Boredom: A Possible Road to Addiction

In fact, when you first quit, it feels like everyone in the world is out getting drunk but you. I was doing almost nothing with my free time, but it never bothered me much. I wasn’t a total shut-in; I still occasionally visited friends or explored the city. One of the upsides of being bored is that it can drive you to try new things.

One of the best things you can do for yourself when you’re feeling bored in sobriety is to find a way to serve others. Let’s address another reason life without alcohol feels boring. If you’ve created an entire social life around drinking, it is natural to be afraid of life without it. When serotonin and dopamine levels are low, we become less motivated and less interested in our surroundings.

What Drinking as a Teenager Does to Their Brain

1. Watching a friend or family member struggle with a binge-drinking habit can be difficult, even heart-wrenching.
2. Choosing a new hobby to occupy your time is not always easy.
3. In such scenarios, our brain searches for something exciting or rewarding, leading us towards behaviors that can stimulate and intrigue us.
4. As the saying goes, “An idle mind is the devil’s playground.” Anyone with too much time on their hands may find themselves in hot water.
5. For instance, some people with alcohol use disorder might push away friends and family and quit participating in activities and events.
6. Remember, it’s normal to reach for a snack out of boredom on occasion.

When I quit drinking, I was lucky to have a spouse that supported my decision. And yet, he still had no idea how to support me. Your friends are out getting drunk, the same as they always do. Meanwhile, you’re at home wondering how many days it would take someone to find your body after you’ve choked on those peanut M&M’s you’ve been knocking back during your latest Netflix binge. When you remove alcohol from your life, you free up all the time you spent drinking and recovering from drinking. If you ever sit down to do that math, you will shock yourself with how much time went towards drinking.

The hunger-boredom paradigm explained by scientists

If you’re a binge drinker, you may not drink every day, but when you do start drinking, you likely have a hard time calling it quits after just one or two drinks. Completely cutting alcohol out of your life is always an option. But if you don’t want to take that big of a step, there are ways to drink more responsibly. However, even if you’re drinking less than this in one session, if your binge drinking is having unwanted consequences in your life, it may be time to reassess your drinking habits.

Picking up that drink to get past feeling bored is a dangerous practice that can only get worse. You may automatically find yourself gravitating toward alcohol to pass the time, increasing the risk of developing an addiction. Most people experience stress and try their best to alleviate it. You might have a drink to calm your mind, mellow out your mood, and take the edge off stress. You might occasionally consume several alcoholic beverages to blot out a highly stressful day.

Anyone experiencing significant levels of boredom needs to ask themselves what challenging (and likely unpleasant) experience they are attempting to avoid. Unstructured time leads to unpredictable behaviors, which are problematic in recovery. Always have a list of people that support your recovery available. This provides quick access to those who empower you on your recovery journey. Surrounding yourself with people that support you can help alleviate possible remnants of guilt and shame from past behaviors. These stories remind us that boredom isn’t merely a state of inactivity or idleness — it can also be a time for reflection, creativity, and unexpected discovery.

Binge DrinkingWhat it is, the Effects, and How to Stop Binge Drinking

Our programs focus on treating the physical, mental, and emotional components of alcoholism in a safe and secure environment where individuals can focus on their healing process. Drinking alone can become problematic when a person has a habit of doing it. You may believe you must hide your drinking from others, so you drink solo. You might not want to hear people express concerns about your alcohol consumption or see their disapproving looks. If you drink alone, monitor how often you do this and consider why. If it becomes frequent, try to taper off or contact an alcohol addiction treatment center.

It was like having a wine collection or being able to tell the difference between wines or knowing how to order a bottle for my table. I was just reading the study of a woman holding a beer makes her seem more sexually available, discredits her trustworthiness. I think they’re really important to call out because they absolutely do affect why we use substances in the first place and how we recover. From her website, Holly is a person in long term recovery who thinks that the key to everything we’re looking for individually and societally comes from drinking because of boredom the work we do on ourselves. Everything starts when we stop running, and because of that everyone deserves the opportunity to engage in recovery.

There have been ceremonial uses and cultural uses of alcohol for thousands and thousands of years, but that’s not what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about late-stage capitalism, excess consumption. Their mood, specifically females tend to use to address negative affect. Negative affect, stress improves, the sort of reactivity to life stressors, to interpersonal stressors. All of that improves, and just the inability to engage. This really is the fundamental question when we’re dealing with any kind of destructive behavior.