When I was drunk all day every day I was ruining my life. Maybe it was all the drama, or just the act of being drunk. I’m a writer, competitive chess player, Army veteran, physicist, and former professional heavyweight boxer. My work focuses on self-development, realizing your potential, and sobriety—speaking from personal experience, having overcome both poverty and addiction.
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I personally used to worry that I wouldn’t be strong enough to stay sober. This post shows you how to take a break from booze so you can get your physical, emotional, and mental health in order. I developed a unique framework for getting sober and dealing with vices.
Alcohol artificially boosts serotonin and dopamine in your brain.
Put together a playlist, turn on a disco light, and grab your dancing shoes. Create care packages to send to seniors or folks in need in your community. Look for jazz cafés, open mic nights, or community bands playing. Many cities and towns will have live music in public spaces, especially during the warmer months.
- You might believe you should always be doing something useful or constructive, so you reach for a drink to calm the negative emotions boredom creates.
- I got tired of hating the face I saw in the mirror.
- You learned something, made progress, and put yourself in a better position for success.
The Boredom Drinking Loop
But you should turn to other, more productive ways to cope with your boredom that won’t be detrimental to your health. In more severe cases, drinking out of boredom can lead to severe alcohol abuse disorders. Starting to drink gradually might be considered normal or appropriate, but it can quickly create a dependence and lead to a severe drinking problem. If you’re drinking out of boredom, read on to learn more about what this means. Swapping our routines and habits that are damaging you for ones that can strengthen your body and soul will give you a really clear reason why you want to stop drinking out of boredom. If you want to reduce the amount of alcohol you drink, it makes sense to avoid busy bars and thirsty friends.
There are various strategies available to help you overcome boredom drinking and maintain a sober lifestyle in 2024. 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 drinking when bored to excessive drinking and result in a variety of health issues, including alcohol abuse.
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. Often, being bored without alcohol seems intimidating because when there’s no task to put your mind to, you’re forced to notice the things that are making you unhappy. If you want to change something, you first need to understand what it is. This might be a bit uncomfortable, as we often drink to reduce the noise of our own thoughts.
Part of it is definitely that I’ve had a rough month and struggle with depression, but another part is simply that it’s a slow day. Just imagining the next few hours slowly creeping by – with nothing but my thoughts to occupy me – really makes me crave that drink. Everyone gets bored sometimes, it’s just the way life is. It’s what makes certain parts of your life all the more exciting. The boring moments make the exciting moments seem all the more exciting.
What did you enjoy doing before drinking came around and took over your social life? If you must dig WAY back into childhood for this answer, then do that. Forming healthy connections with other people is an important of this process. It’s one of the many ways you will relearn how to enjoy life again without alcohol. So many people quit drinking and end up walking around in a dopamine deficit state, struggling to find joy in anything.