the craving that passes if you can just sit there
you can all of a sudden out of nowhere want to get high with your Substance so bad that you think you will surely die if you don’t, and but can just sit there with your hands writhing in your lap and face wet with craving, can want to get high but instead just sit there, wanting to but not, if that makes sense, and if you can gut it out and not hit the Substance during the craving the craving will eventually pass, it will go away—at least for a while.
Context
The recovery machine's core mechanic, and its one piece of good news: the craving that feels lethal is survivable simply by not acting — sitting still with the hands writhing and the face wet, wanting and not, until it passes. The whole white-knuckle discipline compressed into a sentence, including the sober qualifier that keeps it honest: the craving goes away, at least for a while, and then you do it again.