A quiet companion for the long work. Ride out a craving, mark the day honestly, and find a person, any hour.
Your body drops a gear inside one breath.
Two inhales stacked back to back reopen the small air sacs in your lungs that collapse when you hold yourself tight. The long exhale after them offloads carbon dioxide and slows your heart on the way out. You are not talking yourself down. You are sending a signal your body already knows how to answer.
If this is bigger than a breath, go straight to a person. Call or text 988, any hour, free and confidential.
One number, then we go. It is a reading, not a verdict, and it is only here so you can see what the surge actually did. You can skip it.
Bigger than a breath? Call or text 988, any hour.
Nothing to fix yet. Just arrive.
Crisis help does not wait for this to finish. Call or text 988, any hour.
Same scale. Honest is more useful than hopeful, and a surge that did nothing is information about the surge.
Still loud, or worse? Call or text 988, any hour.
Check your shoulders and your jaw. Most people find they came down without being asked.
I do this in the car before I go into my parents house. Twice, three times. Nobody knows I am doing it.
four monthsNothing you just did was saved. Inside Marrow it would be: the app keeps that before and after number on your device, and after three runs of the same surge it tells you what that one actually does for you, and how fast. Then it hands you your own best move instead of a generic tip. That read rates the surge, never you.
Still loud? That happens, and it is not a failure. Call or text 988, or SAMHSA at 1-800-662-4357, any hour.
That is worth knowing, and it is not a failure of yours. Breathing is not the move for every moment. Here is where to go instead.
Stop here and reach a person. The 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is free and confidential, any hour, by call or text. If you might be in physical danger right now, call 911.
A colder, faster one may land better. The Dive puts cold water on your face and drops your heart rate in under a minute through a reflex, not through willpower. Riding the Wave takes ten to twenty minutes and does not ask you to change anything at all.
Usually it is. Marrow has anonymous rooms, a meeting finder and a phone number a human answers, all in one place and none of it needing an account.
It opens without asking you to explain yourself. A ring breathing at the pace you should be breathing, water moving underneath it, and one line telling you where in the wave you are. There is no timer counting down at you and no way to fail it. You rate it going in and coming out, so the next time you are in this you have your own evidence that it passed.
You are not fighting the craving. You are watching it from a small distance, which is what stops the peak from turning into a decision. Cravings build, crest and fall on their own, usually well inside twenty to thirty minutes, as long as you do not feed them.
good Urge surfing, from Marlatt's relapse prevention model and a core practice in mindfulness-based relapse prevention. Bowen et al., JAMA Psychiatry, 2014. The evidence
Three tiles, not a mood questionnaire: still, fast, fog. You hold the button down for a second to mark the day, which makes it a small deliberate act rather than something you tap by accident. Then two numbers, side by side, and seven days behind you drawn as a record and not a grade.
Two numbers, never one. Days in practice only ever rises, and nothing takes it away. Your current stretch starts again from today when it needs to. A return leaves the practice whole, so there is never a reason to lie to yourself about a hard night to protect a number.
good A counter that drops to zero draws the abstinence violation effect as a user interface, and shame, not guilt, is what predicts the next return. Randles & Tracy, 2013. The evidence
Three anonymous rooms, sorted by how long you have been at this and never by how well you are doing. The Spring for the first year. The Current for the quiet middle. The Deep for the long game. Under them, a meeting tonight, and a phone number a human answers, with the plain note that you do not have to be in crisis to call it.
The app is not the thing that gets people through. The person on the other end is. Marrow's job is to shorten the distance between a bad hour and a human being, then get out of the way.
strong Connection, not paperwork, is what carries recovery. Kelly, Humphreys & Ferri, Cochrane Review, 2020. The evidence
Heron does not fix and does not rush. It asks one thing at a time and waits for the answer. If you ask it for something, it does the thing inside the conversation rather than pointing you at a menu to hunt through. At 3am it is the difference between saying it out loud and holding it.
It is an AI and it says so, on the screen, in plain words. It keeps nothing on a server. What it remembers sits on your device, you can read the whole list, and one tap erases it. If what you write reads as danger, it stops and hands you 988 before it does anything else.
strong Built against the APA health advisory on generative AI wellness chatbots. It is not a clinician and never claims to be one. How the guardrails work
A surge is a paced sequence with a named mechanism, not a tip on a list. Every one carries a label for how good the evidence really is, and the weak ones are labelled weak. Someone deciding at 3am whether to trust this deserves to know which is which.
Your body drops a gear inside one breath.
The panic loses its grip in under a minute.
You watch it crest and go, without doing anything about it.
