Boredom: A Possible Road to Addiction

And if you really just don’t want to—do you have another reason other than the excuses I used to give myself? There’s no doubt that addictions mess with our brain and how it sends and receives signals but many problems with addiction also stem from rituals and habits. To stay sober, you must break your nasty habits or once-comforting rituals by replacing those bad habits with good ones. Instead of driving to your favorite convenience store for a 12-pack after work, drive to a gym for a quick run. Instead of smoking a joint, have a cup of green tea. It can take days or weeks to replace your bad habits with good ones but filling that void will keep your thoughts occupied.

What does a month off alcohol do?

Summary. Across the month, your body is likely to have benefitted greatly from giving up alcohol. Better hydration and improved sleep will have increased your productivity and daily wellbeing. Your liver, stomach and skin will also have benefitted from not dealing with alcohol.

When I was a heavy drinker, everything involved alcohol. If I was sad, I drank alcohol to feel better. If I was hanging out with friends, we were getting drunk. 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 have fun. 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. While alcohol abuse is common, it doesn’t mean you have to face it alone.

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Participating in new and thrilling experiences will show you there’s more to life than addiction that you can take advantage of in sobriety. Don’t get your thrills from booze or heroin, get them directly from your own brain by trying new and exciting things.

drinking because bored

McNally A.M., Palfai T.P. Negative emotional expectancies and readiness to change among college student binge drinkers. Conrod P.J., Castellanos N., Mackie C. Personality-targeted interventions delay the growth of adolescent drinking and binge drinking. Carlson S.R., Johnson S.C., Jacobs P.C. Disinhibited characteristics and binge drinking among university student drinkers. Alvanzo A.H., Storr C.L., La Flair L., Green K.M., Wagner F.A., Crum R.M. Race/ethnicity and sex differences in progression from drinking initiation to the development of alcohol dependence. As long as it’s not just you—although, it’s nice to admit when she says, sometimes I have wine in bed and you laugh and say “Me too! ” She’s a mother so she needs it to get through and you’ve just had a break up—so it’s red to relieve blue. Do I want to be talking to this person?

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When serotonin and dopamine levels are low, we become less motivated and less interested in our surroundings. This can lead to feelings of boredom and apathy. Whatever the reason for your boredom, drinking can create a negative cycle around it.

It’s responsible for more than 95,000 deaths annually. I started drinking drinking because of boredom to have fun at parties in high school and then into my 20s and 30s.

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Got through that week, in anger, but got thrue. Photo by niklas_hamann on UnsplashI https://ecosoberhouse.com/ used to believe the lie that life would be boring if I didn’t drink.

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This response to boredom can lead, in some cases, to a destructive path toward addiction. This one seems paradoxical, but if you try it, you might find it helpful.