, he says, he had no compulsion to drink.
The famous passage follows on page 417: "And acceptance is the answer to all my problems today." He goes on to apply acceptance to his marriage, to meetings, and to God, and he means action, not passivity: "I never just sit and do nothing while waiting for Him to tell me what to do" (p. 420).
The story also mentions working the Steps. He and his wife took the Third Step aloud "just as it says in the Big Book" (p. 414), and he later redid all twelve with his marriage in mind (p. 420).
Main text or not
The Big Book itself draws the line. Its program is in the first 164 pages. The personal stories that follow are each writer's account "in his own language and from his own point of view" (p. 29). A search of the main text, the forewords and the appendices finds no "acceptance is the answer." The word "acceptance" appears in the main text only once, in Chapter 4, about why people readily accept scientific theories (p. 48).
Which part: It's sometimes placed in Part III. The fourth-edition text puts it in Part II as story 16 (p. 407), the part titled "They Stopped in Time."
Which edition: Only the fourth edition was checked here, so the edition the story first appeared in can't be confirmed from these sources. The Preface says the personal stories were revised in the 1955, 1976 and 2001 editions (pp. xi–xii), so the story isn't part of the 1939 book.
Why it matters
The passage is often read aloud as if it were Big Book program text. It's a good passage, but it's one man's experience, written decades after the program was set down. Readers who want what the book itself says about the alcoholic's way out will find it in Chapters 5 to 7 (pp. 58–103).
Read it yourself
- Personal stories, Part II, with "Acceptance Was the Answer" (pp. 407–420), free from A.A.: https://www.aa.org/sites/default/files/2021-11/en_bigbook_personalstories_partII.pdf
- Preface, on how the stories have changed by edition: https://www.aa.org/sites/default/files/2021-11/en_bigbook_preface.pdf
- The full book is sold by A.A. World Services: https://onlineliterature.aa.org
Sources
| Source | Pages | Date |
|---|---|---|
| Alcoholics Anonymous, whole fourth-edition text (searched) | — | 1939 text; fourth edition 2001 |
| "Acceptance Was the Answer," Part II, story 16 | 407–420 | in the fourth edition (2001); earlier editions not checked here |
| Chapter 2, "There Is a Solution" (on the stories) | 29 | 1939 |
| Chapter 4, "We Agnostics" | 48 | 1939 |
| Preface | xi–xii | fourth edition, 2001 |
Recovery Starts is independent and not affiliated with Alcoholics Anonymous. Quotations are brief and cited; the Big Book is © A.A. World Services, Inc.
These pages answer questions about A.A. from A.A.'s own published literature, read in full, with every quote checked word for word against the page it cites. Recovery Starts is independent and not affiliated with Alcoholics Anonymous. What we read, and when each source was written.