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. Most people drink to fill some sort of void, like boredom, loneliness, an unhappy relationship, job-related stress or anxiety. But drinking alcohol doesn’t solve any of these problems. When the alcohol wears off, your problems will still be there, and you’ll likely reach out for more alcohol to escape them again.
And if you routinely drink on other occasions too, you’ll experience worse sleep disruptions. The winter months often meet a halt to favorite outdoor activities. This shift in routine, coupled with earlier darkness and cold temperatures, can lead to SAD. Once SAD and downtime collide, bored drinking can result. The drinking out of boredom association between drinking and having a good time has been perpetuated and promoted for years by companies marketing beer, wine, and spirits. Given the ubiquitous nature of alcohol advertising, you might look forward to having that drink as soon as you walk through the door at home or meet your pals at a bar.
Why do I drink alcohol out of boredom?
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. It’s important to understand that achieving sobriety is possible. It doesn’t help that although alcohol may be the world’s most commonly accepted drug, it’s also regularly left off the list of drugs that negatively impact people’s lives. When you’re triggered by experiences like boredom or isolation, the accessibility of alcohol makes it that much harder to refrain from drinking to cope with these difficult feelings. The reasons people start drinking alcohol is very different than the reasons they continue to drink alcohol.
- By engaging in these activities, you can effectively quit drinking, replace boredom drinking, and promote a healthier lifestyle in 2024.
- Regardless of the intent, there are significant health implications that arguably make alcohol the most dangerous substance on the market.
- Talking with a trained therapist, especially one who understands substance abuse, is important.
- For other people, drinking alcohol out of boredom is a much more active choice – they drink to cope with negative feelings like anxiety or loneliness.
So often, our lives are full of distraction, social interaction, entertainment, and things we consider fun. In the midst of these stimuli that keep us busy, engaged, and upbeat about our lives, it can be easy to assume that life of its own accord is here to entertain us. Here it’s helpful to have a working definition of boredom. Jeanette Hu, AMFT, is a San Francisco-based therapist who helps people to become curious about their relationship with substances.
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That would just get in the way of being able to drink as much as I wanted. If our body perceives a harmless situation as dangerous, we start to experience increased levels of stress and anxiety. Boredom is what can occur when you feel like you’ve got nothing to do and no real agency in changing that fact. Among your many options for New Year’s resolutions and fresh starts, dry January is a thing, which means a monthlong break from alcohol. It turns out that doing this even briefly has some health benefits, and NPR’s Allison Aubrey is here to talk about it.
If you’ve reached a point where you can’t experience joy in anything and use alcohol as a way to escape, don’t brush it off as a rough phase. The sooner you get help and start working on it, the sooner you can break free of it. You need to reset your reward pathways and that’s not going to be possible as long as you are drinking alcohol. What if you’ve tried to do the “normal” stuff people do for fun and don’t like any of it? You feel like an automaton simulating a life, but not finding any real purpose, joy, or meaning. This can lead to drinking more and more, potentially developing into harmful patterns or alcohol use disorder.
Drinking Out of Boredom Actually Makes Boredom More Unbearable
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 https://ecosoberhouse.com/ fulfilling. If you find yourself bored without alcohol or drinking simply because you’re bored, you might be developing an unhealthy relationship with alcohol. Regular drinking is often considered socially appropriate and normal, but if your drinking extends to when you’re alone, that’s a red flag.
