Put the phone in another room first, because the phone is the supply. Then set twenty minutes and start something you cannot pause halfway: a shower, a walk to a specific place and back, cooking. Cold water on the face and wrists helps more than sitting still does. Message one person that it is a bad hour. Cravings crest and fall. You are trying to outlast one, not to win an argument.
The phone is the first move, not the last
Everything else on this page is harder while the means of getting supplied is in your hand. A craving with a phone in reach is a ten-second transaction. The same craving with the phone charging in another room is twenty minutes of discomfort, which is a completely different problem.
So: phone in another room, or in a drawer, or handed to whoever you live with. Not on silent on the table.
If the number is still in there at all, close that route properly rather than relying on tonight. [Cutting off the supply](/guides/drugs/cutting-off-your-dealer-and-your-supply) takes about twenty minutes and covers the four routes: the number, the group chats, the money and the walk home.
What a craving actually does
It builds, it peaks, and if nothing feeds it, it comes down. That shape is the whole basis of the technique, and knowing it in advance is what stops you reading the peak as proof that resistance is pointless.
Two things feed a craving and make it last longer than it needed to. The first is planning: working out how you would do it, what you would say, how much money you have. That is not resisting, it is rehearsing, and it keeps the whole thing live. The second is standing near the cue. Same room, same chat, same street, same people.
Cravings also arrive long after you would expect. People describe them turning up years later on walking past an old street or hearing a particular song. That is not a sign of failure or of hidden desire. It is a cue doing what cues do, and it passes faster than the first ones did.
The twenty minutes
Delay rather than refuse. Refusal is a fight you have to win repeatedly. Delay is one decision with a timer attached.
- **Say the actual sentence.** Not now. Twenty minutes. Out loud if you are alone.
- **Move.** Stand up and go to a different room, or outside. The room you are in is part of the cue.
- **Change your temperature.** Cold water on the face and wrists, a cold shower, or two minutes outside without a coat. This interrupts the loop better than anything you can think your way through.
- **Start something unpausable.** A shower, cooking a real meal, a walk to a named landmark and back, cleaning one room properly. It has to have a shape, so that stopping halfway would be noticeable.
- **Eat something.** Hunger sharpens all of this and almost nobody notices they are hungry.
- **Check at twenty minutes.** Usually it has dropped. If it has not, run it again. Two rounds is not a failure, it is the method working.
[Urge surfing](/spaces/urge-surfing-technique) is the longer version, and it is much easier to learn on a quiet evening than at the moment you need it.
The message
Send one message to one person. Short, no explanation, no promise.
"Bad hour. Can you ring me."
That is enough. It works for two reasons: the pull weakens sharply when somebody is going to ask about it, and sending it moves the whole thing out of your head, where it has been running unopposed.
If there is nobody yet, use a line. FRANK is 0300 123 6600, 24 hours. Narcotics Anonymous UK is 0300 999 1212 between 10am and midnight. Cocaine Anonymous UK is 0800 612 0225. SMART Recovery UK is 0330 053 6022. Samaritans is 116 123 at any hour, and you do not have to be in crisis to ring.
Where there is an immediate risk to life, a suspected overdose, or withdrawal that is frightening you now, We Are With You's advice is to call 999. Use it.
If you are on your own with no one to call
This is the hardest version and it needs a smaller plan, because ambition collapses at this point.
Get out of the room. Go somewhere with people in it even if you speak to none of them: a supermarket, a late-opening café, a busy street. Then get through one hour rather than the night. Then go to bed early, on purpose, even if you will lie awake. The evening ends when you are horizontal in the dark, and almost nothing good is decided after midnight anyway.
The specific traps
**"I'll just get it and not use it."** This is the most convincing lie the craving tells, because it feels like a compromise. It is not a compromise, it is the transaction with a delay on it.
**"One won't restart anything."** Might be true. The thing it does not account for is tolerance. If you have had any period without using, the amount that used to be ordinary is not ordinary for your body now, and that is a safety issue rather than a moral one. [Why coming back after a break is the risky part](/guides/drugs/why-tolerance-makes-relapse-dangerous) is the detail.
**"I've already ruined today."** Nothing has been ruined until it has. A bad hour is a bad hour.
**Checking the chat "just to see".** Opening the thread is not neutral. It is standing in front of the cue.
Cravings that keep arriving at the same time
If the same hour keeps producing this, you are not dealing with a random event and you should stop treating it as one. Fill that hour in advance with something fixed and slightly ritualised, at the same time every day. The evening after work, the hour after everyone else goes to bed, Friday at six, payday.
Finding those hours precisely takes a fortnight of logging, and it is worth it. [The people, places and hours that pull you back](/guides/drugs/mapping-your-using-triggers) sets out how.
If you use anyway
Then two things matter more than the disappointment.
**Never use alone.** If somebody has to find you, they need to already be there.
**Assume your tolerance has dropped.** Any gap counts. The World Health Organization advises that all opioid dependent patients who have withdrawn from opioids ["are at increased risk of overdose due to reduced opioid tolerance"](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK310652/). If opioids are involved at all, have naloxone in the house and make sure someone knows where it is.
Then tell someone the same day rather than next week. [You used again, what now](/guides/drugs/you-used-again-what-now) is the four-step version, and going quiet is what turns one night into a month.
Common questions
**How long does a drug craving last?** It rises and falls rather than climbing indefinitely, and most people find a specific urge peaks and eases within about twenty minutes if they do not feed it by planning or by standing near the cue. What remains afterwards is a lower background restlessness, which is easier to carry.
**Why do I get cravings months after stopping?** Because cues persist. A street, a song, a particular time on a Friday, a person's name in a notification. The craving arriving is not evidence that you secretly want to go back, and later ones generally pass faster than the early ones.
**Does distraction actually work, or am I just avoiding it?** Delay is the point. You are not trying to resolve anything in the moment, you are trying to be somewhere else when the peak passes. Anything with a shape and a duration works. Scrolling does not, because the phone is the supply.
**What if the craving comes back straight after the twenty minutes?** Run it again. Two or three rounds in an evening is common and is the method working rather than failing. If most evenings look like this, that is worth telling a keyworker or a GP, because it usually means something structural is missing rather than that you are doing it wrong.
**Should I go to a meeting when I am craving?** Yes, if there is one you can get to. It fills the hour, puts you near people, and removes you from the room the cue lives in. Online meetings count and are much easier at short notice.
Sources
- [WHO, clinical guidelines for withdrawal management](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK310652/), for increased overdose risk after opioid tolerance falls.
- [We Are With You](https://www.wearewithyou.org.uk/help-and-advice/), for free local services, webchat with trained recovery workers, and calling 999 where there is immediate risk to life.
- [NHS, Drug addiction: getting help](https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/addiction-support/drug-addiction-getting-help/), for how UK drug treatment starts.
