Urge Surfing: Riding Out Cravings Without Giving In

A craving is easier to outlast than to argue with. That is the idea behind urge surfing, a technique popularized by G. Alan Marlatt, a University of Washington addiction psychologist: you picture the urge as a wave that builds, peaks and then subsides, and you ride it out instead of obeying it or fighting it.¹

Urge surfing is meant to change what you do with a craving, not to make the craving disappear. It is a coping skill with modest evidence. A 2017 RAND Corporation review of 9 randomized trials found that the group program that teaches urge surfing had a small effect on craving and withdrawal symptoms and no clear effect on relapse, and it rated that evidence low quality.² To practice it when a craving hits, work through five steps:

1. Pause and name the urge
2. Find where it sits in your body
3. Breathe and watch it rise and fall
4. Treat the thoughts as thoughts
5. When it eases, choose your next move

What is urge surfing?

Urge surfing is a mindfulnessmindfulness: Paying attention to what is happening in the present moment, including thoughts and sensations, on purpose and without judging it. The word covers both a state of mind and the courses that train it, and most research tests the courses.Full entry in the glossary technique for cravings: you observe an urge as a passing mix of body sensations and thoughts and let it crest and fade without acting on it. Bowen and Marlatt’s 2009 paper credits the technique to Marlatt and Gordon’s 1985 work on relapse prevention, an approach to addiction.³

Relapse prevention is a cognitive-behavioral treatment that teaches people to spot the situations that lead back to drinking or drug use and to cope with them. Urge surfing now sits inside mindfulness-based relapse prevention, an eight-week group program that pairs meditation with those skills. The authors of a 2014 trial of that program suggest why it might help: watching a craving may work like exposure, so the discomfort grows more tolerable and the rush to relieve it eases.⁴ That is their explanation, not something the trial measured.

An urge feels like an instruction, and most of us treat it as one: we either obey or brace against it. Urge surfing adds a third option, which is to watch. Say it is 9:40 at night and your thumb drifts toward a delivery app. Instead of ordering, or lecturing yourself, you notice the pull, get curious about it, and let it pass on its own schedule.

Urge surfing is for the moment after a cue has already fired. Removing the cue in the first place is separate work, covered in how to break a bad habit by changing what sets it off.

How to practice urge surfing, step by step

The steps below are an everyday version for ordinary cravings, such as snacks, the phone or online shopping, drawn from how relapse-prevention and dialectical behavior therapy programs describe it. They are a habit skill, not a treatment: if the craving is for alcohol or a drug you depend on, or the urge is to self-harm, binge or purge, read the help section near the end first.

1. Notice and name it: say to yourself what the urge is for, as soon as you catch it
2. Find it in the body: tight chest, restless hands, a watering mouth: describe it instead of obeying it
3. Breathe through the crest: the strongest moment is a feeling, not an order; the dashed route to acting on it stays optional
4. It eases, then choose: how long this takes varies; when it softens, decide what to do next

1. Pause and name the urge

Say to yourself, plainly, what is happening: “This is an urge to check my phone.” Naming it turns an automatic reach into something you can look at, and gives you a second or two before your hand moves.

2. Find where it sits in your body

Cravings are physical as well as mental. Look for the sensations: a tight chest, restless hands, a watering mouth, a pull in the stomach. Describe them to yourself as an observer would, and notice whether they stay put or shift. In the Hong Kong version of the program, the session that teaches urge surfing asks people to observe the thoughts, emotions, sensations and impulses a trigger brings and to notice that they pass.⁵

3. Breathe and watch it rise and fall

Use your breath as the board you stand on. Breathe normally and keep checking the strength of the urge, perhaps on a rough scale of 0 to 10. Watch whether it climbs, wobbles or starts to soften. You are not trying to push it down; you are watching what it does when you leave it alone.

4. Treat the thoughts as thoughts

Cravings come with arguments: “just one,” “you deserve it,” “it doesn’t matter today.” Notice them as thoughts the craving produces, not as facts you have to act on. In a 2014 study at McGill University in Canada, people trained for two weeks in a skill the researchers call disidentification (roughly, stepping back from craving thoughts instead of identifying with them) reported less intense chocolate cravings after a craving test than people trained in distraction.⁶ Our account rests on that study’s abstract alone, and chocolate is not cigarettes.

5. When it eases, choose your next move

Once the wave has dropped, decide what to do next, ideally something that uses your hands or takes you elsewhere. The UK’s NHS advises people quitting smoking to keep a distraction ready, because cravings usually last only a few minutes.⁷ In a published case report from a US clinic, a therapist teaching the skill asked a client to allow 15 minutes to tolerate the urge and then to do something else.⁸

Riding one urge

• Say what the urge is for
• Find where it sits in your body and describe it
• Breathe and rate its strength every minute or so
• Label the arguments as thoughts, not orders
• When it eases, do something else with your hands or your place

How long does an urge or craving last?

We found no study that supports a single figure for how long cravings last, and the length likely varies with the substance, the habit and the person. The NHS says smoking cravings usually last only a few minutes and are hardest in the first 28 days after quitting, when the body is adjusting to being without nicotine.⁷

A figure often repeated online is that an urge peaks within 20 to 30 minutes. We could not trace that figure to a study, so it is better seen as a guess than as data. The useful part of the wave picture is its shape rather than its timing.

Myth

If you don't give in, a craving keeps building until you can't stand it.

Fact

Cravings rise and fall. The NHS says smoking cravings usually last only a few minutes, and urge surfing is built on watching that happen.

