GUIDE · MINDFULNESS

Urge surfing: how to ride out a craving without obeying it or fighting it

Your hand is on the pantry door, or patting your pocket for a lighter, or already opening the app, and part of you hasn't agreed to any of it. Urge surfing is a mindfulness skill from addiction treatment for that moment: you watch the urge build, crest and fade as sensations and thoughts, without acting on it or fighting it. It won't make urges vanish, and the research is mixed, but it gives you a plan for the minutes before you act.

What urge surfing is, and where it comes from

Researchers credit urge surfing to G. Alan Marlatt of the University of Washington and trace it to Relapse Prevention, a 1985 book he co-wrote. Relapse prevention is a cognitive-behavioral treatment for keeping a change going, like staying off alcohol. You learn to spot the situations that tend to set off a slip and build skills for getting through them.

The technique rests on one image, described in a 2011 paper Marlatt co-wrote. You picture an urge as an ocean wave that rises, crests and dies down. Instead of getting knocked over, you ride the crest, paying attention to your thoughts and body sensations as it peaks and fades. In this view, an urge is a passing event you don't have to obey. Marlatt and colleagues later built that stance into mindfulness-based relapse prevention (MBRP), an eight-week group program for people who've finished initial addiction treatment.

You can try the same moves on other urges, like eating when you aren't hungry, scrolling, checking or texting an ex, though research on those is thin or missing. The aim is narrower than it sounds: you practice not acting on the urge while it's still there. In a 2009 study by Sarah Bowen and Marlatt, 123 college smokers went through a lab task built to set off cravings, some after brief urge surfing instructions. The instructed smokers' urges came out no weaker, but over the next week they smoked fewer cigarettes. The authors' reading was that the technique may not shrink urges at first, but it may change how people respond to them.

How it differs from fighting an urge or distracting yourself

A common way to fight an urge is to suppress it, pushing the craving and every thought about it out of your head. It's the intuitive move, and it can backfire. In a 2010 study, smokers who spent a week trying not to think about cigarettes smoked significantly more the next week than those who'd thought about smoking on purpose or only kept a log. A similar study found the same rebound with chocolate, but only in chronic dieters.

The rebound isn't a sure thing. In a 2012 study of 162 smokers, suppression and acceptance, the stance behind urge surfing, both eased craving more than no instructions did, with no rebound and no difference in smoking over three days. Once home, the suppression group suppressed less, which the authors read as a sign it's harder to keep up.

Distraction moves your attention somewhere else, and in the moment it can beat urge surfing. In a 2014 study, 84 heavy drinkers sat in a mock bar with their favorite drink poured in front of them. Distraction cut their craving nearly three times as much as instructions adapted from urge surfing, which did no better than having no strategy. A 2018 review of 30 craving experiments found that quick drops from mindfulness likely come from keeping working memory busy, which other tasks also do. It saw more promise in longer practice.

Urge surfing aims at something slower. The MBRP researchers describe mindfulness practice as a kind of exposure: you stay with a craving instead of escaping it, which may make cravings easier to tolerate later. You can also combine the two: surf for ten minutes, then do something absorbing. If you're close to giving in, go straight to distraction. The STOP skill adds a pause before either one, and cognitive defusion works on thoughts like "just one won't hurt."

When urge surfing is the wrong tool

Urge surfing is a skill for cravings, and it doesn't treat physical dependence. If you drink heavily most days, stopping suddenly can bring on withdrawal, anywhere from shakiness and trouble sleeping to seizures and delirium tremens. A 2022 clinical review says up to half of long-term heavy drinkers get withdrawal when they cut back sharply or stop, and the most severe form can be life-threatening. See a doctor before you quit or cut down, and do the same for any drug your body seems to depend on. According to a review for family doctors, most people can be treated for alcohol withdrawal safely as outpatients.

The research follows the same order. In a 2014 trial of MBRP, people joined only after finishing inpatient or intensive outpatient treatment and being medically cleared. Save urge surfing for the cravings that keep coming back once you're safely past withdrawal.

