If you quit drinking and experience any new or worsening mental health symptoms, please consider therapy. Getting sober is like learning to walk again after a terrible accident. You should be able to go about living your life without drinking alcohol, but you feel utterly useless and have no idea what to do with yourself.
Break the Boredom Drinking Loop
If you justify to yourself, “I drink when I’m bored,” it can quickly lead to overindulgence and health concerns. If you’re a casual drinker, you should understand the ramifications of regular drinking. Life can sometimes feel repetitive, and many people find themselves with idle time. Boredom is a normal part of life, but how we deal with it can significantly impact our well-being. Some individuals may turn to alcohol as a way to kill time, mistakenly believing that a drink can add excitement or ease the monotony. But drinking to cope with boredom is never a good plan, and this habit can spiral into a destructive cycle, bringing more harm than good.
“Trust me—I’m more fun when I don’t drink.”
And the thing about alcohol is that it is way more efficient and reliable at creating this effect than natural rewards like having fun with friends or eating a delicious meal. Here it’s helpful to have a working definition of boredom. Plus, we’re always introducing new features to optimize your in-app experience. We recently launched our in-app chatbot, Melody, powered by the world’s most powerful AI technology.
Take a Break From Alcohol and Seek Help
Connecting with a support group can also help you build meaningful relationships with people who understand and can support you in your recovery journey. Planning interactions according to “Sober in Seven” can help reduce feelings of loneliness and prevent reliance on alcohol. Having a list of supportive contacts is beneficial because it can provide you with immediate access to people who will encourage and support you on your journey to recovery. If you know you will feel lonely or down, try and plan some interactions to reduce those feelings and your reliance on alcohol. Anything to change up that routine of drinking out of boredom and make it harder for drinkers to find a place to get comfortable. When you don’t feel you have anyone to talk to or anywhere to go, drinks can feel like a constant, a friend.
How To Overcome The Boredom When You Stop Drinking Alcohol?
Making smart drink choices can go a long way in protecting your kidney health and overall well-being. While water is often the best choice, many people can stay hydrated with a variety of drinks, including plant-based milk, unsweetened juices, and more. Drinking too much alcohol can dehydrate your body and force your kidneys to work harder. Over time, excessive alcohol consumption may contribute to high blood pressure, liver disease, and kidney damage. Not all drinks are created equal when it comes to kidney health.
She felt so good, she stretched that hiatus out for another month, and then another, until deciding to go dry for good. At first, Gomez—who has since founded the online community No Booze Babes—encountered plenty of questions about why she wasn’t drinking, which rattled her. It helped to frame her decision as a temporary one, emphasizing that she wasn’t drinking at that precise moment and was taking a month or two off.
- One of the first ways that I’d suggest that you overcome boredom is just to accept that it’s part of the discomfort that you’re going to go through, I mean that’s all it basically is.
- Instead, you should find ways to cope with your boredom that keep you productively occupied and are more fulfilling.
- Give us a call and we can help find the right treatment program for you or your loved one – even if it’s not ours!
- All these tips are here to help you prevent drinking out of boredom.
- This consistent connection will help foster healthy relationships in recovery with people who can support you and what you’re going through in the present moment.
This will help you regain control of your life and improve your overall mental health and well-being. Habitual patterns of alcohol consumption can play a significant role in boredom drinking. These habits are often activated by certain cues or conditions, like boredom, which can lead to excessive drinking and result in a variety of health issues, including alcohol abuse. By recognizing and addressing these habits, you can break the cycle of boredom drinking and take control of your life.
Sometimes admitting the truth to yourself is the first step. But it’s comforting to know that you don’t have figure it out on your own. But I’m going to explore solutions for people who sit at various points along the “sobriety is so boring” spectrum. It’s not as simple as “getting out there” and “trying something new.” It’s hard to do that when you suffer from extreme depression and anhedonia. The very things you should be doing to feel better require a level of motivation you might not be able to fathom. Sometimes we would watch a show, but even that become untenable for me after a couple of drinks because I did not have the attention span for it.
If your boredom drinking has become drinking when bored unmanageable or is causing an addiction, seek professional help right away. This cycle can lead to unhealthy consumption patterns when feeling anxious or overwhelmed. Alcohol’s reinforcing effects can be attributed to the way cortisol interacts with the brain’s reward system, causing a person to feel pleasure and therefore reach for more of it when stressed. Eating well, staying hydrated, getting physical activity, and not stocking up on alcohol for the winter are other helpful strategies to stop drinking out of boredom. Alcohol can be in a unique position of being both the solution to and the cause of pain. Yet, no matter how much pain it causes to the individual or family, alcohol is one of the most difficult substances to remove.
- Stress, anxiety, and loneliness can all be potential triggers for boredom drinking.
- It’s likely your doctor will order some bloodwork, which can be the start of your path to physical recovery.
- The average adult experiences around 131 days of boredom per year, so how you react to this boredom is critical to your mental health.
- Surrounding yourself with people that support you can help alleviate possible remnants of guilt and shame from past behaviors.
- Alcohol offers a quick and easy solution, seemingly transforming a dull moment into something a bit more lively.
Whatever the reason for your boredom, drinking can create a negative cycle around it. So whether you are an absent-minded drinker or a lonely or anxious one, what can you do to prevent drinking out of boredom? Here are 5 tips to help you make changes to your drinking habits that could help you feel better, for good. But self-medicating like this is not just bad for your body, but it is also likely to make your mental health worse. Drinking out of boredom because you feel anxious is likely to make you feel worse because alcohol is a depressant, so if you are already feeling low, it makes those feelings more extreme. It’s very common for people, especially those with additional mental health issues like depression and anxiety, to drink out of boredom.
If it becomes frequent, try to taper off or contact an alcohol addiction treatment center. Mindfulness practices and stress management techniques can empower you to cope with boredom and negative emotions without turning to alcohol. Practicing mindfulness can help you become more aware of your emotions and triggers, so you can avoid turning to alcohol out of boredom. Stress management techniques can also help you manage difficult situations without alcohol.
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. Alcohol merely blurred my perception of social situations. 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. Now that you know the chemical reason for your boredom, let’s explore additional factors that might be contributing to these feelings.
An important way to safeguard your sobriety is to be aware of this and take steps to mitigate it. However, feeling bored without alcohol isn’t actually a bad thing. And the sickness and tiredness you feel after the initial high of alcohol consumption wears off is neither fun nor interesting. So drinking because you’re bored isn’t doing much for you in the long run. Instead, you should find ways to cope with your boredom that keep you productively occupied and are more fulfilling.
Still, alcohol is a highly addictive substance that can lead to dependency, especially when consuming frequently and in large quantities. Drinking out of boredom may indicate a deeper issue at hand. Self-medicating can drastically impact overall health and well-being. It’s also a common reason many become dependent on substances.