Bored After Quitting Drinking: How to Overcome It

Since you are worried about how much alcohol you are consuming, try taking some steps to change drinking because of boredom your drinking habits. It’s unclear from your question exactly how much you’re drinking.

Think of times or places where alcohol is normally found. Parties, seasonal events, family meals or work gatherings might spring to mind. Drinking alcohol is often seen as a very social activity, but in truth for millions of people, it’s the total opposite.

1. Mediation analysis

If you are ready to kick this poison out of your life for good click here to get started or check out my live quit drinking seminars. Boredom is something that almost every individual will have experienced from time to time. One way of describing it would be to say that it is a state of mind that people experience when they have nothing to do and they lack interest in their surroundings. Another definition describes boredom as being restless and weary because of a lack of interest in things. Youngren writes about one interaction where she talked about her pandemic drinking with a fellow parent who said consuming alcohol isn’t compatible with raising small children. Some people found the interaction judgemental, but Youngren agrees with the parent’s response. Before she quit, she saw an occasional glass of wine turn into nightly drinking — and watched every “evening slid by in a haze of Sauvignon Blanc and streaming TV,” she writes.

• Drinking out of boredom may indicate a deeper issue at hand.
• If they do not find ways to fill this time then it can mean that they end up feeling bored a lot of the time.
• In our sample, almost half of the adolescents declared they had experienced binge drinking in the last two weeks and this percentage is higher than 50% for boys.
• Unfortunately, drinking alcohol because of boredom makes you feel worse which in turn, makes you feel even less confident about going out and making new connections.
• When you remove alcohol from your life, you free up all the time you spent drinking and recovering from drinking.

I was out on an ankle monitor as a result of a DUI, so I was forced to stop, and I thank God for that, but now it’s come off. I want more than anything to maintain not drinking and plan to. I guess I’m wondering how I stop thinking about that illusion of how my favorite things are amplified when adding alcohol to them.

Tip 1: Get conscious about what’s driving your drinking out of boredom

Finally, in a third hypothesis we expected boredom to predict binge drinking via the mediation effect of drinking expectancies. That is, we hypothesized that the effect of boredom proneness on binge drinking can be accounted by drinking expectancies. Boredom is often cited as a reason for drinking to begin in a person’s life.

Carlson S.R., Johnson S.C., Jacobs P.C. Disinhibited characteristics and binge drinking among university student drinkers. Blume A.W., Guttu B.L. Categories of alcohol outcome expectancies and their relationships to alcohol related consequences. Alvanzo A.H., Storr C.L., La Flair L., Green K.M., Wagner F.A., Crum R.M. Race/ethnicity and sex differences in progression from drinking initiation to the development of alcohol dependence. People everywhere know they’re choosing between death and cigarettes/drinks/pharmaceuticals/heroin/whatever but they still take the drug. It’s insane but, again, it’s not a rational choice. As Dr Stephens explained, the real issue is in the way the liver breaks alcohol down into stuff called acetaldehyde. This is used to produce perfumes and disinfectants—as well as nasal tumours in rats, and laryngeal tumours in hamsters.

Our recovery program helps you do it for good.

Ugh I wish I could even do chores when I was drinking. As soon as I open a bottle, I just slump on the couch. A therapist can assess your habits and make recommendations that could help you manage your alcohol intake. If your house is well-stocked with alcohol, you’ll likely drink more and more often.

For instance, some scholars (Clark et al., 2012) have suggested that individual characteristics and alcohol expectancies have been involved in the dysregulated use of alcohol in binge drinkers. An initial hypothesis concerns the differences between girls and boys in alcohol use as well as in boredom, and drinking expectancies. In line with the literature previously described, we predicted that boys not only use alcohol more frequently and consume higher quantities, but also begin to drink at a younger age.

Tips For Overcoming Boredom in Sobriety

In fact, chronic episodes of binge drinking can be a real bummer for everyone involved. Sobriety means never having to embarrass yourself or become a burden on your friends again. For many of us who began drinking as a social lubricant, the thought of enjoying ourselves at a party without alcohol can seem impossible. We may believe that people like us more when we drink—that we are funnier, wittier, and more charming after a few cocktails. In almost all cases, this story we tell ourselves is far from reality. Once you become sober, you may begin to observe this phenomenon in those around you that continue to drink. Alcohol may give you a false sense of confidence, but it also slows down thinking, slurs speech, and lowers inhibitions, often leading to socially unacceptable behavior.