George89

Its the boredom I find hard on the weekends.

Where as before, I would feel hungover, anxious, depressed, stressed and all other other horrible symptoms after a night of drinking. So certainly now is better.

Although, Friday and Saturday nights I do get restless. I am building in some new hobbies over the weekend and am starting to play more soccer as well + looking into flying lessons etc. Once I have enough to keep me busy, it won't be a problem.

Its crazy just how little I have done on the weekends in the past. Usually alcohol took first place, and the rest of the weekend was spent recovering.

Now my thought is: so much time to do things, and its great but also means you do have to focus on building up hobbies to keep from getting bored. Although reading/TV and playing Sudoko are better then nothing.

Has anyone else had similar experiences with boredom?

polaris

Of course, that is one of the main reasons people drink and/or relapse.

MIRecovery

Boredom is something we all went through. Take away the chaos, the anxiety, fear, guilt, shame, and pain, and we are left with nothing to do. Boredom does not fix itself we have to build a completely new sober life. Volunteer, go to AA, go to non drinking events or church

Recovery is finding all the things normal people do.

Soberwolf

http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...ething-do.html

QuietToday

The boredom is tough at first, but I found it to go away pretty quickly. It was hard for the first few weeks for me because I was too sensitive to do anything just yet. I didn't even want to leave my house because I thought I'd drink, and yet keeping myself cooped up just made me want to drink too!

In the end though, once I got comfortable with sobriety, I've ended up really enjoying all of the new things I do sober. I absolutely love bicycle riding now, and night or day I can always go for a good long ride. I'm also very comfortable staying in one place now, so when I get bored at nights I'll take a walk or a ride somewhere and bring a book and just read for hours, maybe taking a break to buy a milkshake in-between

I tried to force myself into a hobby when I first started, but it didn't work. I found it best to just stick with the things I knew I could do and relatively enjoy, and then just push through. Once I got comfortable with sobriety a lot of options opened up fast, and I haven't had the opportunity to be bored since!

Dee74

From my own experience, I'm not sure it's boredom, or an inability to think of having fun without alcohol?

SW's link is a good one George - make your sober life as fun as you want it to be

D

George89

Yeah thanks guys. Dee, I agree, I think part of it is learning how to have fun again without alcohol. I am making positive steps, such as beginning to play a game football twice over the weekend, and am looking into some group hobbies including learning to play an instrument and language lessons.

I think being sober means we make much more conscious choices for what we want to do, where we want to go and be, and how we spend our money. I think the things we end up doing therefore can take longer to materialise compared to the lifestyle of drinking and socalizing through drinking - very little thought goes into that, its really "what time are we meeting for our first drink?"

I suppose it all ties into instant gratification as well. Building a new sober lifestyle is going to take sometime but as long as I am working towards it and signing up and turning up to new hobbies and groups, then month by month I will start to find new people I can relate to and find my weekends are more busy then they are now.

Soberwolf

Heres some other useful links George http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...at-we-did.html

http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...rituality.html

sugarbear1

Define boredom

Once defined, maybe you can address what needs to be changed now so you aren't bored

Latte

I just realized how much I was used to chaos and that really isn't wasn't boredom, but the lack of chaos that I had to get used to.