Tell them that you plan to avoid alcohol or that you’re cutting back. Staying sober requires a person to analyze the reasons why they were using the substance, identify their personal triggers for relapse, and avoid falling into a pattern of use again. You may again seek out the people and situations that support your alcohol use.

After a couple of cocktails, drunks get real.

• “If you want to maintain the friendship, see a movie or do an activity with them that does not involve alcohol,” says Hafeez.
• If you’ve created an entire social life around drinking, it is natural to be afraid of life without it.
• When you’re trying to adjust wavelengths, but are still surrounded by booze-centric events (ahem, Zoom happy hour), it’s easy to cave.
• Plus, it helps us with our emotional sobriety and wellness.
• It’s important to develop a structured daily and weekly schedule and stick to it.

However, I know that this is best to maintain my recovery. One of the hardest things for an individual who is in recovery from drugs and alcohol is to be around those individuals who still use. As an individual who has been in recovery for nearly 30 years, it has gotten easier for me when I see someone drinking but that was not always the case. This can help you become more thoughtful about your approach. Mindful drinking might be a helpful concept to explore, and research shows that practicing meditation can help casual drinkers reduce their alcohol consumption.

Additional resources to fight boredom in sobriety:

For over 50 years, our compassionate team of professionals has helped individuals overcome addiction with evidence-based, personalized, and life-saving addiction treatment. Furthermore, we’ll explore identifying triggers and avoiding temptation, understanding why it’s crucial for maintaining sobriety. Additionally, we’ll look at enjoying life beyond alcohol consumption by exploring fun activities that don’t involve alcohol and advantages of ordering non-alcoholic drinks over water. Regardless of why you decide to change your drinking habits, socializing sober can feel scary. If you find that you’re struggling to avoid alcohol, or you’re feeling lonely and isolated, consider seeking professional help.

Alcohol-Related Health Problems

Sometimes boredom in sobriety looks like not wanting to be around anyone. When I quit drinking, I was lucky to have a spouse that supported my decision. Your friends are out getting drunk, the same as they always do. Meanwhile, you’re at home wondering how many days it would take someone to find your body after you’ve choked on those peanut M&M’s you’ve been knocking back during your latest Netflix binge. Alcohol merely blurred my perception of social situations.

• Coffee shops, movie theaters, museums, libraries, and fast-food restaurants are just a few places that aren’t likely to serve alcoholic beverages.
• You may find that in steering the focus of a social gathering or party away from alcohol to try to help a recovering person, that you are catering to more than just the individual in recovery.
• What did you enjoy doing before drinking came around and took over your social life?
• Staying busy is a great way to stave off boredom and create space for healing the parts of your brain that took a walloping from drinking.
• After singing this refrain myself during one particularly fiery summer, I’ve been experimenting with periods of a slow-to-no approach to drinking that has me happily in bed by midnight.
• When I quit drinking, I was lucky to have a spouse that supported my decision.

Jason Kelce denies being drunk after wild dancing, throwing beers at the crowd on ‘Monday Night Football’

So make the most of the time you gain by doing something enjoyable or productive. Obviously, you aren’t likely to avoid alcohol all the time. Weddings, shows, and even art galleries usually serve alcohol.

Reduce time with friends who drink

Drinking alcohol can create problems in every area of life, including your physical health, mental health, social life, work-life, and overall wellbeing. Make a list of the ways drinking has negatively impacted your life. You may want to reflect on this list when you feel cravings to drink. If you’ve been curious about how to stop being sober around drinkers drinking alcohol and get sober, you might be wondering where to start. Keep reading to learn about steps you can take to stop drinking, take back control of your life, and how to get sober from alcohol to start the path to recovery and long-term sobriety. The buddy system has been proven to be beneficial in addiction recovery.

A therapist can support your efforts and help you find the strategies that work best for you, your health, and your life. You can try to avoid the conversation, but it’s good to have a response ready in case that’s not possible. If the question comes from someone you know well, you may want to say that https://ecosoberhouse.com/ drugs or alcohol became a problem for you, so you’re staying away from them. If you don’t know the person well, simply saying you have to get up early the next morning or you quit for health reasons should be enough. If you find it difficult to make new, sober friends, try joining a support group.

Drunk people are all secretly Beyoncé’s backup dancers.

When I was finished, it was like someone had hit the refresh button on my brain. I could go back and re-read what I wrote and approach it from the perspective of an outside observer. I’ve included this separate from hobbies because I don’t believe that journaling is a hobby. We are stressed-out, overstimulated, tech-obsessed creatures. Pile on some sobriety struggle, and it’s a recipe for madness. I found myself planning little outings when I got sober because I needed to figure out what it meant to have fun again.

• You might find that one of the best parts about not drinking is that you don’t waste away the next morning sleeping and feeling hungover.
• Being sober also means being present in every moment without clouded judgment or impaired senses due to alcohol consumption.
• Awakening revitalized and eager for the oncoming day is a benefit of abstaining from alcohol.
• Shame is having negative beliefs about yourself and your self-worth.

Normally I wouldn’t mind—I mean, my conversations are littered with expletives—but when it’s two in the morning, and I’m sober and tired, it wears thin quick. During the early days of my recovery, the temptation to use was prevalent and the more that I wanted to avoid it, the more my addiction wanted to rear its ugly head. There were those individuals who I worked with and tried everything to get me to go out and drink with them.