Pick up the phone before the drink
For a craving, insert a pause by externalising it: 'pick up the phone before you pick up a drink'. Call someone and name the urge out loud — five minutes on the phone is often enough to come down from the hyperfocus locked onto that first drink or hit.
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ADHD impairs the inhibitory pause between an impulse and acting on it, and a craving narrows that further into a hyperfocus whose only target is the next drink or hit. The counter is to manufacture the missing pause by externalising the moment. The concrete rule: pick up the phone before you pick up a drink — call a supportive person and say out loud that you’re having the urge right now. The act of naming it to someone and staying on the line for about five minutes is often enough to break the hyperfocus loop and let the urge subside before it becomes an irreversible action. This is the in-the-moment version of the wider ‘think, pause, act’ principle (deliberately inserting a gap between thought and action so the impulse can resolve), applied to the highest-risk seconds where a generic ‘sleep on it’ is too slow.
