What Sets You Off
This is anything — a person, a place, a smell, a feeling — that makes you suddenly want to use.
What is a trigger?
Name a time a place — a street, a shop, a room — made you feel something shift inside before you even knew why.
Personal share — full points for naming the place and describing what happened inside you.
True or false: A craving keeps building and building until you use — or something dramatic happens to stop it.
What is FALSE? A craving is like a wave. It rises, peaks, and then falls — usually within 15 to 30 minutes — whether you use or not.
Name a day of the week or a time of day that is most dangerous for people in recovery.
What is Friday or Saturday night? (Also accept: payday, late night, after work, weekends with no plans.)
Name one thing you can do in the first sixty seconds of a craving that actually helps.
Full points for any specific, realistic action: step outside, call someone, breathe, say it out loud, drink water, move your body.
True or false: Triggers only come from outside you — like seeing a bar or running into an old friend.
What is FALSE? Triggers can come from inside too — a feeling like stress, boredom, loneliness, or even excitement.
Name a time a person — not what they said, just being around them — made the urge to use come back.
Personal share — full points for describing the effect, not necessarily naming the person.
This is the name for the skill where you watch a craving like a wave — without acting on it and without fighting it.
What is urge surfing?
This four-letter word describes the moment just before a relapse when someone starts to believe using is not a big deal.
What is SLIP — or specifically, the permission-giving thoughts: "just this once," "I've got it," "no one will know."
This strategy means picturing what happens two hours after you use — not the relief part, but everything that comes after.
What is playing the tape forward?
These four states make any trigger harder to handle: Hungry, Angry, ___, Tired.
ANSWER
What is LONELY? (The HALT check.)
Name a time you were actually happy — celebrating something good — and still got a craving. What was going on?
Personal share — full points for naming the positive emotion and connecting it to the craving.
True or false: Having a craving means you actually want to use.
What is FALSE? A craving is a reflex — the brain's automatic response to something it learned. Wanting and craving are not the same thing. You can have a craving and still choose not to use.
Name a time you walked into a situation thinking you could handle it — and realized too late that you could not. What happened?
Personal share — full points for naming the situation and what it taught them.
Name a time calling or texting someone before things got bad actually changed what happened that day.
Personal share — full points for naming what they said, who they called, and what it changed.
Name a time something completely ordinary — a song, a smell, a TV show — suddenly brought back the urge to use out of nowhere.
Personal share — full points for any honest, specific answer.
Name a time you caught yourself heading toward a trigger without realizing it — what did you notice, and what did you do?
Personal share — full points for naming the trigger and the moment of awareness.
Name a time you rode out a craving without using. How long did it last — and what did you do while you waited for it to pass?
Personal share — full points for naming the craving, the action, and an honest sense of how long it lasted.
Name a time or moment when you felt great — confident, happy, on top of things — what did you avoid to get to that place?
Personal share — full points for naming the situation and what it taught them.
Name the coping skill that works best for you — not the one you are supposed to say, the one that actually works when things get hard.
Personal share — full points for a real, specific answer. Bonus if they can explain WHY it works for them specifically.
True or false: If you have been in recovery long enough, triggers eventually stop showing up.
What is FALSE? Triggers can fire years into recovery. They often become less powerful over time — but knowing your triggers never stops being important.
Name a time someone in your life noticed your warning signs before you did. What did they say or do — and did it land?
Personal share — full points for naming what was said or done and whether it helped.
What happens — in your body, not just your head — when a craving hits? Where do you feel it, and what does it actually feel like?
Personal share — full points for a specific, physical description. Cravings live in the body. Naming where helps.
Name the high-risk situation that is hardest for you to plan for — the one where you feel most caught off guard. What makes it so hard?
Personal share — full points for naming the situation and what makes it difficult to prepare for.
Right now, in this room — what is one thing you know about managing your triggers that you did not know a year ago? And who needs to hear it?
Personal share — full points for a specific insight and naming who they would share it with. Encourage them to actually say it to that person.