The feeling gets smaller the moment it has a name.
You come back into the room you are actually standing in.
The charge on the picture comes down a notch.
The hour after this stops being an idea and starts being a place.
The craving comes down while you are busy doing something else.
Your body takes the hint and stands down.
The craving goes back to being a sentence instead of an order.
The next hard moment already has your answer inside it.
The words are in your mouth before you need them.
Rate one before and after, three times, and Marrow starts telling you what it does for you specifically, in a line like the dive takes you down about 3 points in a minute, and it is your steadiest one. Then it hands you that one instead of a generic tip. The read stays on your device and nowhere else, and it rates the surge, never you. See all twelve →
Not another dashboard of numbers to protect. Marrow opens on a river, not a scoreboard. There is no streak to break, and nothing resets when you have a bad night.
One question, every time. What do you need right now? The app meets the moment, not a menu.
Nothing to lose. No streak counter waiting to punish a hard night. Two honest numbers, and a return leaves the practice whole.
Yours alone. It works with no account, and your record stays on your device.
The home screen, drawn live.
You can usually see the hard night coming. The wedding with the open bar. The parent who keeps saying one glass is not a problem. The friend you used with, texting at midnight, funny as ever, who does not know you stopped. You name it, and Marrow plays the other side, so the words come out of your own mouth now instead of being composed under pressure later.
Then a short read on what landed, and one line worth keeping. It is not graded. There is no score.
Saying a sentence out loud once beats having a good intention about it. This is the same reason The Refusal exists as a three-minute surge: under pressure people compose badly, so the work is to make the moment ask you to remember something rather than invent it. Read the full guardrails
Twelve paced sequences with named mechanisms and honest evidence labels. Rate one before and after, three times, and Marrow tells you what that surge actually does for you and how fast. The read stays on your device, and it rates the surge rather than you.
Practise the hard conversation before the night arrives. Clearly marked as practice, one push and never two, eight exchanges, and a step out that is on screen the whole time.
Only when you log it yourself, only if you want it. It finds the chain that led there and the earliest fork where a different move was available, and it keeps one guardrail out of it. The worst day becomes the most useful thing you own.
Ask in plain words, and Heron does the thing right there in the conversation, instead of pointing you at a menu to hunt through.
In a hard moment, Heron brings up the one person you saved, with call and text a single tap away. No hunting through a list.
Set a small if-then plan while you are clear, like leaving a party by nine, and it comes back to you when that moment is near.
Added when it is ready, and only when it earns its place. Open Marrow →
I opened it at 2am instead of the liquor store. That is the whole story of my first month.
nine monthsNo streak to lose meant no reason to lie to myself about a bad night.
two yearsI keep a metal spoon in the freezer. Sounds stupid. It has got me through more nights than anything I paid for.
two yearsThe night I slipped, it did not flash red at me. It just said, you are still here. I came back the next morning.
a yearI practised in the car outside the wedding. Felt ridiculous. Said it four times that night without thinking about it once.
seven monthsIt never once tried to keep me. That is the exact reason I trusted it.
four yearsComposite reflections in the spirit of the rooms. Anonymous by design, always.
If you write something that reads as danger, Marrow stops and hands you a real human number before it does anything else. That is a net, not a guarantee, so the crisis line sits on every screen and every page of this site whether or not anything is detected. Marrow complements your care. It never replaces it.
No sign-up, no email, no app store. Every recovery tool in Marrow is free to use. The only thing we have ever charged for is optional encrypted sync between your own devices, and no recovery tool sits behind it.
What we collect →Check-ins, notes and your record stay on your device. The one exception is Heron: your message and what it remembers go to our AI provider long enough to shape a reply, then are let go, and are never used to train a model.
Read the policy →988 and SAMHSA are one tap from every screen in the app and every page of this site, including inside the surge you just ran. Nothing we build sits above them or delays reaching them.
How safety works →Every science claim carries a strength label and a real source. Grounding is marked as practice-based because it is. Marrow itself has never been measured in a study on its own users, and the evidence page says so.
See the sources →Marrow is a peer-support companion. It is not therapy, medical care, or an emergency service. It does not diagnose, does not give medical advice, and will not tell you anything about doses or tapering. Heron is an AI and says so; it is not a clinician, a sponsor or a counsellor, and it is not a person. Marrow is for adults 18 and over. If you are in danger right now, call or text 988, or call 911 in a life-threatening emergency. The terms and the safety page say all of this in full.
