Eat something in the next twenty minutes, because hunger and wanting a drink feel almost identical. Put a cold drink you actually like in a proper glass. Move rooms. Message one person that tonight is a hard one. Then set a bedtime and treat it as the finish line. Tonight is the only thing you are trying to win.
One check before anything else
If you drink most days and you wake shaky or sick, tonight is not a willpower problem, it is a medical one. Stopping suddenly can be dangerous when you are physically dependent, and the NHS says so without hedging: ["It can be very dangerous to stop drinking suddenly if you're dependent on alcohol."](https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/alcohol-misuse/treatment/) Ring a GP or a free alcohol service tomorrow, and read [how to stop drinking safely](/guides/alcohol/how-to-stop-drinking) before you make tonight a test.
Call 999 if you have ["severe symptoms of alcohol withdrawal, including: hallucinations, severe tremors, seizures or fits"](https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/alcohol-advice/alcohol-support/).
Everything below is for the evening that is difficult rather than dangerous.
The hour it actually starts
Very few people lose an evening at nine. They lose it somewhere between six and eight, in the gap between the day ending and the night beginning, when the house goes quiet and there is a shape in the routine where a drink used to sit.
That gap is the whole fight. Plan for it specifically rather than planning to be strong later.
Six o'clock: eat and change the room
Two things, both slightly boring, both disproportionately effective.
**Eat.** Tiredness and low blood sugar produce a restless, hollow feeling that is almost indistinguishable from wanting a drink, and if you have not eaten properly you will read one as the other. A real meal at six beats anything else you can do in the same twenty minutes. This is the H and the T in HALT, and it is worth [ten minutes of reading](/spaces/halt-method-recovery) while you are calm.
**Change the room.** Habits are anchored to places. The chair you drink in, the kitchen at the moment the cooking finishes, the sofa with the television on. Sit somewhere else tonight. Eat at the table. Take the first hour of the evening outside if the weather allows it. You are not being asked to resist a cue, you are being asked to not stand in front of one.
Eight o'clock: something in your hand
The urge to drink is partly an urge to hold something and sip it. Take that seriously rather than dismissing it as trivial, because it is the cheapest part of the problem to solve.
- Buy four or five soft drinks you would actually choose. Not the one nobody wants. Something with bite to it: tonic with bitters, a good ginger beer, cold sparkling water with a lot of lime.
- Use the glass you would have used. Cold, heavy, proper. The ritual is doing more work than the liquid.
- Have a second thing for your hands. Washing up, a jigsaw, a game, a guitar, anything that occupies both hands and a bit of attention.
- Put the phone somewhere else if the phone is your off-licence. Delivery apps turn a ten-minute urge into a twenty-minute transaction. If yours are still logged in, [clearing that out takes about a quarter of an hour](/guides/alcohol/clearing-alcohol-out-of-the-house).
When the urge peaks: the twenty minute rule
Cravings behave like waves rather than staircases. They build, they crest, and if nothing is added to them they come down. That is the entire basis of the technique, and knowing it in advance is what stops you reading the peak as proof that you cannot do this.
The move is to delay rather than to refuse. Refusing is a fight you have to win over and over. Delaying is one decision with a timer on it.
- Say the actual sentence to yourself: not now, twenty minutes.
- Start something that takes twenty minutes and cannot be paused halfway. A shower. A walk to a specific landmark and back. Cooking something.
- Change your body temperature. Cold water on the wrists and face, or going outside without a coat for two minutes, interrupts the loop better than sitting still and thinking about it does.
- At twenty minutes, check. Most of the time it has dropped. If it has not, run it again.
[Urge surfing](/spaces/urge-surfing-technique) is the longer version of this, and it is worth learning on an easy night rather than a hard one.
Nine o'clock: put a person in the gap
One message. Not a confession, not a plan, just a flag.
"Tonight is a hard one, can you text me at ten."
That is a complete message. It works because the pull to drink is much weaker when someone is going to ask, and because sending it moves you from doing this in your head to doing it out loud. If you have nobody you want to say it to yet, that is a real problem and it has [its own answers](/guides/alcohol/telling-someone-youve-stopped-drinking).
If there is nobody at all tonight, use a phone line. Drinkline is 0300 123 1110, weekdays 9am to 8pm and weekends 11am to 4pm. Alcoholics Anonymous Great Britain is 0800 917 7650, 24 hours. Samaritans is 116 123, any hour, and you do not need to be in crisis to ring.
Eleven o'clock: end the evening early
The last hour is where most attempts fall over, because you are tired, the house is quiet, and the argument in your head has had five hours to rehearse.
Do not try to outlast it. Go to bed early on purpose, even if you will lie awake. A bad night's sleep is a much smaller cost than tomorrow morning, and the evening ends the moment you are horizontal in the dark.
Expect the sleep itself to be poor for a while. It very often gets worse before it gets better, and people read that as the change failing rather than as a stage. [What the first week actually feels like](/guides/alcohol/first-week-without-alcohol) sets out what is normal and what needs a GP.
If you drink anyway
Then you drink, and the useful thing is what happens in the next hour rather than the next month. Stop where you are rather than finishing the bottle on the grounds that the evening is already ruined. Eat, drink water, go to bed. Start again in the morning, not on Monday.
One safety point matters more than the disappointment. If you have had a stretch without alcohol, your tolerance has fallen. The UK guidelines put it plainly: ["After a period of abstinence, tolerance is greatly reduced… they may even experience fatal alcohol poisoning"](https://www.gov.uk/guidance/clinical-guidelines-for-alcohol-treatment/8-harm-reduction). The amount that used to be an ordinary night is not the amount your body can take now. [You drank, what now](/guides/alcohol/you-drank-what-now) is the four-step version of this.
Common questions
**How long does a craving for alcohol last?** They rise and fall in waves rather than climbing indefinitely. Most people find that a specific urge peaks and then eases within twenty minutes or so if they do not feed it with planning, negotiating or standing near the cupboard. What lingers afterwards is a lower background restlessness, which is a different thing and easier to carry.
**What can I drink instead of alcohol in the evening?** Something cold, sharp and served the same way you served the drink. Tonic with bitters, ginger beer, sparkling water with a lot of lime. Buy a few you would pick on their own merits, because a drink you resent is a reminder rather than a replacement.
**Does exercise actually help with cravings?** Twenty minutes of moving at the hour it usually starts works for two ordinary reasons: it occupies the window and it changes how your body feels. It does not need to be a workout. A walk to a landmark and back is enough.
**I got through last night and tonight feels worse. Why?** The second and third evenings are commonly harder than the first, because the first has novelty and decisiveness behind it and by the third you are just tired. It is a stage rather than a signal. Plan tonight the same way and go to bed early.
Sources
- [NHS, Alcohol misuse treatment](https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/alcohol-misuse/treatment/), for the danger of stopping suddenly if you are dependent.
- [NHS, Alcohol support](https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/alcohol-advice/alcohol-support/), for the symptoms that mean calling 999 and the Drinkline hours.
- [GOV.UK, UK clinical guidelines for alcohol treatment, harm reduction](https://www.gov.uk/guidance/clinical-guidelines-for-alcohol-treatment/8-harm-reduction), for greatly reduced tolerance after a period of abstinence.
