Facts About Aging and Alcohol National Institute on Aging

Practicing mindfulness, a person gets in touch with their senses to feel, hear, smell, taste and see the world around them. They will also pay more attention to their thoughts and feelings to understand how people, places and things trigger boredom and the desire to use substances. Perhaps the most significant danger of boredom is addiction relapse. Relapse is always unsafe, but especially early in recovery. Without a steady supply of drugs, the brain begins to lose its tolerance to substances.

Many groups hang out before or after the meeting so join up for a great time and less boredom. The activity of drinking is not a fun, exciting, or interesting activity. There are countless numbers of people complaining about feeling bored, not knowing what to do with themselves. Early sobriety is a critical period when community and support networks are critical. This can be hard if your social life previously revolved around drinking. It’s even harder if your loved ones don’t support your sobriety.

Give Yourself a Time Out

If your options are to sit there and be bored or wash the dishes and be bored, you can at least accomplish having clean dishes if you choose to wash the dishes. While this may not sound too enticing, picking something off your to-do list and just doing it can break the spell of boredom https://ecosoberhouse.com/article/why-do-alcoholics-crave-sugar-in-recovery/ and lead you to something more engaging. Take our short alcohol quiz to learn where you fall on the drinking spectrum and if you might benefit from quitting or cutting back on alcohol. But truthfully, it’s something we all experience—and struggle with—throughout our lives.

Go try it on and then devise a plan to make the money that you’ll need to purchase it. Nothing is too ridiculous or “out there” – the very act of doing can save you from fatal boredom. Although I got different kinds of advice about what I should or shouldn’t do from the people in my life, no one questioned my drinking at the time. By cultural standards, my drinking habit was nothing to worry about, which is perhaps why I silently struggled in the gray area for so long. But when I quit alcohol, a fascinating domino effect of positive shifts naturally followed suit. My husband noticed my light turn back on and, after a while, I felt it too.

How Do You Make Relaxation a Regular Part of Recovery?

With a solid support group, an understanding of one’s own personal triggers, and plans to counteract temptations, you can enter recovery once–and remain there. When you’re stuck in this sort of pattern, sometimes the best thing to do is just pick an activity and stick with it. It can take a few minutes to settle down and focus, and many activities are not fun or interesting until you get to that point. So the solution is often just to set a timer for 10 minutes or so and just keep working on it for that amount of time no matter what. Once you overcome that initial resistance, you’ll typically find the activity is no longer boring.

Personally, I am still happy to go to the pub with pals who are drinking while I nurse an alcohol-free beer. I have become a master of the French exit (disappearing without going through a lengthy and tedious round of goodbyes). Nobody ever notices, cares or remembers when you left.

Additional resources to fight boredom in sobriety:

So if all you’re doing is “not drinking” you are CRUSHING this early sobriety thing. If you want to access my free video training on how to make stopping drinking effortless drinking out of boredom and enjoyable, click here. There is nothing wrong with being bored after stopping drinking. One of the best ways to overcome boredom is to have a written schedule.