Also, I want to address this: It's true that urges are waves but what happens to some guys sometimes, and myself too, is that we experience sometimes urges all day, it's like they start in the morning and don't stop until the evening, not exactly continuously (yes, waves) but they keep coming, in 5 minutes they come again, in 10 minutes they come again, you know what I'm saying?
Yes. When we've been acting out for a period of time, those neural pathways are hyper-sensitive. What it means physiologically to break our habits and end our addiction is to desensitize those same neural pathways. This will only happen as we repeatedly and consistently (or at least for longer and longer periods of time) ignore the behaviors that light these pathways up.
So in the beginning of our recovery, or in restarting after resensitizing the neural pathways (by relapsing), the urges are going to be in waves- yes- but more often.
But, and this will be true for all of us, no matter how tough our particular case is, through repetitiously ignoring the urges, we eventually desensitize these neural pathways, and the urgency and constancy of the urges will drop off and become more and more quiet. This is why we try and go for longer and longer streaks is to give ourselves time to heal, deaden those pathways, and create new pathways that are healthier habits.