Riding Out a Craving: The First Ten Minutes

Most cravings peak within about five minutes and start easing within twenty if you don’t act on them, so the first ten minutes are usually the hardest stretch. Ground yourself, name the urge, rate it, then add a few rounds of bilateral stimulation (BLS), the technique behind EMDR, at each checkpoint until it passes.

The craving hits like a switch flipping. One second you’re fine, and the next you’re already negotiating with yourself about why this time doesn’t count.

What’s actually happening in those first few minutes?

The APA Dictionary of Psychology defines a craving as an intense, sometimes overwhelming desire for something, one of the clinical markers doctors use when diagnosing a substance use disorder. Everyday urges, even the ones with no diagnosis attached, tend to follow a similar arc: they build, peak, and fade, whether or not you act on them. University of Michigan psychology research on cravings found the pull typically peaks around five minutes and eases within about twenty if you leave it alone. The first ten minutes cover most of that climb, which is why they usually feel like the hardest part.

A craving like this is often standing in for something else: a fast way to quiet stress, boredom, or discomfort when nothing calmer is close at hand.

Ground yourself before you start the clock

Before you try to observe a craving calmly, make sure you’re calm enough to observe anything. Take a few slow breaths, feel your feet on the floor, and run a quick grounding check: name a few things you can see or hear right now. Trying to ride out a strong urge without grounding first tends to backfire, turning a ten-minute window into a much longer fight.

Go slow: one craving, one window at a time

Pick one specific craving, not every habit you’d like to change at once. “The urge to check my phone right now” is workable. “Fix my whole relationship with sugar” is not, at least not in one sitting. Keep this practice to one urge and one ten-minute window at a time, and expect to repeat it many times before it feels close to automatic.

Know your stop point

If your distress climbs above a 7 out of 10 and won’t come back down, stop. Ground yourself again, and consider working with a professional rather than pushing through alone. If the craving involves a substance your body may depend on physically, like alcohol, nicotine, opioids, or a prescription medication, talk with a doctor before you try to cut back or stop. Never start, stop, or change a medication without your prescriber; withdrawal from some substances is medically risky no matter which technique you use alongside it.

A minute-by-minute way to ride out the craving

With grounding and a stop point in place, here’s how to move through the first ten minutes with a few rounds of bilateral stimulation:

• Minute 0–1: Name it and rate it. Say what’s happening, without judgment: “craving for a cigarette,” “urge to check my phone.” On a 0–10 scale, how strong is it right now?
• Minute 1–3: Locate it in your body. Chest, stomach, hands, jaw? Describe the sensation itself, tight, hot, buzzing, restless, rather than the story wrapped around it.
• Minute 3–5: Ride the peak with bilateral stimulation. This is usually the hardest stretch. Move your eyes smoothly left and right for 20 to 30 seconds, tap your knees or shoulders left-right (the “butterfly hug”), or use alternating left-right audio tones. Let your breath anchor you while the peak passes.
• Minute 5–7: Pause and re-rate. What shifted in the sensation, even slightly? Add a second round of bilateral stimulation if the number hasn’t moved much yet.
• Minute 7–10: Check in one more time. If the number is easing, you’re most of the way there. If it climbed instead, stop, ground yourself, and treat that as a sign to try again later or reach for more support.

Watching a clock and counting rounds while a craving is loud is one more task than most people want to hold mid-urge. EmEase, a self-guided EMDR app, runs the same left-right technique for you with a moving on-screen target or alternating tones, paced however you like, in the web app. The beginner’s guide to self-guided bilateral stimulation covers choosing a method and pace in more detail.

Does bilateral stimulation actually help with a craving?

There’s real evidence behind the mechanism, with an important caveat about who it’s been studied in. Since the early 1990s, EMDR clinicians have used a structured protocol called DeTUR (Desensitization of Triggers and Urge Reprocessing), developed by A.J. Popky, one of EMDR’s early contributors, to work directly with triggers and the urge to use. A 2024 meta-analysis in Brain Sciences, pooling five studies and 266 participants with substance use disorders, found EMDR therapy produced a statistically significant reduction in craving compared with control conditions.

That evidence comes from trained clinicians working with people who have a diagnosed substance use disorder, not from someone running a few minutes of self-guided BLS on a phone habit or a sugar craving. The minute-by-minute practice above borrows the same rhythmic left-right mechanism in a lower-stakes way: a plausible, low-risk tool for getting through a rough ten minutes, not a proven addiction treatment.

When is ten minutes not enough?

This practice is built for everyday, situational cravings. It’s probably not enough on its own if:

• A substance you use may involve physical dependency, like alcohol, nicotine, opioids, or a prescription medication. Talk with a doctor before changing your use, and never adjust a medication without your prescriber.
• The craving is disrupting your health, relationships, work, or finances in ways that feel bigger than an everyday habit.
• Distress climbs past a 7 out of 10 during the practice above and won’t settle, even after a few rounds.
• The craving connects to thoughts of harming yourself. That’s outside what self-guided practice is built for. A licensed professional, or our crisis resources page, is the safer next step.

In any of those, a licensed therapist, ideally one trained in EMDR or addiction-focused care, is the safer path. If stress or burnout is what’s fueling the craving in the first place, our guide to stress and burnout looks at that pressure directly. And if the wave-riding technique behind this practice interests you, urge surfing covers it in more depth. Our hub on habits and urges covers the wider pattern.

You don’t have to win every ten-minute window perfectly. Riding out one craving, one time, is real practice, and it counts even when it’s messy.