Urges to hurt yourself are a different situation, and this page shouldn't be your plan for them. Tell a therapist or doctor what's going on, and if you might act on an urge soon, use the crisis contacts at the bottom of this page. If you're afraid you'll hurt someone else, get help the same way.

Some urges belong to a pattern that needs its own treatment, like binges you can't stop or checking that eats hours of your day. Urge surfing can sit alongside that treatment but can't replace it. Our page on compulsive checking covers when checking looks like OCD.

The urge surfing script

Read it once on a calm day so the steps feel familiar, then run it from memory or from a card in your wallet. Practice on mild urges, the ones you'd rate a 3 or 4, before the big ones.

1. Name the urge and rate it. Say to yourself, "I'm having an urge to smoke," or to eat, scroll or check. Rate it from 0 to 10. Naming it turns an order into something you're noticing.
2. Buy yourself ten minutes. Tell yourself you'll decide when a ten-minute timer goes off, and set it. If the cigarette, snack or phone is within reach, put it in another room.
3. Find the urge in your body. Close your eyes or lower your gaze, and ask where the urge is right now: your mouth, throat, chest, stomach or hands. Pick the spot where it's strongest.
4. Describe what's there. Is it tight or loose, warm or cool, still or moving? Does it buzz, ache or pull? Describe it the way you'd describe the weather, without calling it good or bad.
5. Let the thoughts ride along. Thoughts like "just one" or "I can't stand this" will show up. Notice each one, call it a thought and go back to the sensations.
6. Breathe and watch the wave. Breathe at your normal pace, with a slightly longer out-breath if that helps. Every minute or so, check the number. Is the urge building, peaking or easing?
7. Stay on through the peak. At the strongest point, keep describing it. Notice that you can feel the full pull without moving. If your jaw or hands clench, loosen them, since clenching is a sign you've started fighting it.
8. Check in when the timer goes off. Open your eyes and rate the urge again. If it's dropped, do something that fits the rest of your evening, like a glass of water or a walk. If it's still high, run another round or switch to something absorbing.
9. Write one line. Note the time, the trigger, the peak rating and what you did. After a week or two, you'll see when your urges tend to hit and how long they take to fade.

If you acted on the urge this time, write down where it caught you, skip the self-lecture and run the script again on the next one.

Illustrative examples: four urges, one script

These people are made up. They show how the script might go and aren't case studies or evidence of any result.

Dana quit smoking ten days ago, and after a tense call with her landlord the craving hits an 8. She leaves the balcony where she used to smoke and sets a ten-minute timer. The urge is a dry pull in her throat and a twitch in her fingers, with "one won't undo ten days" showing up twice. It climbs to 9, holds for a long minute, then slides to 5. A smaller wave comes later, and she rides that one too.

Ana is at the pantry at ten at night, three hours after dinner and not hungry. She rates the pull toward the chips a 7 and sits at the kitchen table, out of sight of the shelf. It's a hollow feeling in her stomach and a restless jaw, with "I've earned this" riding along. The number eases, jumps back when she remembers tomorrow's meeting, then settles at 3, so she makes tea. Some nights she eats the chips anyway and logs those too. Our page on stress eating looks at what drives evenings like hers.

Theo is in bed with his thumb on the app before he's decided anything. He gets up, puts the phone on the dresser across the room and lies back down. The urge is an itch in his hand and a hum in his chest, with "someone might have replied" tagging along. It rises to a 6 and fades within a few minutes. Twice it comes back, smaller each time.

Mia sent a report to her manager an hour ago, and the urge to reread it for mistakes, or ask a coworker if it was okay, keeps coming back. She notices heat in her face, a squeeze in her chest and the thought "what if there's a typo." She surfs it instead of opening the file, and it peaks at 8 and settles at 4. If the checking started eating hours of her day, she'd see a therapist.

Snags you'll probably hit

The urge doesn't drop, or it gets stronger at first. That can happen early on. In a 2013 study, hungry people told to accept their cravings while looking at tempting food felt those cravings grow, while people told to suppress them held steady. The authors suggested acceptance may take repeated practice. Bowen and Marlatt's smokers didn't get weaker urges either, only fewer cigarettes. Judge a round by what you did. If the urge is still high at the timer, a second round or a switch to distraction both count.

