Being Bored When You’re Quitting Drinking

Planning interactions according to “Sober in Seven” can help reduce feelings of loneliness and prevent reliance on alcohol. Having a list of supportive contacts is beneficial because it can provide you with immediate access to people who will encourage and support you on your journey to recovery. If those thoughts are very negative, then hanging out in your own brain isn’t going to be a great experience.

• There’s a connection between consuming alcohol and boredom.
• Boredom is a natural state or emotion that’s part of the spectrum of things we feel as humans, and we all experience boredom in different forms and at different times.
• If you tend to crave or reach for certain foods when you’re bored, you might be tempted to completely stop eating those foods to remove the temptation.
• Throughout 2020 and into 2021, people reported feeling bored at higher rates than usual due to the COVID-19 pandemic (27).

Address emotional eating

Your friends are out getting drunk, the same as they always do. It’s important to have the right mindset about sobriety. Now that you know the chemical reason for your boredom, let’s explore additional factors that might be contributing to these feelings. When you use alcohol (or any substance) to artificially boost serotonin and dopamine levels in your brain, you create an imbalance in the brain. 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 (and everyone else) have fun. 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.

Alcohol didn’t make life fun. It just made you not care.

In this article, we look at 16 tips to help people stop eating when bored. These involve diet, supporting mental health, and changing a person’s behavioral habits and environment. By becoming more involved in your community, you can effectively replace boredom drinking with meaningful connections and activities that improve your overall mental health and well-being. By engaging in these activities, you can effectively quit drinking, replace boredom drinking, and promote a healthier lifestyle in 2024.

Practicing Mindfulness and Stress Management Techniques

• If you know your willpower weakens after 9 pm, get up before then and go and have a warm shower instead.
• All these tips are here to help you prevent drinking out of boredom.
• Say your main drinking occasion is when you socialize with friends.
• Many people say that they drink alcohol to manage anxiety – to numb it or take the edge off difficult feelings.
• Sitting in traffic, for instance, is one of those things that most people would rather forego.
• The boring moments make the exciting moments seem all the more exciting.

That latter experience feeling like everything is gray and dull and lacks meaning? A lot of people experience anhedonia when they quit. Dopamine is another neurotransmitter that is responsible for feelings of pleasure and happiness. It is also responsible for regulating movement and emotional response. Dopamine depletion can cause apathy, boredom, and lack of motivation.

Therefore, adequate hydration may help a person stop eating when they feel bored. If a person eats in front of the TV or computer when bored, they may overeat or eat unhealthy foods. Similarly, eating while on the go or while traveling may cause overeating and lead to unhealthy dietary choices. Restocking the kitchen and pantry with healthy food and snacks can make eating through boredom less harmful and less tempting. People can prepare regular healthy meals and snacks to keep them satiated throughout the day, making them less likely to eat through boredom.

Reasons You Might Feel Bored in Sobriety

Make notes in a food journal about what you’re doing and your environment when you feel the urge to eat. This might help identify — and stop — boredom eating patterns. Your mood and emotions play a significant role in psychologically induced hunger like boredom eating. Learning to be aware of your emotions, hunger triggers, drinking because of boredom and fullness cues can help prevent you from eating because you’re bored. In certain situations, being bored too often may have detrimental health effects, such as increased rates of depression and altered eating habits (1, 28). Rather than eliminating the foods you crave, try eating them regularly but in moderation.

What is Ecotherapy? A Beginner’s Guide + Tips to Get You Started

• First of all, boredom has a lot to do with your energy levels, so if you’ve got a lot of energy and you have no way of expending it, if you’re sitting around you’ll going to feel bored.
• Many bored drinkers likely don’t realize they’re bored drinkers.
• If you need a medical diagnosis and treatment plan, you are advised to speak to a doctor or suitable medical professional.
• The activity of drinking is not a fun, exciting, or interesting activity.
• You can even sign up for a book subscription service and let someone else curate your list for you.
• Helping business-owners and professionals get control of their drinking.

At the beginning of those days, plan to work on a hobby or some other activity when nothing else is scheduled. You’ll find it easier to settle into the activity should boredom strike. If “for no reason” pops up frequently in your list, it might help to seek a CBT professional to understand your why in those situations. The American Psychological Association recommends CBT to root out “faulty or unhelpful ways of thinking” that may be driving unhealthy behaviors. A sure sign of problematic bored drinking is failing to achieve hobby-related goals. For many people, an antidote to boredom is picking up their knitting, grabbing a book, or writing in their journal.

• Boredom no doubt played a role in this scenario.
• Use Sunnyside to track your drinks and better understand the connection between how much you drink and how you feel.
• The good news is that your brain can adjust and restore balance to your internal world.
• You might occasionally consume several alcoholic beverages to blot out a highly stressful day.
• When serotonin and dopamine levels are low, we become less motivated and less interested in our surroundings.

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. You’ll meet millions of fellow Reframers in our 24/7 Forum chat and daily Zoom check-in meetings. Receive encouragement from people worldwide who know exactly what you’re going through!