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Is "turn it over" in the Big Book?

In short:

  • Not as a saying in the program. The words "turn it over" don't appear in the 1939 program text, pages 1 to 164. What the program text has is Step Three: "Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him." (p. 59).
  • The phrase itself is in a personal story, a man's prayer in 1938, his first in thirty years: "Please let me turn it over to you." (p. 251), and in Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers (1980).
  • In the program text, what is turned over is the whole will and life, and the book explains it at length (pp. 60–63): quit playing God, take Him as Director, then act. It also speaks of placing a particular outcome or problem "in God's hands" (pp. 80, 120); in the clearest case, the man hands the outcome to God and still makes his amend (p. 80).

What the search found

All our sources were searched for "turn it over," "turned it over," "turn everything over," "turn(ed) ... over" and "God's hands," with page breaks joined.

  • Program text, forewords, appendices: no "turn it over." "Turn ... over" appears only in Step Three and its explanation (pp. 59, 60). "In God's hands" appears at pp. 80, 100, 120 and 124.
  • Personal stories (fourth edition, 2001): "The Man Who Mastered Fear" (Part I) has the writer, just out of the hospital and shut in his room at Dr. Bob's house "in a strange city" in September 1938, gripped by fear, pray, "God, for eighteen years I have been unable to handle this problem. Please let me turn it over to you." (p. 251). "Physician, Heal Thyself!" (Part II) describes the alcoholic's rage at being told he must "turn the whole business over to someone else" (p. 306).
  • Stories printed in 1939 and later dropped (Experience, Strength and Hope, 2003): not as a phrase. "The Back-Slider" gets results by placing his life "in God's hands every day" (Experience, Strength and Hope, 2003).
  • Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers (1980): writing about the 1939 split between the Akron and Cleveland members, the book guesses, "Perhaps Dr. Bob just turned it over." (Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers, 1980), and quotes words attributed to him then: "There's no use worrying about these things." (Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers, 1980). That is the 1980 book's suggestion, not Dr. Bob's own phrase.

What Step Three turns over, and how the book explains it (pp. 59–64)

Step Three is the decision "to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him" (p. 59). The book doesn't leave it there: "Just what do we mean by that, and just what do we do?" (p. 60).

  • Why. "The first requirement is that we be convinced that any life run on self-will can hardly be a success." (p. 60). The self-willed man is like an actor trying to run the whole show (pp. 60–61), and selfishness is "the root of our troubles" (p. 62).
  • What changes. "First of all, we had to quit playing God." (p. 62). "Next, we decided that hereafter in this drama of life, God was going to be our Director." (p. 62). With that, "We had a new Employer." (p. 63).
  • The words. The Third Step prayer: "God, I offer myself to Thee—to build with me and to do with me as Thou wilt." (p. 63). See: What is the Third Step prayer, and where is it?
  • What comes next. "This was only a beginning" (p. 63). "Next we launched out on a course of vigorous action" (p. 63), the inventory, because the decision "could have little permanent effect unless at once followed by a strenuous effort" to face and be rid of what blocked us (p. 64).

Bill describes doing the same in the hospital: "I placed myself unreservedly under His care and direction." (p. 13), and "I must turn in all things to the Father of Light who presides over us all." (p. 14).

Placing a problem in God's hands

The program text does also speak of handing over particular troubles, which is how "turn it over" is often used: - A man facing an amend that could ruin him "saw that he had to place the outcome in God's hands or he would soon start drinking again" (p. 80). He then made the amend, publicly (p. 80). - To a wife whose husband has drunk again: "If a repetition is to be prevented, place the problem, along with everything else, in God's hands." (p. 120). - "When we look back, we realize that the things which came to us when we put ourselves in God's hands were better than anything we could have planned." (p. 100). - Through the day, Step Eleven has us pause "when agitated or doubtful" and ask for the right thought or action, saying "Thy will be done" (pp. 87–88).

Handing the outcome to God doesn't replace action in these pages: the man at p. 80 still makes his amend, and after Step Three's surrender the inventory still gets written (pp. 63–64). The wife at p. 120 is in the same passage told to cheer her husband up and not to try to shield him from temptation (p. 120).

Read it yourself

Sources

Source Pages Date
Alcoholics Anonymous, whole fourth-edition text (searched) — 1939 program text; fourth edition 2001
Chapters 1, 5–8 13–14, 59–64, 80, 87–88, 100, 120 1939
"The Man Who Mastered Fear," Part I 251 prayer in September 1938 (p. 256); story written more than sixteen years later (p. 251)
"Physician, Heal Thyself!," Part II 306 fourth edition (2001)
"The Back-Slider" (Experience, Strength and Hope) — printed in the first edition, 1939; collected 2003
Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers — 1980 (post-1950)

Recovery Starts is independent and not affiliated with Alcoholics Anonymous. Quotations are brief and cited; the Big Book, Experience, Strength and Hope and Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers are © 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.