Surfing slowly turns into white-knuckling. A clenched jaw, counted seconds and a voice going "don't, don't, don't" mean you've slid into suppression. Loosen your hands, lengthen the out-breath and go back to describing the sensation as if you were curious about it. If you can't find any curiosity today, choose distraction on purpose instead of gritting your teeth.

You're surfing right next to the trigger. In a 2017 study, adults with an alcohol use disorder logged their cravings in an app for six weeks. The cues most often followed by drinking were being around alcohol, at 52 percent of cravings, and people drinking nearby or offering a drink, at 34 percent. Leave first and surf once you're out, whether the trigger is a bar, a bag of chips or the phone on your pillow.

Something heavier shows up under the urge. An urge can travel with grief, loneliness or panic. Once you stop acting on it, the feeling underneath may get louder. You can stop the script then and reach for the self-soothe skill or for TIPP. If close attention to your body makes you panicky, open your eyes and name a few things you can see.

What the studies found, and where they're thin

We found only a handful of studies that test urge surfing by name, and they point in different directions: fewer cigarettes in the 2009 study, no help with craving in the mock bar. In the 2017 app study, 28 people could play an urge surfing recording when a craving hit. Afterward they drank 10 percent of the time, compared with 16 percent after the app's distraction option and 82 percent when they coped some other way. There was no control group, and the authors saw little evidence that any one of the app's strategies beat the others.

Bigger trials tested whole programs. In the 2014 trial, 286 people who'd finished initial treatment for substance use disorders got eight weeks of MBRP, standard relapse prevention or usual aftercare. Both programs beat usual care at six months, and relapse prevention delayed the first drug use longer. At 12 months, the MBRP group reported fewer days of substance use and less heavy drinking than either other group. A 2017 meta-analysis of nine MBRP trials with 901 people found no clear difference in relapse and only small benefits for craving and for harms from use, with limited confidence even in those.

For food, the evidence comes from related strategies. In a weight-loss group, people who got seven extra weeks of acceptance training reported lower food cravings than those who didn't. In another study, 137 people trying to eat less chocolate carried a bag of it for five days. Those taught defusion, treating a craving thought as just a thought, ate less from the bag than a relaxation group. Those taught acceptance ate no less.

We didn't find any study of urge surfing for phone use or reassurance seeking, so those examples work by analogy. Lab cravings also fade with no technique at all. In a 2018 experiment, stirred-up chocolate cravings were back to baseline within a four-minute recording, even for people told to let their minds wander, so a falling number doesn't prove the surfing worked. The fair summary is modest: urge surfing may change what you do with an urge more than the urge itself, it may take repeated practice, and it doesn't replace treatment.

Pick an urge to practice on

The chat below runs with Helpy, the site's AI assistant. Tell it which urge keeps winning and when it tends to show up, and it can help you plan where you'll surf it and what you'll do once it passes.

