During lockdown, drinking has become a worryingly easy way to punctuate the day Lauren O’Neill

But remember that, scientifically, boredom is an emotion — just like appiness or sadness. It typically occurs when we find ourselves disengaged from what’s going on around us or when there’s a lack of interest or enjoyment in our activities. By focusing on eating healthy, nourishing foods, you are actively working on reversing those symptoms. When you get sober, you realize there is an entire daytime pulse in your city or town that you never really felt before. Things that people do during that day that don’t involve recovering or boozy brunch. Not on its own, but maybe it starts a conversation and a friend comes over just to sit with you and make sure you’re good.

WAYS TO PREVENT DRINKING OUT OF BOREDOM

When you are learning something new, you have to give all of your attention to it. This prevents your mind from wandering, which is one of the key characteristics of boredom. If you are genuinely engaged in whatever it is you are learning, you will be able to keep boredom at bay. On the other, we are often bored when we are mired in the tedious work of life. Laundry, dishes, cleaning the house, and doing the work can all be quite boring.

How to Stop Drinking Out of Boredom: Tips and Advice for a Sober Life in 2024

This can lead to increased anxiety, depression, and stress when not drinking, which might make sober times feel particularly empty or boring. To understand why https://ecosoberhouse.com/ can be so risky, it’s worth taking time to understand the role of dopamine in how we behave and make decisions. Warren is a Licensed Master Social Worker, who specializes in substance abuse and mental health treatment.

Create a Healthy Support System

The next best thing is to implement everything you’ve learned in this article by yourself. Here’s that link again if you’d like to learn more about the service BetterHelp.com provide and the process of getting started. Too many people try to muddle through and do their best to overcome issues that they never really get to grips with. If it’s at all possible in your circumstances, therapy is 100% the best way forward. While you may try to work through this yourself, it may be a bigger issue than self-help can address. And if it is affecting your mental well-being, relationships, or life in general, it is a significant thing that needs to be resolved.

• But when the pandemic struck, she worried constantly about her job, her health and the safety of her children.
• When I was a heavy drinker, everything involved alcohol.
• Try to spread out your calorie intake throughout a regular meal and snack schedule.

Short-Term Effects

You can easily drain yourself dry on activities, responsibilities, and keeping up with a busy schedule if you don’t allow yourself adequate time for rest. Try getting in touch with friends or family that you like spending time with. It may also help get out and try some new activities or do some drinking out of boredom volunteer work to meet some new people. Maybe you love your job overall, but you don’t so much care for all of the scheduling and management that needs to be done to do your job effectively. Or maybe you have a hobby that requires a lot of work or planning before you can actually enjoy doing it.

• But if you neglect these responsibilities, their presence in the back of your mind can create a cloud of anxiety and woe that will hang over you.
• Yet, no matter how much pain it causes to the individual or family, alcohol is one of the most difficult substances to remove.
• It’s normal to feel an urge to eat when you’re bored, even on a regular basis.
• One listener described his realization to me that he’d been using alcohol as, quote, “a numbing agent.” And he told me not drinking made him kind of show up for his life, feel more present.
• We don’t just treat the symptoms of addiction; we address underlying issues like co-occurring mental health conditions and trauma that perpetuate substance use.

To unpack some of the underlying reasons you feel bored right now, it helps to understand what alcohol does to your brain. It’s pretty normal to reduce the entire experience of boredom in sobriety to missing alcohol and believing that getting drunk is the primary way you (and everyone else) have fun. Mental health needs as much attention as physical health, so if you are suffering, go and talk to your doctor. Boredom is a key reason people give for drinking too much and drinking out of boredom like this can become almost a subconscious activity, something that you do whilst doing something else. Think of times or places where alcohol is normally found.

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