I voted psychological tips and tricks are "better than mystical smoke & mirrors", which I'm assuming means religions.
At the very core of my recovery has been my understanding how alcohol over time changed the way my brain functioned, specifically the brain stem and limbic system.
My psychological trick in the first three or so months of recovery, while experiencing urges, was to replace the urge with the image of a drooling Komodo Dragon. Komodo Dragons can be over 9 feet long and weigh 150 pounds. They have a poisonous bite, which along with the virulent bacteria in their saliva kills their prey slowly by blood poisoning. The prey gets weaker and weaker, even after a single bite, and it can over a week to die. As the prey slowly weakens to the point where it can no longer defend itself, the number of Dragons following it increase as well. Finally, they overcome the prey and eat it alive.
This worked well for me; the limbic system (where I believe alcohol addiction resides physiologically) is also called our "lizard brain" because it's believed to be a stepping stone to our current brain size and structure from our evolutionary past. I chose to use the many layers of grey matter above my "lizard brain" to override the basal, instinctual urges emanating from my limbic system.
Just as surely as one Komodo Dragon bite will result in a lingering, painful, grotesque, ugly death...so will one drink of alcohol, because one drink will equal many, many more.
If I'm wrong about any of this I don't care, because it's been 369 days for me on my first try at being sober, and I'm haunted by Komodo Dragons no more