Evidence and sources

• Bowen & Marlatt (2009), Psychology of Addictive Behaviors: 123 college smokers went through a lab task built to trigger the urge to smoke, with or without brief urge surfing instructions; urges didn't differ, but the instructed group smoked fewer cigarettes over the next seven days. One brief session with students who weren't in a quit program, and we read only the abstract.
• Hendershot, Witkiewitz, George & Marlatt (2011), Subst Abuse Treat Prev Policy: a review of relapse prevention that describes urge surfing as riding an urge like an ocean wave that rises, crests and subsides. It presents the technique as an example of the MBRP approach. A description of the technique, not a test of it; we read the full text.
• Bowen et al. (2014), JAMA Psychiatry: 286 people who'd finished initial treatment for substance use disorders were randomly assigned to MBRP, relapse prevention or usual aftercare; both programs beat usual care at six months, relapse prevention delayed first drug use longer, and MBRP led on days of use and heavy drinking at 12 months. An eight-week program, not urge surfing alone, at one treatment agency; we read the full text.
• Grant et al. (2017), Journal of Addiction Medicine: a meta-analysis of nine MBRP trials with 901 participants found no clear difference in relapse or frequency of use, with small benefits for craving and withdrawal symptoms and for negative consequences of use. The authors rated the evidence as low or very low quality; we read only the abstract.
• Murphy & MacKillop (2014), Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research: 84 heavy drinkers in a mock bar; distraction lowered craving and urge distress more than mindfulness instructions adapted from urge surfing, which didn't beat having no strategy. One session with no practice and no drinking measured, in young drinkers who weren't seeking treatment; we read the full text.
• Dulin & Gonzalez (2017), Psychology of Addictive Behaviors: 28 adults with an alcohol use disorder used a smartphone app for six weeks; drinking followed 10 percent of cravings met with an urge surfing recording and 16 percent of those met with distraction, and being around alcohol was the strongest trigger. No control group, a small sample and no severe dependence; we read the full text.
• Tapper (2018), Clinical Psychology Review: a review of 30 experiments on cravings for food, cigarettes and alcohol; quick drops in craving from mindfulness may come from loading working memory and may be matched by other strategies, while repeated practice over a longer period looked more promising. The author calls the support from those longer studies tentative; we read only the abstract.
• Erskine, Georgiou & Kvavilashvili (2010), Psychological Science: smokers who spent a week suppressing thoughts of smoking smoked more the following week than those who expressed the thoughts or only kept a log. Self-recorded cigarette counts over three weeks; we read only the abstract.
• Erskine & Georgiou (2010), Appetite: among 116 women, restrained eaters (chronic dieters) who suppressed thoughts of chocolate ate more of it in a disguised taste test; women low in restraint showed no rebound. One lab session; we read only the abstract.
• Litvin et al. (2012), Psychology of Addictive Behaviors: 162 smokers; acceptance and suppression both eased cue-induced craving compared with no instructions, with no rebound and no difference in cigarettes smoked over three days. Most weren't seeking treatment yet, and 30 percent didn't complete follow-up; we read the full text.
• Alberts, Thewissen & Middelweerd (2013), Eating Behaviors: hungry participants looking at tempting food felt cravings rise when told to accept them and hold steady when told to suppress them. A single lab session, and the authors suggest acceptance needs repeated practice; we read only the abstract.
• Alberts et al. (2010), Appetite: adults in a group diet program for overweight who got seven extra weeks of acceptance-based craving training reported lower food cravings than those who didn't. Self-reported cravings and a related strategy, not urge surfing; we read only the abstract.
• Jenkins & Tapper (2014), British Journal of Health Psychology: 137 people trying to eat less chocolate carried a bag of it for five days; those taught cognitive defusion ate less from the bag than a relaxation group, and acceptance made no difference. Only five days, and the bag result was barely significant; we read only the abstract.
• Tapper & Turner (2018), Appetite: after a chocolate craving induction, 101 people's cravings returned to baseline during a four-minute recording whether it guided decentering, imagery or mind wandering. Lab-induced cravings in one session; we read only the abstract.
• Day & Daly (2022), Addiction: a clinical review: up to half of people with long-term heavy drinking get alcohol withdrawal when they cut back sharply or stop, the most severe form can be life-threatening, and medically assisted withdrawal often comes first. A review, not new data; we read only the abstract.
• Bayard et al. (2004), American Family Physician: alcohol withdrawal ranges from insomnia and tremors to seizures and delirium tremens, and most patients can be treated safely as outpatients. An older clinical review; we read only the abstract.

Read next

Cognitive Defusion (ACT): Learning to Watch Your Thoughts From the OutsideWatching a thought instead of obeying itThe STOP skill in DBT: a pause between the urge and the actionA pause before acting on an urgeStress eating: why you crave food when you're stressed, and how to stopWhen the urge is to eatWise Mind ACCEPTS in DBT: seven places to put your attention until the worst of it passesDistraction on purpose in a crisis momentChain analysis in DBT: retrace one behavior link by link and find where you could have stepped offMap what led to a behavior you regretHabit reversal training: catch the habit early and give your hands another jobSwap a habit for a competing action

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