When you feel a craving for something – a cookie, a beer, Instagram – what does the craving say?
It says, “You need this. Right now.”
And our default response is to believe what the craving says.
But it turns out that both the need and the now are lies.
In fact, cravings aren’t just lies, they’re illusions.
Cravings are Externally Triggered
I recently did this jigsaw puzzle:
Although I love donuts, I never crave them out of the blue. But I spent the entire time I worked on this puzzle craving donuts. Why? Because I was looking at them.
Some restaurants purposely pump French fry smell out towards the street to trigger a craving in passing pedestrians. They know that sensory exposure leads to desire.
These two examples show that we experience cravings primarily when our senses remind us that something desirable exists.
This is the basic principle behind fast food advertisements, beer vendors at baseball stadiums, and candy in the check-out lane at the grocery store. These external stimuli trigger cravings, which cause people to make purchases they otherwise would not.
More importantly, the fact that cravings are externally triggered means they don’t come from something real inside of you. That’s the first reason why cravings are illusions. The other reason has to do with the timing of cravings.
The Surprising Timing of Cravings
Anyone who’s had a chemical addiction to something like alcohol or cigarettes is probably thinking that I’m full of crap. When you have a drug addiction, your own body and mind produce cravings. That’s how chemical dependency works.
Or does it?
Nir Eyal describes a surprising study in his book Indistractable:
“Two groups of flight attendants who smoked were sent ton two separate flights from Israel. One group was sent on a three-hour flight to Europe, while the other group traveled to New York, a ten-hour flight. All the smokers were asked by the researchers to rate their level of cravings at set time intervals before, during, and after the flight. …
When the flight attendants flying to New York were above the Atlantic Ocean, they reported weak cravings. Meanwhile, at the exact same moment, the cravings of their colleagues who had just landed in Europe were at their strongest. What was going on?
The New York-bound flight attendants knew they could not smoke in the middle of a flight without being fired. Only later, when they approached their destination, did they report the greatest desire to smoke. …
What affected their desire was not how much time had passed after a smoke, but how much time was left before they could smoke again.”1
If cravings were real, internally generated feelings, then the flight attendants would have craved cigarettes at the same time – as soon as it had been too long since their last nicotine hit. Instead, they only felt strong cravings when cigarettes were almost available. Those on the shorter flight did not actually need to smoke right when they landed in Europe; the near-availability of smoking tricked them into feeling that way.
I’ve experienced the same thing while fasting. I can go a long time without eating and only experience mild hunger, but as soon as I’m about to break my fast, my hunger spikes. While I’m finally preparing food in the kitchen, I feel desperate to eat, and I’m shockingly impatient. I frantically grab handfuls of nuts while I’m preparing the meal, and I get frustrated if there’s a delay.
This is completely irrational. Objectively, I don’t need food any more than I did before I stepped into the kitchen. But suddenly, because I’m almost there, I experience a massive craving for food.
Patience Training
If I understand that cravings are an illusion – the result of external triggers and timing, rather than real, urgent needs – then I can use them as training opportunities. Cravings are a chance to practice patience.
When I feel like I need something right now, I don’t have to act on that feeling. I can wait. I can sit with the discomfort of delay, training myself to tolerate it better.
This not only produces better behavior, but it also feels better. Buddhism teaches that the source of unhappiness is desire: We crave something, and when we can’t get it, we suffer. Or we do get it, but the satisfaction doesn’t last, and we’re left craving more or craving something new.2
The antidote to this kind of suffering is acceptance: accepting that we want something that’s out of reach, accepting that we can’t have it, or accepting that we have to wait.
There’s a technique in addiction recovery called “urge surfing” that demonstrates the power of acceptance. When you feel a craving, you just sit with it. You don’t try to get yourself to stop feeling the craving. Instead, you mindfully observe how it feels, examining the feeling with the curiosity of a biologist studying a new species of beetle. And what happens when you ride the wave of your urge? The craving subsides.3
How to Beat Cravings
Lastly, let’s use these ideas to outsmart our cravings.
The fact that cravings are externally triggered means we should do everything we can to reduce those triggers. The things you’re trying to consume less should be kept out of sight and out of reach.
- Hide the junk food in a closet or don’t buy it at all.
- If you’re newly sober and trying to avoid alcohol cravings, don’t go to bars and parties where you’ll be exposed to alcohol.
- Delete social media apps from your phone or at least remove the icons from your home screen.
- Keep your phone out of sight and out of reach when you’re trying to do deep work.
The fact that cravings spike when what we want is nearly available means we should make craveable things less available. Apply the 20-Second Rule and make the things you’re trying to avoid consuming inconvenient to access. Or better yet, make it a pain in the butt.
- Put your junk food in a box in the garage, underneath some other boxes.
- Take the batteries out of the TV remote and stuff them in a drawer in a different room.
- Don’t let social media websites save your log-in information, so you’re forced to type it in each time.
- Leave your phone in airplane mode, so you can’t instantly access any of its distractions.
But even with these strategies, you’ll never be able to avoid cravings entirely; the marketers of the world have made sure of that. So, when you inevitably feel a craving for something you know you’re better off not consuming, remember that the feeling is a lie: You don’t really need that thing, and you don’t have to have it right now.
1Eyan, Nir. Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life. BenBella Books, 2019.
2Wright, Robert. Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment. Simon and Schuster, 2017.
3Jessica Drew de Paz, PsyD. “Urge Surfing in the New Year: Resolving to Ride the Waves of Change.” Integrative Insider. January 9, 2024.