Change your breathing before you try to change your mind. Two inhales through the nose stacked back to back, then a long slow exhale through the mouth, three times. The second short inhale reopens the small air sacs in your lungs that collapse when you hold yourself tight, and the long exhale offloads carbon dioxide and slows your heart on the way out. You can run the full paced version on this page in about a minute, with nothing to install and no account. If the craving is loud, ride it rather than fight it. Cravings rise, crest and pass, usually inside twenty to thirty minutes.
Most cravings crest and fall within twenty to thirty minutes if you do not feed them. They feel like they will climb forever, which is exactly why people act at the peak. Watching a craving instead of fighting it is called urge surfing, and it comes out of Marlatt's relapse prevention work and is a core practice in mindfulness-based relapse prevention. Marrow paces it for you so you are not sitting there watching a clock.
It is free, and no account is needed. Marrow opens in a browser with no sign-up, no email and no app store. Every recovery tool in it is free to use. The only thing we have ever charged for is optional end-to-end encrypted sync between your own devices, and no recovery tool sits behind it.
Nothing, because there is no streak. Marrow keeps two numbers instead of one. Days in practice only ever rises and is never reset by anything. Your current stretch starts again from today. A return does not erase the days you did. Afterwards Marrow offers an optional, unhurried debrief that looks for the earliest point where a different move was available, and it is only ever offered when you log the return yourself. Marrow never infers it.
Your check-ins, your notes and your record are stored on your own device and are not sent anywhere. The one exception is Heron, the AI companion. To answer you, your message is sent to our AI provider along with what Heron remembers on this device, which can include your name if you gave one, your day count, notes you asked it to keep and commitments you wrote in your own words. It is used to shape a reply and then let go, and it is never used to train any model. You can read everything Heron remembers, export all of your data as a plain file, or erase all of it in one tap. The privacy policy lists it in full.
No. Marrow is a peer-support companion. It is not therapy, medical care, or a crisis service, and it never gives medical advice, dosing or a diagnosis. It sits beside your care rather than in place of it, whatever your care is: a counsellor, a doctor, a sponsor, meetings, medication, or all of them at once. It is for adults eighteen and over.
Yes. Heron, the AI companion inside Marrow, is there at any hour and does not rush you. It is an AI and says so plainly. For a human voice at 3am, the SAMHSA national helpline is free and confidential at 1-800-662-4357, and the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline takes both calls and texts. Both numbers are one tap from every screen in Marrow and from every page of this site.
A surge is a short paced sequence you run in the moment, with a named mechanism and an honest label for how good the evidence actually is. There are twelve. The Sigh takes about a minute. The Dive takes under one. Riding the Wave takes ten to twenty. Each one tells you what is happening in your body or your mind and where the claim comes from, and the ones resting on practice rather than trials are labelled that way rather than rounded up. All twelve are here.
Some of it is measured and some of it is not, and Marrow labels which is which. Paced breathing, acute movement, putting a feeling into words and if-then plans all have real trials behind them. Grounding exercises are long-standing practice in crisis work rather than trial-tested protocols, and Marrow says so on the card. Marrow itself has never been measured in a study on its own users. What it does add is a record of what works for you: run a surge, rate it before and after, and after three runs it tells you which one actually brings your number down and how fast. That read rates the tool, never you. The evidence page shows the working.
Have the sentence ready before you need it, and keep it short. No thanks, I am not drinking. Say it out loud now, then say it again with no reason attached, because reasons invite negotiation. Then have a subject change and an exit line ready for the one push that usually follows. Marrow has a three-minute surge for exactly this, and a practice mode where you can rehearse the real conversation before the night arrives.
It is a practice scene. You name a situation you can see coming, like a wedding with an open bar or a parent who keeps pushing, and Marrow plays the other side so you hear your own words come out of your own mouth before the night arrives. It is marked as practice the whole way through. It pushes once the way a real person does and never twice. It never makes a drink or a drug sound appealing. It ends after eight exchanges on its own. A step-out control is on screen in every state and ends the scene on the first tap. It stops being a character the moment anything real comes up and hands you a person.
Call or text 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline in the US, any hour, free and confidential. If you are in immediate physical danger, call 911. Marrow is not a crisis service and does not monitor you. If you write something in the app that reads as danger, it stops and hands you 988 before anything else, but that is a net rather than a guarantee, which is why the crisis line sits on every screen and every page whether or not anything is detected.
The most powerful thing in recovery is one person reaching another. Give Marrow to someone you love, or to yourself for a harder day. No account, and they see your note first.
Copied. Send it the way you would send anything that matters, a text, a message, in person.
It is free, it is private, and it is open right now.
Open MarrowSomeone else on your mind? Give them Marrow →