A reader writes in and asks: “How long do alcohol cravings last?”

This depends on the person, of course.  But the type of person who is asking this question is most likely just getting sober, and I want to assure them that first of all, cravings do pass.  In fact, even if you are craving alcohol right now at this very minute, you can become distracted at some point over the next hour or so and realize that the alcohol craving was, in fact, very temporary.  We tend to believe that our cravings our continuous and that we simple want to drink all the time.  This is not the case, even when we first get sober, but sometimes we don’t believe it unless we prove it to ourselves.

But the real question this person is asking is this: for how long am I going to miss and crave alcohol?  For how long am I going to want to drink?  As a recovering alcoholic I can tell you that there will always be a tiny part of you that wants to drink.  You can be several years sober and walk past a television and there could be some image on it that just triggers some part of your brain and for a split second, a beer sounds really good.  Or whatever.  But we catch ourselves and it is not the end of the world and it will not even bum you out at that point.  All it does is give you a 2 second reminder that you are still an alcoholic and that part of you is still capable of coming alive (if you let it).

When I first got clean and sober I thought about drinking and using drugs every day.  I had lots of cravings.  And I told the people in recovery who were trying to help me that I was unique, and that I would always crave drugs and alcohol.  They were nice and polite with me and told me that the cravings would pass eventually.  I did not believe them.

Well guess what….about 2 or 3 months into my recovery, I realized that I had just gone through an entire day of my sobriety without thinking about using drugs and alcohol.  Not once did I even consider it or have to fight off the idea of relapse.  Not a single time.  And this was very early in my recovery that this miracle happened.  Now did I still have the occasional craving after that?  Sure.  But I was out of the woods at that point, at least with the mental part of it.

So stick it out and keep taking positive action every day and you will eventually get there.  “There” meaning: a place with no cravings.  For me it took about 2 months.