How to Cut Down on Alcohol, Even If You Don’t Want to Quit Drinking

Danny ensures he has as many techniques as possible to help people improve their well-being and achieve their goals. Outside of work, he divides his time between family, basketball, and rock climbing. If Danny won the lottery, he’d start a tech company focusing on deep learning to support people in coping strategies. Have you ever found yourself pouring a drink not to celebrate, but simply because there’s nothing else to do?

Sober and Bored? Here’s What To Do About It

Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at for further information. Let’s get started on a new life full of purpose and passion. Helping others can be highly rewarding and a great way to meet people in recovery. The best way to get outside of your own head and boredom is by helping someone else which is why we recommend volunteering. It also offers an opportunity to express yourself without the need for drugs or alcohol.

Getting Drunk Without Drinking

And when you were 14 and 16 and 18 the time before you started drinking and that was the center of your life. And it’s time to look forward to what is hiding underneath what you’ve been doing. The dreams that you had that you’ve never gone after. Because you were so busy working and socializing and improving your home and taking care of your kids and commuting and going to sports practices.

Finding Healthier Ways to Cope with Boredom

It is easier to drink than it is to mourn your dead. It is easier to drink than it is to hate the person the people around you all expect you to be. It is easier to drink than it is to get creative and sit through writers block and wondering where the Hell your inspiration is.

• We recently launched our in-app chatbot, Melody, powered by the world’s most powerful AI technology.
• But it will lift little by little and new interests and joy will come into the picture.
• Self-awareness and reflection are essential in identifying triggers for boredom drinking.
• He further describes his approach as science-driven, constantly reviewing the latest literature and theory.
• Early sobriety is a critical period when community and support networks are critical.
• But people pleasing often just results in you doing things you didn’t want to in the first place – including getting on it.

Consuming alcohol stimulates the release of dopamine, a neurotransmitter that plays a significant role in our brain’s reward system. Dopamine is like a pat on the back from our brain. Always have a list of people that support your recovery available. This provides quick access to those who empower you on your recovery journey. Surrounding drug addiction yourself with people that support you can help alleviate possible remnants of guilt and shame from past behaviors.

Make a Schedule to Structure Your Days

You suggest it sounds good, or as good as my wife? But believe me when I tell you that I realized that longer term sobriety was an exciting new adventure. Whether or not you realize it, drinking is the shame cycle. And it held me in a place where I was stuck and where my world got smaller drinking out of boredom and smaller. Once you stop drinking, your world becomes more open. And you get to find out what life looks like, and feels like without drinking.

How can I identify my boredom drinking triggers?

And you actually need this space, you need the blah, you need the quiet time between your drinking life and what is going to fill it up. And suddenly you look over and they’re doing something that you couldn’t even imagine that they would do because the thing that they were obsessed with was put down and put away. But that is because it gave them a hit and a distraction. And now, I want to talk about life after early sobriety after the law when you start to look around and try to imagine what your life is going to look like without alcohol. This is when it’s time to look backwards to the things that gave you joy when you were 12.

• Just restart your plan and recognize & reflect on what challenges need to be overcome and how.
• Since then, she has worked across various settings including outpatient, inpatient, and community corrections programs.
• AspenRidge Recovery offers online treatment programs that make it possible to receive recovery care while still maintaining a flexible schedule.
• The questionnaire consisted of closed, self-completed questions which addressed young people’s current drinking behavior, drinking expectancies and boredom proneness.

Both inpatient and outpatient rehab facilities are available. I believe that we need passion to heal ourselves of addiction. I read recently that looking at what you enjoyed doing as a child is a clue as to what you should be doing to fulfil yourself as an adult.