List the benefits of not drinking and the reasons you’d like to stop. When you’re tempted to reach for alcohol, read over the list. Alcohol becomes a problem when it causes social or relationship problems. Perhaps you argue with your partner when you’re drinking, or maybe you become the loud person who embarrasses their friends in a restaurant. Like many people, it sounds like you initially sought alcohol because you thought it was a solution. It might have temporarily offered relief from boredom or loneliness.

Drinking out of boredom may indicate a deeper issue at hand. Drinking out of boredom can reinforce negative feelings and self-medicate. Learning healthy coping skills, unfortunately, is not as intuitive as it might seem. Dealing with monotony and underlying mental health issues typically requires self-awareness and outside assistance through various forms of therapy addressing underlying conditions.

#3 Make a Schedule to Structure Your Days

However, if you are able to schedule your time, it can be a game-changer. One of the best ways to overcome boredom is to have a written schedule. Find any obstacles that stand in your way between you and your goal. What is holding you back from achieving this goal? Focus on removing the BIGGEST factor that is holding you back. If it’s a big goal, you may wish to break it down into smaller goals.

When you’re worried, lonely, or angry, you may be tempted to reach for a drink. Try to find new, healthier ways to cope with stress, including staying active, meditating, or talking to friends and family. A study from RAND Corporation showed Americans’ alcohol consumption rose in every age group. And women report the heaviest increases, saying their episodes of heavy drinking — four or more drinks in a few hours — increased by 41%.

Piedmont Healthcare

A second hypothesis concerned the boredom drinking between adolescents who had experienced binge drinking in the last two weeks and those who had not. In this case, we expected binge drinkers to declare a more frequent use and a higher quantity of alcohol consumption, as well as a younger age of first approach to drinking behaviors. Moreover, we expected binge drinkers to express a greater feeling of boredom and to have higher scores on expectancies to drink. 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.

• Try to find new, healthier ways to cope with stress, including staying active, meditating, or talking to friends and family.
• 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.
• Other tasks like laundry and cleaning the house can cause boredom and be a source of anxiety.
• Instead I’m drinking coffee, listening to the birdsong and planning my day.
• 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.
• But I found myself drinking in bed to rest my body.
• Get on Google, find a class, and make it happen.

Switch to smaller drinks and drink slowly, breaking up your drinks with food. Don’t feel pressured to finish an entire drink. Better yet, substitute alcoholic beverages with non-alcoholic ones, such as tea, water, sparkling water, or other low-sugar beverages. Staying closely involved as parents and keeping your children busy is positive activities is crucial to both the prevention of teenage substance abuse and recovery from it. The knowledge that boredom can lead to teenage drug use is a valuable weapon that can be used by you as parents in your fight to keep your children healthy and substance-free.

I’m Bored Unless I’m Drunk, But Is That Actually a Problem?

The best way to stop boredom is to step out of your comfort zone and do something you never could have done while drinking or using. You could swim with sharks, or try mountain biking, or try new food. Participating in new and thrilling experiences will show you there’s more to life than addiction that you can take advantage of in sobriety. Don’t get your thrills from booze or heroin, get them directly from your own brain by trying new and exciting things.