Surrounding yourself with supportive friends and family who encourage sobriety and engage in alcohol-free activities can be incredibly beneficial in combating boredom drinking. By building a strong support network, you can access the encouragement and guidance you need to stay sober and successfully overcome boredom drinking. A great therapist I met at a retreat told me it’s normal to use “things” to dull emotional pain.
Addiction Therapy Programs
On average, members see a 30% reduction in alcohol consumption in 3 months, leading to improved sleep, diet, and overall wellbeing. Bored drinking can sneakily become an unhealthy habit, and it’s not always easy to curb it on your own. Simply asking these questions might be enough to take the edge off the urge to drink.
Building a Supportive Social Network
If your boredom drinking has become unmanageable or is causing an addiction, seek professional help right away. This cycle can lead to unhealthy consumption patterns when feeling anxious or overwhelmed. Eating well, staying hydrated, getting physical activity, and not stocking up on alcohol for the winter are other helpful strategies to stop alcohol abuse articles. A conversation when they’ve been drinking or are stressed is likely to trigger a lot of emotions that could get out of hand.
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- Normally, this helps us learn and survive by rewarding life-sustaining actions like eating or having sex.
- The average adult experiences around 131 days of boredom per year, so how you react to this boredom is critical to your mental health.
- We can address fear and healthy coping mechanisms to combat any doubt and uncertainty that either an individual or family may feel during these difficult times.
Why Drinking Out of Boredom Is So Risky
Write down how much to drink, when you drink and — how about this question — why do you drink? If those thoughts are very negative, then hanging out in your own brain isn’t going to be a great experience. This is where the real work of sobriety is – facing up to your own mind.
You may need to make other changes
With understanding and a few targeted strategies, you can retrain your brain to seek healthier, more fulfilling ways to escape boredom. Sometimes boredom in sobriety looks like not wanting to be around anyone. If you quit drinking and experience any new or worsening mental health symptoms, please consider therapy. When I was a heavy drinker, everything involved alcohol.
You won’t want to miss out on the chance to participate alongside fellow Reframers (or solo if that’s more your thing!). 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. Melody is here to help as you adjust to a life with less (or no) alcohol.
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. This is important to remember when thinking about boredom. Take control of the aspects of your life that you have some influence over and watch the world change around you. If you have someone you trust, let them know if you are feeling down or lonely — so they know you won’t mind if they check in with you more often. See if there are organisations around you where you could help out, that would love to use your skills and talents.
As someone born and raised in the Midwest, the presence of alcohol at gatherings always seemed to be a given. Particularly in my adoptive state of Wisconsin, at everything from church events is marijuana addictive to high school graduations and baby showers it is expected that there will be alcohol available. In the meantime, the Soberish community is here to support you and help you get there.
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. Drinking to relieve stress may differences between crack and cocaine and myths veer into murky territory, if you feel that you must consume alcohol every day to de-stress. Above all of these things, drinking responsibly is key in not finding yourself in a situation that you cannot come back from.
