What to do in the minutes of an urge, when pushing it away brings it back

The white bear

In a 1987 experiment, Wegner and colleagues sat students alone, asked them to say whatever came to mind, and had them ring a bell every time a white bear came up¹. Two groups first spent 5 minutes trying not to think of a white bear¹. One of those groups had a red Volkswagen to think of instead. Then both groups were asked to try to think of it for 5 minutes¹. A third group was asked to think of it from the start, with no suppression before, and those thinking periods are the ones compared¹.

Students asked to think of it from the start thought of the bear 15.47 times on average¹. Students who had spent the first 5 minutes pushing it away thought of it 34.05 times, a little over twice as often¹. The group with the red car landed in between, at 21¹. Holding the thought down was followed by a rebound, and having one other thing to think about reduced it¹.

That was 49 students and a white bear, which is a long way from an urge¹. The closer test came in 2010, in a trial with 85 smokers who were not trying to quit². The ones told to push away thoughts of smoking for a week smoked less that week, then more than the other groups in week three². A 2020 review pooled 41 comparisons from studies published between 1987 and 2015 and found a rebound with an effect size of 0.19³. After a correction for bias toward small studies, the rebound was no longer significantly different from zero³. So pushing a thought away is no disaster, and pooled over many studies the rebound is small. In the white bear and smoking studies it still did the opposite of what people wanted¹².

One thing to say plainly before going further. Almost nothing on this page was measured on porn. The studies are of students, smokers, and people using alcohol and drugs. They are here because they test what to do with a craving in the moment, and no one has run the same tests on a sexual urge.

Letting the urge pass

If fighting the thought brings it back, the obvious next question is what happens if you stop fighting it. Bowen and Marlatt tested that in 2009 with 123 college students who smoked⁴. Each went 12 hours without a cigarette, then opened a pack, put a cigarette in their mouth and raised a lighter without lighting it⁴.

Before that, 61 of them heard about 11 minutes on urge surfing, which teaches you to notice an urge and let it pass without acting on it. The other 62 heard a recording of the same length telling them to use their usual coping⁴. Over the next week, the urge surfing group went from 5.93 cigarettes a day to 3.75. The usual coping group went from 4.73 to 4.55⁴.

The part we find most useful is what did not change. The urges were no weaker in the urge surfing group, at the session, a day later or a week later⁴. What changed was what people did with them. A week on, low mood and urges went together far less in the urge surfing group, a correlation of 0.29 against 0.66⁴. In the other group, a bad mood still tended to bring an urge with it.

The study has real limits. These were light smokers, about 5 a day, mostly men, who wanted to change their smoking but were not in a quit program⁴. The urge surfing group started higher, so part of its drop may be a return to normal, though the analysis adjusted for the starting level. It ran one week, cigarettes were self-reported with no breath test, and groups were assigned by session time rather than person by person⁴. Still, it fits with the white bear. Neither study made the thought go away, and the group that stopped trying to came out ahead.

Slowing the breath

Urge surfing changes what you do with a craving and leaves the craving as it is. Other tools try to turn the craving itself down. A 2026 review by Roxburgh and colleagues pooled 12 controlled studies of slow, paced breathing in alcohol, drug and nicotine use, with 696 people in all⁵. Controlled breathing lowered craving by an effect size of 0.3, with a 95% interval of 0.12 to 0.48, and the studies mostly agreed⁵.

Some of those studies used a heart-rate monitor to pace the breathing and some did not. Breathing with a monitor did no better than plain slow breathing⁵. No gadget needed.

An effect of 0.3 is small. For scale, a separate review by López-Pinar, Esparza-Reig and Bőthe found psychotherapy for problematic porn use lowered craving by 0.31, across 5 trials and 797 people⁶. Those 5 trials varied widely, and the authors rated every study in their review at high risk of bias or with some concerns⁶. The two numbers come from different people and different cravings, and nobody tested one against the other⁵⁶. No breathing study measured a sexual urge⁵. Breathing lowers craving. It does not end it.

Getting up and moving

Exercise has its own evidence, all of it in smokers. Haasova and colleagues pooled the raw data from 19 randomised trials, 930 observations in all, and rescaled every craving measure to a 0 to 100 scale⁷. Craving was measured right after exercise or 5 minutes later, against people who rested⁷.

Moderate exercise lowered craving by 34.6 points, across 17 studies⁷. Vigorous exercise did about the same, 31.3 points across 4 studies⁷. Light exercise managed 9.2, about a quarter of the moderate drop⁷. Going harder than moderate bought nothing extra.

The kind of exercise mattered less than the effort. Walking, running and cycling worked about equally⁷. Tensing muscles in place and 5 minute bouts made no significant difference⁷. So the version that worked meant getting up and moving for longer than a few minutes, and a walk counted. Every trial was in smokers, none measured a sexual urge, and the review covers the minutes after exercise, not whether anyone quit⁷.

Training for the long run

Breathing and exercise work in minutes. Urge surfing, in the student study, was a one-week result. The harder question is whether learning to sit with urges changes anything months later. Bowen, Witkiewitz, Clifasefi and colleagues tested that in a 2014 trial⁸.

