Drinking When Bored? What It Could Mean Addiction Treatment

By incorporating mindfulness practices and stress management techniques into your daily routine, you can effectively manage boredom and negative emotions without relying on alcohol. By practicing self-awareness and reflection, you can develop healthier habits and coping mechanisms to replace boredom drinking. This will help you regain control of your life and improve both your mental and physical health. In this article, we’ll unpack bored drinking and help you figure out whether boredom is a drinking trigger. Then we’ll show you how to better manage boredom and avoid unhealthy drinking patterns.

But when dopamine levels artificially spike (like what happens when we drink alcohol), that’s when trouble starts. Surround yourself with people that support you and help you in whatever you’re going through in the present moment. It can be your friends, colleagues, or family who know you for ideas of things you can do to fill your time differently. Meet and connect with such people regularly and let them know when you are feeling down or lonely. Fried and overly sugary foods will also artificially spike your dopamine levels and cause your brain to overcorrect, leaving you feeling irritable, depressed, and cranky. These are all things you’re trying to overcome from drinking.

They give you alternatives to drinking to fill gaps in your life. If you want to get better control of your drinking, you need to think about what your future drink-free life will look like. Andy explains how a straightforward, 7-stage process enabled him to change a lifelong addiction to alcohol. It also opens up space to approach your internal world differently. One of the biggest impediments to my sobriety during my relapse days was my inability to avoid getting consumed by emotions.

Dealing With Boredom in Recovery: Tips From a Coach

It is used to combat not only boredom, but also sadness, stress, or the pressures of work. At Ria, we offer weekly meetings with certified counselors to help members stay on track and build skills for long-term change. Excessive drinking has numerous impacts on your body and mind, ranging from mild to severe. Learn which signs to look out for, and how to care for your well-being. You probably have mates who will be fine and normal about you cutting back. But chances are you’ve also got that one friend who won’t be satisfied until you perform “Love Is a Losing Game” for the entire beer garden.

Take a Break From Alcohol and Seek Help

For resources related to AUD, including how to get support, please visit the NIH website. We’ve also partnered with Moderation Management, a non-profit dedicated to reducing the harm caused by the misuse of alcohol. Not to mention alcohol also suppresses hormones related to appetite. So when you reach for a snack, you add even more pounds.

If you’re interested in learning more about me or the work I do or accessing free resources and guides to help you build a life you love without alcohol, please visit hellosomedaycoaching.com. And I would be so grateful if you would take a few minutes to rate and review this podcast so that more women can find it and join the conversation about drinking less and living more. Now there were a bunch of other ideas that came up on the call that I wanted to share. People talked about taking a chocolate making class and getting a kit and doing that. I always have, but they really really helped me in early sobriety.

Sometimes being sober is boring because your life revolves around alcohol.

1. They bought themselves watercolor paints, or beautiful crayons.
2. Hangover symptoms peak — and likely, feel their worst — when the body’s blood alcohol concentration returns to zero.
3. It’s responsible for more than 95,000 deaths annually.
4. There is a quiet time between drinking and your life after drinking.
5. Eventually, feeling bored all the time leads to increased alcohol consumption.

But if you consume alcohol, these signs might indicate that boredom is a drinking trigger. You’re likely to drink more alcohol in a shorter amount of time if you kick off your night with hard liquor, he says. It makes you inebriated faster — and you may feel inclined to drink more than you would slowly sipping a beer. Some people think that a “hair of the dog,” an alcoholic beverage consumed the morning after a night of heavy drinking, can help cure a hangover. Don’t expect products like sports drinks, vitamin-infused patches or hydration packets to work any miracles before or after a night on the town, says Marino. While they may keep you hydrated, they likely won’t address any other hangover symptoms.

Build a strong support network.

Courtney’s professional experience in drinking out of boredom substance use treatment began in a holistic residential treatment center. Since then, she has worked across various settings including outpatient, inpatient, and community corrections programs. Sunnyside is not designed to treat alcohol use disorder (AUD).