Urge surfing: how to ride out a craving, step by step

What urge surfing is

An urge feels as if it will keep building until you give in. Urge surfing is a way to test that feeling. You picture the craving as a wave: it builds, crests and washes out onto the beach. Your job is to stay on the board, watching it as an observer, neither struggling against it nor letting it sweep you away.

The point is what you learn by doing it. Urges and cravings peak and subside fairly quickly if you don't act on them, rather than building forever. Each time you ride one out, the next one looks a little less like an order.

Where it comes from: CBT, mindfulness and DBT

Urge surfing was developed by psychologist G. Alan Marlatt as part of relapse prevention, his cognitive-behavioral model of how people slip back into addictive behavior. So its roots are in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT).

Marlatt and Sarah Bowen later tested it as a brief mindfulness exercise, and the same approach runs through mindfulness-based relapse prevention (MBRP), a group program that combines mindfulness practice with cognitive-behavioral relapse prevention. Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) programs teach it as well, as a distress tolerance skill for riding out urges, for example in skills workshops for teens who use substances.

How to urge surf: a five-minute script

1. Name it and rate itSay to yourself: "This is an urge." Rate it from 0 to 10. Naming it creates a small gap between you and the craving.
2. Put distance between you and the habitPut the phone face down across the room, step away from the laptop, or sit somewhere else. Surfing works better without the trigger in your hand.
3. Find it in your bodyWhere is it? Chest, stomach, hands, jaw, face? Describe it plainly: tight, warm, buzzing, restless. Notice whether it moves or changes.
4. Breathe with itSlow your breathing down. You can use a 4-7-8 count: in for 4, hold for 7, out for 8. Let the out-breath be the longest part.
5. Watch the wave, and the thoughts on itNotice the intensity rise and fall. Thoughts like "just once" or "I deserve it" will come. Label them as thoughts and go back to your body.
6. Ride, don't fightIf it gets stronger, stay curious about it. You don't have to argue with it or make it go away. You only have to not act on it for now.
7. Rate it again and choose your next moveMost of the time the number has dropped. Then pick a deliberate next action: water, a walk, a message to someone, bed.

An example of urge surfing

Here is how it can look. It's 11:40 p.m., you're in bed, and the urge to open an app you're quitting hits. You rate it 8. You put the phone on the dresser and sit up. The feeling is a tightness in your chest and a pull in your hands. A thought arrives: "I'll just check." You notice it as a thought and breathe in for 4, hold for 7, out for 8.

After three minutes it is a 6, then it surges back to 7 when you think about tomorrow. You stay with it. After about eight minutes it is a 3, and you are mostly tired. You take the phone to the kitchen and go to sleep. Nothing dramatic happened, and that is the lesson: the wave came and went, and you didn't have to obey it.

Does urge surfing actually work?

The evidence is promising but modest, and most of it comes from smoking, alcohol and drugs rather than porn, gambling or phones.

• Smoking, one session. 123 student smokers were exposed to smoking cues. Half got brief mindfulness instructions based on Marlatt's urge surfing. Their urges were no weaker, but they smoked significantly fewer cigarettes over the following seven days.
• Substance use, one year. In a trial with 286 people after addiction treatment, both mindfulness-based and standard relapse prevention lowered relapse risk at six months compared with usual care. At twelve months, the mindfulness group reported fewer days of drug use and heavy drinking than both other groups.
• The overall picture. A meta-analysis of 9 trials with 901 participants found no clear difference between mindfulness-based relapse prevention and other treatments on relapse, but small benefits on craving and withdrawal. The authors rated the quality of evidence as low.

The smoking study points to how it works: urge surfing may not make the urge smaller at first, but it changes how you respond to it. That is exactly the part you control.

Common mistakes

• Surfing with the phone in your hand. Put distance between you and the trigger first.
• Expecting urges to stop forever. Occasional thoughts and cravings are a normal part of recovery. Each one you ride out is practice.
• Fighting the thought. Arguing with "just once" keeps your attention on it. Notice it, label it, go back to your breath.
• Only practicing in emergencies. Try it on small urges first, such as checking your phone in a queue, so the skill is ready when a big one comes.

Where 4-7-8 breathing fits

Breathing in for 4, holding for 7 and breathing out for 8 takes 19 seconds per round. It won't make an urge disappear, and it isn't magic. What it does is give your attention a simple, physical job while the wave passes, and slow you down long enough to choose.