If today is the hard one, start here.
You do not have to be in danger to use this page. Reaching for it early is the point. Nothing here is logged to a clinic.
Talk to someone now.
These lines are free, confidential, and answered around the clock.
Four things you can do in the next ten minutes.
None of these fix anything. They buy time, and time is usually what the moment is missing.
In for four. Hold for four. Out for four. Hold for four. Repeat until the count is easier to follow than the thought.
Name five things you can see, four you can touch, three you can hear, two you can smell, one you can taste. Out loud if you can.
An urge is a wave, not a command. Set a timer for twenty minutes and agree to decide nothing until it goes off. Most peak and fall well before that.
Move your body to a different space and put something cold in your hands. Craving is tied to place and cue more tightly than it feels.
Write it on a calm day, so it is already there on a hard one.
BetterStep builds this with you inside the app, following the Stanley-Brown template that clinicians use. You can also write it on paper right now. Six sections, in this order.
The thoughts, moods, and situations that show up before a return to use.
What you can do on your own, without calling anyone, that has worked before.
Two or three people you can be around without discussing the crisis at all.
Names and numbers, written down while calm, so they are not a decision later.
Your clinician, your program, and the crisis line, in the order you would use them.
What to move, give away, or lock while you are not in the middle of it.
BetterStep is not an emergency service and does not monitor this page. If you are in immediate danger, call your local emergency number. If you are in treatment, your clinician is the right first call, and reaching out early is not a failure of the program. It is the program working.