Acceptance is a huge part of AA. One of the most frequently quoted stories from the AA Big Book is from the chapter entitled “Acceptance Was the Answer”:
“And acceptance is the answer to all my problems today. When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place, thing, or situation—some fact of my life—unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing, or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment. Nothing, absolutely nothing, happens in God’s world by mistake. Until I could accept my alcoholism, I could not stay sober; unless I accept life completely on life’s terms, I cannot be happy. I need to concentrate not so much on what needs to be changed in the world as on what needs to be changed in me and in my attitudes.” (BB p.417).
You may find yourself sitting in an AA meeting and hearing the short version: “And acceptance is the answer to all my problems today” or an even shorter version, where the member simply says “page 417.” If you hear “page 417,” that means that acceptance might be a good direction to look in your life. This line has been repeated for generations in AA. In fact, you might hear a real old-timer at AA say, “Page 449” and then pass with no further comment. If you do, they are still reading out of an older edition of the book where the same line occurred on page 449. This story has stayed relevant and meaningful for many, many alcoholics.
And in AA, acceptance does not mean liking, agreeing, wanting, or cosigning in any fashion. Acceptance does not mean sit like a lump and do nothing. If you think that, listen to the AA sayings like “God provides the vegetables, but you have to do your own cooking.” Why do they say that? They say it because AA is an into-action program. They are affirming a faith that what is needed for the creation of a life worth living is available to us and that steadfast nonacceptance blocks access. Notice that page 417 is not saying that all fault lies with the one it refers to. What it is saying quite directly is that “I need to concentrate not so much on what needs to be changed in the world as on what needs to be changed in me and in my attitudes.” This is not the same as saying all is fine with the world. It is rather a prescription for focusing attention.
The flip side of acceptance is often resentment. Resentment is one of the long-smoldering versions of nonacceptance. As the old AA saying goes: “Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other guy to die.” Sometimes we nurse resentments for years, decades even. Sometimes the resented person does not even know about it, but we do and suffer the cost. The AA Big Book has some very remarkable things to say about resentment. “Resentment is the ‘number one’ offender. It destroys more alcoholics than anything else” (BB p.64). It goes on to say, in the fourth-step inventory of resentments, that “this world and its people were often quite wrong. To conclude that others were wrong was as far as most of us got. The usual outcome was that people continued to wrong us and we stayed sore… . We began to see that the world and its people really dominated us. In that state, the wrong-doing of others, fancied or real, had the power to actually kill” (BB p.66). Many people spend years grinding over and over the wrongs committed against them. We often feel compelled to justify our resentment. If we can get anyone to listen, we try to enlist them to join us in the resentment. Look closely at your own resentments and see if it is not so. See if it is not the case that, even in the midst of a well-enjoyed rage over a resented wrong, the “victory” is short lived. It is also worth noting that all that effort spent on whether the resentment is justified or not gains us little. They are suggesting in the above passage that resentments fancied or real had the power to kill. They may not literally kill, but they most definitely kill living. The Big Book suggests, among several other steps, that we view these wrongdoers as sick and suggests we offer them the same regard we would offer a sick person, even though we do not like their symptoms. This does not mean that we should stay in sick situations. Sometimes leaving is the healthiest thing to do. However, leaving in kindness does as much to take us from a sick environment as leaving in anger. You can choose to leave. You do not require anger and resentment to justify leaving.
The above also does not mean that you should suppress angry or resentful feelings. As we have said elsewhere in this book, suppression is a losing strategy. Keep working on your life, gently turn your attention to growth, and resentment will take care of itself. Those thoughts will come and go. However, if you nurse them, they are more likely to come and stay. Like birds, you cannot keep them from flying over your house, but you do not need to help them build a nest in the attic. In fact, resentment is only a prison to the extent that it organizes our life activities. Consider this fact. There is almost certainly a jail in your town. Does the jail have to disappear for you to be free? No, it does not. You are free when you are free to walk in and out of it. The key to being free of resentments is to stop actively nursing them and instead to adopt the posture taught in the 12 steps: “Love and tolerance of others is our code” (BB p.84). When we say love and tolerance here, we don’t mean feeling love and tolerance. We expect feelings to come and go, like weather. But we can act in loving and tolerant ways even on the days when the feeling is far away. Don’t fake it. Embody it. Embody love. Embody tolerance. As is the drumbeat of this whole Big Book: practice, practice, practice.
The Serenity Prayer is heard at almost all 12-step meetings around the world and echoes the importance of acceptance in 12-step recovery: “God, Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
When we are in the middle of a battle with the world, it can be very hard to distinguish between what we can and cannot change. A bit of stillness, a bit of perspective, and a bit of acceptance can make it easier to sort that out. The AA Big Book even suggests that alcohol itself is not a battle we want to fight. “And we have ceased fighting anything or anyone—even alcohol” (BB p.84) It is a paradox that even things we can change need to be accepted as they are first.
Just like with perspective taking, meetings are a great place to practice acceptance, practice love, practice tolerance. Meetings are also a great place to notice the harmful effects of nonacceptance. It is easy for nonacceptance to distract us from important life tasks. If you are trying to use AA as a source of support, try to let it be someone else’s job to straighten AA and its members out. You will find plenty of flaws and flawed people in AA meetings. Don’t let your objections to those people keep you away from the resources available there. In a certain way, you can think of AA meetings as a testing ground for living in the world. If everyone in the world has to think just the right things and say just the right things in order for you to live well—good luck with that. Use AA as a place to practice patience and tolerance for human frailty. If you do, you just might find that you are simultaneously learning to practice a bit of patience and tolerance for yourself.