Cravings used to decide if I stayed clean.
I used to believe cravings were a command.
Or at least that’s what it felt like my body was telling me.
It didn’t matter where I was or what I was doing—when that feeling hit, everything else faded into the background. My thoughts would narrow, my body would tighten and tingle, and it felt like there was only one way to make it stop. I didn’t question it. I didn’t analyze it. I just obeyed.
In early recovery, that belief followed me like a shadow. Every craving felt dangerous. Every urge felt like a ticking clock. And if I’m being honest, part of what made it so overwhelming was that I didn’t understand it. I thought all cravings were the same—one powerful force trying to drag me backward.
But over time, I stopped letting my addictions take first place in my life.
Not all cravings come from the same place. And more importantly, not all of them need to be handled the same way.
Learning the difference between emotional and physical cravings didn’t just help me stay clean—it helped me understand myself on a deeper level.
The First Time I Questioned a Craving
I remember one moment clearly.
I was sitting at my parents house, doing nothing particularly stressful. It was a quiet day.
I was crafting with my mom. A show playing in the background. M*A*S*H* I think. No chaos. Just making little glow in the dark ghosts. In the heat of the summer with the door open there were some flies buzzing around.. And yet, out of nowhere, the urge hit me hard. It felt physical—like it was sitting in my chest, pressing outward. My skin began to crawl.
My first instinct was panic.
Why now? Where is this coming from?
I almost convinced myself that it meant something was wrong, that I was about to relapse no matter what I did. But for some reason—maybe exhaustion, maybe frustration having just come out of my second relapse—I didn’t act on it right away.
But I also couldn’t just sit there, I jumped up and ran to the road to get cell service. I called my accountability partner.
She told me to come over and hang out before the meeting that night. I paced back and forth in her kitchen for up to an hour. Many ramblings, many tears and a little panic attack.
And slowly, something strange happened. The feeling shifted. It didn’t disappear instantly, but it changed. It softened. Within a couple hours of me being chaotic then sitting silently through a meeting, it was gone.
That moment stuck with me because it didn’t fit the story I had always told myself. If cravings were unstoppable, why did that one pass?
That question opened the door to something I had never really considered before: maybe cravings aren’t all the same.
What Physical Cravings Feel Like
Physical cravings are the ones I notice in my body first.
They don’t ask permission—they just show up.
Sometimes it’s a restless energy that makes it hard to sit still, like my body is trying to crawl out of itself. Other times it’s more subtle, like a tension in my chest or a kind of tingling under my skin. There’s an urgency to it, a sense that something needs to be done to fix this like right now.
When I first started recognizing these sensations, I assumed they were the most dangerous kind of craving. They felt powerful, almost primal. Like my body was overriding my logic.
But what I’ve learned—through experience, not theory—is that physical cravings have a rhythm.
They rise. They peak. And then, if I don’t feed them, they pass.
That doesn’t mean they’re easy to sit through. There are moments when they feel almost unbearable, when every second stretches out and I’m convinced it will never end. I shut off all other sensory input and lay like a vegetable for as long as it takes. But it always does pass.
Always.
The problem was, I rarely gave them the chance to pass before. I reacted too quickly. I tried to escape the discomfort instead of understanding it.
Now, when a physical craving hits, I try to respond differently. Not perfectly—just differently.
Sometimes I go for a walk, even if I don’t feel like it. Sometimes I drink a glass of water, or exercise till my body is more focused on the muscle pain than the craving. I remind myself, over and over, this is temporary.
And even when I don’t fully believe it, I’ve lived it enough times to know it’s true.
Emotional Cravings: The Quieter Danger
Emotional cravings are a different story.
They don’t always feel intense at first. In fact, sometimes they barely feel like cravings at all.
They show up as thoughts.
That’s what makes them so hard to catch.
It might start with something small, almost harmless:
“You’ve been doing really well lately.”
“You deserve a break.”
“Just once won’t matter.”
On the surface, these thoughts don’t seem dangerous. They don’t come with the same physical urgency. They don’t feel like a wave crashing over me.
They feel… reasonable.
