Is "think the drink through" (or "play the tape forward") in the Big Book?

What the search found

All our sources were searched for "think the drink through," "think the drink," "think it through," "think through," "thought through," "drink through," "play the tape," "tape forward," "play it through," "think it all the way," "think past," "remember the last" and "think of the consequences," with page breaks joined. None of them is there. The only "the tape" in the Big Book is the stock-ticker tape Bill stared at on the night of the 1929 crash (p. 4).

What the book says about remembering the consequences

The idea behind the saying is that if you run the memory forward from the first drink to where it always ends, you won't take it. The Big Book discusses exactly that defense, and its finding is that for the real alcoholic it gives way:

• Chapter 2. "We are without defense against the first drink." (p. 24). "The almost certain consequences that follow taking even a glass of beer do not crowd into the mind to deter us." (p. 24). "If these thoughts occur, they are hazy and readily supplanted with the old threadbare idea that this time we shall handle ourselves like other people." (p. 24). Or "perhaps he doesn't think at all" (p. 24). The book calls this "a complete failure of the kind of defense that keeps one from putting his hand on a hot stove" (p. 24).
• Jim. He knew he faced the asylum and the loss of his family if he kept on (p. 35). "He had much knowledge about himself as an alcoholic." (p. 36). Yet "all reasons for not drinking were easily pushed aside" (pp. 36–37) by the idea that whiskey in milk on a full stomach couldn't hurt him.
• Everyone else. "We have sometimes reflected more than Jim did upon the consequences." (p. 37). It made no difference: "Our sound reasoning failed to hold us in check." (p. 37).
• Fred. He had learned all about alcoholism and was sure the knowledge would keep him sober (p. 40). On the night he drank: "This time I had not thought of the consequences at all." (p. 41). Afterward he saw that "what I had learned of alcoholism did not occur to me at all" (p. 42), and that "will power and self-knowledge would not help in those strange mental blank spots" (p. 42).
• Bill. After resolving that he was through forever, he came home drunk: "Where had been my high resolve? I simply didn't know. It hadn't even come to mind." (p. 5).

The chapter states its point plainly: the actual or potential alcoholic "will be absolutely unable to stop drinking on the basis of self-knowledge" (p. 39). See: Is "your best thinking got you here" in the Big Book?

Where the book does use looking back

The book isn't against remembering. It uses the review of past drinking in a different place: after the spree, to bring a man to admit what he is.

• When Jim relapsed, the members "worked with him, reviewing carefully what had happened" (p. 35).
• Fred, back in hospital, "went carefully over that evening in Washington" (p. 41), and the review is what convinced him: "I knew from that moment that I had an alcoholic mind." (p. 42).
• In Chapter 7 the helper tells a newcomer about his own drinking and is to "Show him the mental twist which leads to the first drink of a spree." (p. 92), so that the newcomer can draw his own conclusion (p. 92).

So in the book, looking back at the drinking is how a man comes to concede he's an alcoholic. It isn't offered as the thing that stops him at the bar.

What the book offers instead

• A Power greater than ourselves. "Except in a few rare cases, neither he nor any other human being can provide such a defense. His defense must come from a Higher Power." (p. 43).
• A changed reaction, not a won argument. After the Steps, "If tempted, we recoil from it as from a hot flame." (p. 84). The image echoes Chapter 2's hot stove (p. 24), and the book says where the new reaction comes from: "We will see that our new attitude toward liquor has been given us without any thought or effort on our part." (p. 85). That holds "so long as we keep in fit spiritual condition" (p. 85).
• When shaky, help someone. Before going where liquor is served, the book does give a member a question to ask himself, about his motive for going (p. 101). And: "But if you are shaky, you had better work with another alcoholic instead!" (p. 102). Bill found the same: when all other measures failed, "work with another alcoholic would save the day" (p. 15).

What this means

"Think the drink through" can be sensible advice, and the book never tells anyone not to remember. But it describes that very defense, memory of the consequences, as the one that fails the alcoholic "at certain times" (pp. 24, 43), and it rests his safety elsewhere: on a Higher Power and a spiritual condition kept up daily (pp. 43, 84–85). See: Is "it's the first drink that gets you drunk" in the Big Book?

Read it yourself

• Chapter 2, "There Is a Solution" (p. 24): https://www.aa.org/sites/default/files/2021-11/en_bigbook_chapt2.pdf
• Chapter 3, "More About Alcoholism" (pp. 35–43): https://www.aa.org/sites/default/files/2021-11/en_bigbook_chapt3.pdf
• Chapter 6, "Into Action" (pp. 84–85): https://www.aa.org/sites/default/files/2021-11/en_bigbook_chapt6.pdf
• Chapter 7, "Working With Others" (pp. 92, 101–102): https://www.aa.org/sites/default/files/2021-11/en_bigbook_chapt7.pdf
• Chapter 1, "Bill's Story" (pp. 5, 15): https://www.aa.org/sites/default/files/2021-11/en_bigbook_chapt1.pdf
• The full Big Book: https://onlineliterature.aa.org

Sources

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.