286 adults who had just finished inpatient or intensive outpatient treatment were randomly assigned to one of three aftercare programs⁸. One was mindfulness-based relapse prevention, which trains people to notice cravings and the thoughts around them without acting on them. It ran as 8 weekly sessions, and the authors cite the urge surfing study when they explain its longer-term effect⁸. The other two were standard relapse prevention and usual aftercare based on the twelve steps.

At 12 months, 7.8% of the mindfulness group reported any heavy drinking in the 90 days before the check, 8 of 103 people⁸. Standard relapse prevention came in at 19.3% and usual aftercare at 20%⁸. Those shares divide by everyone assigned, including the roughly 1 in 5 in each group who missed the 12-month check, so they run lower than the share among people who answered⁸.

It is one trial, and the picture is less tidy than the chart. At 6 months, standard relapse prevention did better on time to first drug use⁸. Drinking and drug use were self-reported⁸. And a 2017 review by Grant and colleagues, pooling 7 trials, found no significant difference in relapse⁹. We read this result as a strong single trial that the pooled evidence has not yet backed up.

How they found it

• In the white bear study, each student sat alone, said whatever came to mind, and rang a bell every time a white bear came up. Two groups first spent 5 minutes trying not to think of it, one with a red Volkswagen to think of instead. The chart counts the 5 minutes in which each group was asked to try to think of it, after suppression for those two groups and from the start for a third.
• In the urge surfing study, after 12 hours without smoking, students opened a pack, put a cigarette in their mouth and raised a lighter without lighting it. Before that, one group heard about 11 minutes on urge surfing and the other a recording of the same length on their usual coping.
• The breathing review pooled 12 controlled studies of slow, paced breathing, some with a heart-rate monitor and some without.
• The exercise review pooled the raw data from 19 randomised trials in smokers, rescaling every craving measure to 0 to 100. Craving was measured right after exercise or 5 minutes later, against people who rested.
• The mindfulness trial randomly assigned 286 adults who had just finished inpatient or intensive outpatient treatment to one of three aftercare programs. Its percentages count everyone assigned, including people who missed the 12-month check.

What it cannot tell you

• None of these studies measured a sexual urge. They are of students, smokers, and people using alcohol and drugs.
• A white bear is not an urge. In a 2010 trial with 85 smokers, the ones told to push away thoughts of smoking for a week smoked more than the other groups in week three. A 2020 review pooling 41 comparisons found a rebound with an effect size of 0.19, which a correction for small-study bias left no longer significant.
• The urge surfing study ran one week in light smokers, about 5 a day, mostly men, with cigarettes self-reported and groups assigned by session time. Its urge surfing group started higher, so part of the drop may be a return to normal.
• The breathing and therapy effects come from different people and different cravings. They were never tested against each other.
• The exercise review measures the minutes after exercise, not whether anyone quit.
• The mindfulness result is one trial. A 2017 review pooling 7 trials found no significant difference in relapse, and at 6 months standard relapse prevention did better on time to first drug use.

In P-Minus

The P-Minus urge button gives you coping actions and your own plan to follow.

Sources

1. Wegner DM, Schneider DJ, Carter SR, White TL. Paradoxical effects of thought suppression. J Pers Soc Psychol. 1987;53(1):5-13.
2. Erskine JAK, Georgiou GJ, Kvavilashvili L. I suppress, therefore I smoke: effects of thought suppression on smoking behavior. Psychol Sci. 2010;21(9):1225-30.
3. Wang DA, Hagger MS, Chatzisarantis NLD. Ironic effects of thought suppression: a meta-analysis. Perspect Psychol Sci. 2020;15(3):778-93.
4. Bowen S, Marlatt A. Surfing the urge: brief mindfulness-based intervention for college student smokers. Psychol Addict Behav. 2009;23(4):666-71.
5. Roxburgh AD, Rowland B, Lubman DI, et al. Controlled breathing and heart rate variability biofeedback for substance use-related outcomes: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Addiction. 2026.
6. López-Pinar C, Esparza-Reig J, Bőthe B. Psychotherapy for problematic pornography use: a comprehensive meta-analysis. J Behav Addict. 2025;14(2):630-43.
7. Haasova M, Warren FC, Ussher M, et al. The acute effects of physical activity on cigarette cravings: exploration of potential moderators, mediators and physical activity attributes using individual participant data (IPD) meta-analyses. Psychopharmacology. 2014;231(7):1267-75.
8. Bowen S, Witkiewitz K, Clifasefi SL, et al. Relative efficacy of mindfulness-based relapse prevention, standard relapse prevention, and treatment as usual for substance use disorders: a randomized clinical trial. JAMA Psychiatry. 2014;71(5):547-56.
9. Grant S, Colaiaco B, Motala A, et al. Mindfulness-based relapse prevention for substance use disorders: a systematic review and meta-analysis. J Addict Med. 2017;11(5):386-96.

Sources checked October 2026.