That’s what makes them dangerous.
Emotional cravings are tied to something deeper—something I’m feeling but not fully acknowledging. Stress, loneliness, boredom, anger, shame. Sometimes it’s even something positive, like excitement or relief. Anything that creates an emotional shift can open the door.
And instead of hitting all at once, emotional cravings build slowly.
They linger, or come and go until they get louder over time.
If I ignore them, they don’t fade—they grow. They start to reshape my thinking. I begin to romanticize the past, focusing only on the parts that felt good and conveniently forgetting everything that led me to recovery in the first place.
That’s the part that scares me the most: not the craving itself, but how convincing the little addiction voice can become.
The Internal Negotiation
When I’m in the middle of an emotional craving, it doesn’t feel like a battle.
It feels like a negotiation.
And my mind is very, very good at arguing its case.
It tells me I’ve earned it.
That I’m strong enough to handle it now.
It tells me this time will be different, I’ve grown.
And if I’m not paying attention or working my program, I start to agree.
That’s how relapse used to begin for me—not with a sudden loss of control, but with a quiet shift in perspective. A slow rewriting of the truth.
I didn’t wake up one day and decide to go backward. I talked myself into it, one thought at a time. Then I waited for one singular moment to blame.
Recognizing that pattern has been uncomfortable, but necessary. Because now I know: when my thoughts start justifying something I once fought so hard to leave behind, that’s not clarity.
That’s a warning sign.
Learning to Pause
If there’s one thing that’s changed for me, it’s this:
I’ve learned to pause.
Not perfectly. Not every time. But more often than I used to.
When a craving hits now, I try to create just a little bit of space between the feeling and my response. Even a few seconds can make a difference.
I first recite the word, ‘detach’ as many times as I need.
Then I view it as a scientific investigation.
I ask myself questions I never used to ask:
- Was there an obvious trigger that I somehow missed?
- What am I actually feeling right now?
- Is this coming from my body or my mind?
- What do I really need at this moment in time?
Sometimes the answer is obvious. Other times it takes a while to surface.
But that pause—that moment of curiosity instead of reaction—has saved me more times than I can count.
What Helps Me Ride It Out
Over time, I’ve built a kind of toolbox. Not a perfect one, not a complete one—but enough to get me through most days.
For physical cravings, I focus on movement and time. I remind myself that I don’t have to solve anything—I just have to get through the wave. I will change my environment if I can. I distract myself. I breathe, even when it feels pointless.
For emotional cravings, I have to go deeper.
I’ve learned that ignoring them doesn’t work. If anything, it makes them stronger. So I try to face them, even when it’s uncomfortable.
Sometimes that means talking to someone such as a friend or accountability partner and admitting I’m not okay. Sometimes it means writing things down—honestly, without filtering or trying to make it sound better than it is. Sometimes it just means sitting with the feeling long enough to name it.
Lonely. Overwhelmed. Angry. Numb.
There’s something powerful about putting a name to it. It takes the edge off. It makes it feel less like an invisible force and more like something I can understand.
Where I Am Now
I still get cravings.
That hasn’t changed.
What’s changed is how I respond to them.
The biggest shift for me wasn’t just recognizing the difference between emotional and physical cravings.
It was realizing that neither one controls me.
For so long, I believed that cravings meant I was failing. That having the urge meant I was weak, or that relapse was inevitable.
Now I see it differently.
Cravings are information.
Physical cravings tell me my body is adjusting, reacting, remembering. Emotional cravings tell me something inside me needs attention.
Neither one is a command.
Neither one is permanent.
And neither one has the power to decide what I do next.
I don’t panic as quickly. I don’t assume the worst. I don’t automatically believe every thought that crosses my mind.
There are still hard days—days when the line between emotional and physical blurs, when everything feels overwhelming and I’m not sure what I need. Days when the pause feels impossible.
But even on those days, I know this:
I’ve felt this before.
I’ve gotten through it before.
And I can get through it again.
Recovery hasn’t made me immune to cravings.
It’s taught me how to understand them.
And in that understanding, I’ve found something I never thought I’d have again:
A Choice.