Log four things every time you use, or nearly use, for fourteen days: the time, where you were, who you were with, and what you felt in the ten minutes before. Read it in one sitting at the end. Most people find two or three repeating patterns they had never named, and each one turns into a specific change: a different route, a filled hour, a muted chat.
Why the same week keeps happening
You have probably noticed that it is never random. It is Friday, or it is payday, or it is the walk from the station, or it is the two hours after everyone else has gone to bed.
That is not weakness showing up on schedule. It is cues doing what cues do. Using is attached to conditions, and the conditions repeat weekly, which is why the week repeats.
The practical consequence is that resolve is being asked to fight something it never sees. By the time you are aware of wanting to use, the cue fired forty minutes ago and the rest has been running on rails. A map moves the fight to where you can win it, which is before the cue, not after it.
The log
Four columns. No more, because a complicated log gets abandoned by day three.
| Time | Where | Who | What I felt just before | |---|---|---|---|
Four rules that separate a useful log from a wasted fortnight.
**Log the near misses.** The evenings you wanted to and did not are as informative as the ones you did. Mark them so you can tell them apart.
**Write it at the time.** Memory tidies everything into "I was stressed", which is too general to act on.
**Use ordinary words for the feeling.** Not "stress". Try "bored and flat", "wound up after the shift", "lonely, everyone asleep", "buzzing, could not settle", "angry about the phone call".
**Do not edit for shame.** Nobody else reads it. A respectable log teaches you nothing.
Fourteen days, because a week misses the pattern that only appears on one Saturday and a month gets abandoned.
What to look for
Read the whole fortnight at once and hunt for five things.
**Hours.** Circle the times. Nearly everybody finds one or two windows carrying most of it. The most common are the hour after work and the two hours after the house goes quiet.
**Places.** The specific street. The flat where it is always available. The station exit. The pub that is never really about the pub. The back garden at eleven.
**People.** One or two names appear far more often than the rest. That is not a judgement on them. It is a fact about a combination.
**The calendar.** Payday. The day the shift pattern changes. The Sunday before the week starts. Money arriving is one of the most reliable triggers there is, and one of the easiest to plan around because you know the date in advance.
**Feelings.** Group them roughly. Most maps come down to two or three, and the replacement for each is different. Bored and flat needs an activity. Wound up needs something physical. Lonely needs a person, and no amount of activity substitutes.
Turning it into changes
A map you do not act on is a diary. Take three changes out of it and make them this week.
**Close one route.** The number, the chat, the money, the walk. This is the cheapest win and the one people skip because it feels too small to matter. [Cutting off the supply](/guides/drugs/cutting-off-your-dealer-and-your-supply) is the full twenty-minute version.
**Fill one window.** Take the hour that appears most and put something fixed in it, at the same time, every day. A meeting, a gym class you have already paid for, a standing phone call, a meal with someone. An empty hour is not neutral. It belongs to the habit until something else claims it.
**Change one route.** A different walk home, a different bus, getting off a stop early, a different door out of the station. Small and slightly silly changes work better than resolve because they do not require you to be in a good mood.
The group chat is a place
People map streets and forget the phone, which is where most of the geography now lives.
Go through the chats and ask which ones are where plans get made, which ones make it look easy, and which ones you open when you are already restless. Mute or leave them. If the thread is also your entire social life, that is a real cost, and it is worth saying so out loud rather than pretending the decision is free.
The same applies to the people who are not dealers but are always around when it happens. You are not being disloyal by stepping back while the habit is louder than you are. Some of those friendships come back later on different terms, and some do not.
The triggers nobody writes down
Two conditions raise the odds on any evening and almost never make it into a log, because they do not feel like triggers.
Hunger and tiredness. Both produce a restless, hollow state that is easy to misread as wanting to use, and both are easy to fix. If your log shows most of it happening before you have eaten, or after bad nights, you have found something more actionable than any insight about your childhood. That is the H and the T in [HALT](/spaces/halt-method-recovery).
The third is money in your pocket. Not payday in the abstract, cash in hand. If that is on your map, the change is mechanical: lower the daily withdrawal limit, do not carry notes, let someone hold the card for a fortnight.
What the map cannot fix
Some of what appears will not be a logistics problem. If the recurring feeling is persistent low mood, or dread, or something you have never told anyone, then using is doing a job and removing it leaves the job undone.
That is not a reason to carry on. It is a reason to say it to a keyworker or a GP rather than solving it with route changes. We Are With You runs free local services across England and Scotland plus a webchat staffed by trained recovery workers. FRANK is 0300 123 6600, 24 hours. Samaritans is 116 123 at any hour, and if your mood has dropped into thoughts of harming yourself, ring one of them today rather than finishing the fortnight of logging.
If you have not yet made the first call to a GP or a service, that outranks the map. [How to stop using](/guides/drugs/how-to-stop-using-drugs) covers what the call involves and which substances make stopping suddenly dangerous.
Keeping the map somewhere useful
The finished thing is one page: three hours, three places, two people, two feelings, and the three changes you made. Keep it where you will read it in a bad week rather than filing it, and turn it into a written plan for the situations you already know are risky, which is what [a relapse prevention plan](/spaces/how-to-prevent-relapse) is for.
If a slip happens mid-fortnight, log it and keep going. A return to use is common enough that the National Institute on Drug Abuse describes it as ["often part of the treatment and recovery process"](https://nida.nih.gov/publications/drugfacts/treatment-approaches-drug-addiction), and the entry you write that night will be the most useful line in the whole document. [You used again, what now](/guides/drugs/you-used-again-what-now) covers the rest of that morning, including the tolerance warning that matters most.
Common questions
**How long should I keep the log?** Fourteen consecutive days. A week misses patterns that only show up once a fortnight, and a month is long enough that most people stop before the end.
**What if my only trigger is that I want to use?** Then the columns are not being filled in at the time. Wanting to use is the output, not the trigger. Go back to writing the entry the moment it starts rather than at the end of the day, and the hour, place and feeling will appear.
**Are people really triggers, or is that just blaming my friends?** It is a fact about a combination rather than a verdict on a person. Usually it is a particular setting or ritual you share rather than their existence. Change that element first and see whether the pattern survives.
**Does knowing my triggers stop me using?** Not by itself. It converts a vague struggle into a short list of concrete changes, and the changes do the work. A map that produces no changes is a well-organised way of feeling bad.
**Should I show it to my keyworker?** Yes. It is the single most useful thing you can bring to an appointment, because it turns "it's been a difficult few weeks" into two hours, one street and one name that you can plan around together.
Sources
- [NIDA, treatment approaches for drug addiction](https://nida.nih.gov/publications/drugfacts/treatment-approaches-drug-addiction), for a return to use being often part of the treatment and recovery process.
- [We Are With You](https://www.wearewithyou.org.uk/help-and-advice/), for free local services and webchat with trained recovery workers in England and Scotland.
- [NHS, Drug addiction: getting help](https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/addiction-support/drug-addiction-getting-help/), for how UK drug treatment starts and what a keyworker does.