Collect your own number. The next few times you ride an urge, glance at the clock when it starts and when it has clearly softened. Knowing that your evening snack urge usually fades in about ten minutes, say, makes the next one easier to sit through.

How urge surfing differs from white-knuckling

Urge surfing is the opposite of gritting your teeth. White-knuckling treats the craving as an enemy to be pushed out of mind; urge surfing lets it be there and watches it. The difference matters, because trying not to think about a craving can backfire.

In a 2008 lab experiment by a University of Hertfordshire researcher in the UK, people who spent five minutes suppressing thoughts of chocolate then ate more of it in a taste test than people who had simply talked aloud with no instructions.⁹ That account comes from the abstract alone. Ordering yourself not to think about the snack may backfire, and noticing it is the alternative.

The best-known test of urge surfing itself also points at the response rather than the feeling.

The study

Limited evidence

Same urges, fewer cigarettes: a 2009 lab study of student smokers

In a study run by University of Washington researchers, 123 undergraduate smokers who wanted to change their smoking but were not in a quit program took part in a cue-exposure task designed to set off urges. They were randomly assigned to brief mindfulness instructions based on urge surfing or to no instructions. The two groups’ urges did not differ. Over the next seven days, though, the mindfulness group smoked significantly fewer cigarettes.³

That pattern is the heart of the technique: the urge arrived just as strongly, and people did less about it. The study had a small sample of students, one week of follow-up, and only the abstract to go on.

Urge surfing also turns up in the original dopamine detox, where it is one of two techniques borrowed from therapy for cutting back an impulsive behavior.

Does urge surfing work for addiction?

For people in addiction treatment, most of the evidence on urge surfing comes from mindfulness-based relapse prevention, a therapist-led group program used as aftercare once initial treatment ends. The results are encouraging in some trials and flat in others, and on its own, urge surfing is not a treatment for dependence.

The program’s 12-month test, published in JAMA Psychiatry in 2014, followed 286 adults for a year after they finished treatment at a US nonprofit agency. They were randomly assigned to the mindfulness program, to standard cognitive-behavioral relapse prevention, or to the agency’s usual 12-step-based aftercare. At six months, both skills programs had lowered the risk of relapse to drug use and heavy drinking compared with usual care; at a year, the mindfulness group reported less heavy drinking than both other groups and, among those who used drugs, fewer days of drug use.⁴ Outcomes were mostly self-reported, and some authors are paid to train therapists in the program.

Smaller trials pull in both directions. A 2009 pilot by the same team found lower substance use over four months than usual care.¹⁰ A 2026 pilot in Hong Kong found no statistically significant differences between groups on any outcome, including craving.⁵ Pooled together, as in the RAND review above, the picture is uncertain. A 2026 umbrella review of 11 earlier reviews (we read its abstract only) was more upbeat about relapse and craving but flagged uneven study quality.¹¹

Outside formal treatment, a 2017 study from the University of Alaska Anchorage gave 28 adults with an alcohol use disorder a phone app offering an urge-surfing audio track among other coping tools. Cravings met with urge surfing were followed by drinking less often than those met with strategies outside the app.¹² People chose their own strategy, so this shows an association, not proof.

For anyone in treatment, urge surfing is one tool inside a program, used alongside the rest of your care, not a replacement for it.

Is urge surfing a DBT skill?

Urge surfing did not start in dialectical behavior therapy (DBT); it comes from Marlatt’s relapse prevention. DBT therapists do teach it, though. A 2025 US case report described teaching “riding the wave,” or urge surfing, as a DBT skill to two women with post-traumatic stress disorder and eating disorders.⁸ A 2026 trial protocol from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Bhopal, lists urge surfing in a DBT distress-tolerance session for people with obsessive-compulsive disorder.¹³

We could not check Marsha Linehan’s DBT skills manual, so we make no claim about it. If you are in DBT, ask your therapist how urge surfing fits with the distraction and self-soothing skills you are learning.

Alcohol, drugs and dependence: get help before you stop

Urge surfing is a way to sit through a craving, not a way to come off a substance your body depends on. If you drink heavily or use drugs regularly, stopping suddenly can be dangerous, and the safe route starts with a doctor.

• Now: if someone may have overdosed, or seizures, severe confusion, hallucinations or fever follow stopping alcohol, phone your local emergency number; MedlinePlus gives 911 as the US example.¹⁶ Across the EU, 112 reaches all emergency services.¹⁷ In the US, the 988 line answers calls and texts from anyone in suicidal crisis or emotional distress.¹⁸ NHS guidance for the UK points to 999 when a life is at risk, such as after an overdose, and the Samaritans line, 116 123, for talking about anything troubling you.¹⁹ If you live elsewhere, note the emergency and crisis numbers for your country before you need them.
• Soon: if you drink heavily or use drugs regularly, see a doctor or an addiction service before you try to stop, for the reasons in the box above. NIDA notes that medicines exist to help with alcohol, nicotine and opioid addiction, and urge surfing is no substitute for them.¹⁵ If urges to self-harm, binge or purge keep returning, see a doctor or mental health service too.
• Routine: mention it to your doctor at a regular visit if a habit keeps winning despite your efforts, or is costing you sleep, money or relationships.

The bottom line

Urge surfing asks you to treat a craving as a wave you can watch, not an order you must follow. Its best support is modest: it seems to change what people do with an urge more than how strong the urge feels, and the program built around it has a small, uncertain effect on craving and withdrawal. For everyday urges, try the five steps and judge them by what you did. For alcohol or drugs you depend on, get a doctor’s help with stopping.