Similarly, eating while on the go or while traveling may cause overeating and lead to unhealthy dietary choices. If a person links their eating habits to how they feel psychologically, they may wish to seek support from a healthcare professional. Restocking the kitchen and pantry with healthy food and snacks can make eating through boredom less harmful and less tempting. Having regular meals may help balance energy throughout the day and avoid hunger pangs, which may trigger eating from boredom.

However, the variety of treatment options make it easier for individuals and families to focus on moderate consumption or complete abstinence. Some drink for pleasure or at social events, while others find themselves drinking for no reason at all.. If you’re having trouble making this change alone, Sunlight Recovery offers programs like individual therapy, group therapy and medical detox to help you with drug and alcohol treatment.

Bored Drinking: How to Defend Against the Sneakiest Trigger

Bored drinking might elevate your mood briefly, but it won’t ever match the satisfaction of mastering a hobby. The solution is some form of stimulation, which can be healthy or potentially unhealthy. Next time you feel bored, take a few minutes to think about how you’d really like to be spending that time. Sometimes a quick 10–20-minute walk is all it takes to recenter yourself and forget about the urge to snack out of boredom.

So many people quit drinking and end up walking around in a dopamine deficit state, struggling to find joy in anything. I have gone to bars with people I genuinely like as a sober person, and I don’t stay for longer than an hour or two if nothing is happening. When you remove alcohol from your life, you free up all the time you spent drinking and recovering from drinking. If you ever sit down to do that math, you will shock yourself with how much time went towards drinking. Now that you know the chemical reason for your boredom, let’s explore additional factors that might be contributing to these feelings. Alcohol robs you of the ability to feel naturally motivated and inspired.

Sobriety itself isn’t boring

It’s responsible for more than 95,000 deaths annually. Many people struggle with drinking out of boredom, and even if they don’t particularly like alcohol or its effects. Studies have shown that easily drinking out of boredom bored people are at higher risk of anxiety, depression, drug addiction, alcohol misuse, anger, and a number of other issues. Boredom can unexpectedly become a cue for sensation-seeking behavior.

• 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.
• “Surely if I’m bored without alcohol, then alcohol makes my life less boring” – they think to themselves.
• Those feelings don’t come back immediately when you quit.
• It’s normally while your mind is glad let free or wonderingto wonder on its own, it’s only when you that you’ll get bored.
• For those who didn’t work from home, only 12% were prone to excessive drinking.

But at home, it’s easy to get a bit too comfortable… you can get a long way down a bottle when you are sitting in front of the TV half-watching some series to pass the time. Give us a call and we can help find the right treatment program for you or your loved one – even if it’s not ours! There will always be a long lost friend who arrives on your doorstep looking to catch up over a few drinks. Be ready for these moments when they arrive, and they will, give yourself a wry smile, then make the choice that fits with your goals.

You put off starting a new hobby or working on an existing one.

Choosing a new hobby to occupy your time is not always easy. It may require a bit of soul-searching, especially when your motivation is at historically low levels. And while these things might sound serious and scary, it’s important to note that it’s one piece of a larger puzzle. It’s not as simple as “getting out there” and “trying something new.” It’s hard to do that when you suffer from extreme depression and anhedonia. The very things you should be doing to feel better require a level of motivation you might not be able to fathom.

Instead, you should find ways to cope with your boredom that keep you productively occupied and are more fulfilling. Usually, when we’re bored, we’re less likely to recognize how much we’ve had or how quickly we’re drinking. This can result in excessive drinking, leading to longer-term health problems such as liver disease and increased risk of certain types of cancer.

In a 2022 survey of Sunnyside members, 5% said boredom triggered them to drink. The only triggers that ranked higher are unwinding after a long day, habit, relieving stress, and celebrating something important. Especially when it comes to psychological types of hunger like boredom eating, external factors often trigger the urge to eat. Rather than eliminating the foods you crave, try eating them regularly but in moderation.