Boredom and Recovery
 

What I believe most people in early sobriety mean when they say that they experience boredom is that they are experiencing a lack of pleasure. This meaning of the word is somewhat different from the way the word is typically used by those who are not in early recovery. Normies (or even folks with long term sobriety) normally use the word to point to a lack of stimulation in their envirnment. This lack of stmulation is typically the fundumental component of their bordom. Those in early sobriey on the other hand, often use boredom to refer to the lack of pleasure that they derive from activities, even activities that are inherently stimulating .


In fact, it is often this lack of pleasure which MAKES the activity boreing for that individual in recovery.


Regular ingestion of substaces, in an effort to experience pleasure, changes the brain. Untill the brain begins to normalize again, in recovery, it is much more difficult to derive pleasure from normal day to day experiences. This often takes many months or sometimes even years after the use alcohol and/or drugs has ended.


But even with abstinence, there is a key aspect of recovery which is often neglected. This is something which can be the reason alcohol and/or drugs became such a large problem in the first place. An article about bordom, recently posted by trachemy, addresses this. It says "it would be wiser to question whether there are more serious, long-term issues that are causing us to feel disengaged. (Eastwood's) work, for instance, has shown that priming people to feel their lives have a greater purpose and meaning tends to make them less bored".


I believe that it is often this lack of purpose and meaning which is the fundemental factor in the initial developement of alcohol and substance problems. I believe it is also often the cause of relapse.


I believe everyone in recovery would do well to ask themselves how they can make their lives more meaningful, instead of more pleasurable. I believe if they do they'll end up with both.

For me I definitely didn't know what do do when I quit drinking, because that filled my time, I didn't do anything else, so boredom was a real thing with soo much time on my hands.

Not filling this time with something meaningful, new activities, new projects, new interests, would have lead back to drinking.

I needed to carve out a new Sober life to make it happen!! :)

I don't believe I've ever been bored a day in my life.

Pleasure... now that's been a tough one. Experiencing the brunt of normality was hard for me :) It's been an acquired taste, lol.

Meaning and purpose... those all shift for me, thankfully.

When i got sober i kept filling up my time with recovery based activities

Whether it was group, mtns, service, volenteering, journal writing, meeting up with sober friends

Then i started doing simple things i enjoyed parks cinema meals etc

Now i have many ivitations to many things that i sometimes turn down lol

Most days in my early recovery I complain of being bored. I agree that this is more so a lack of finding pleasure in anything than not having anything to do. I can think of a lot of things I could do right now but have no desire for I expect no pleasure or reward for doing anything. I actually feel quite sad and worthless because of this. I look around and see people enjoying themselves do simple things, things I can't imagine would do anything for me or my happiness. Keep in mind I post this to relate as a person in early recovery. Its a bit discouraging, but today I still want to get clean and actually have some stability in my life. Its more important to me to get on my feet and have my life back than to feel good right now. I just hope I can find a way to cope with the depression in time.

Another aspect of addiction and early recovery is the enormous changes in how we subjectively experience things due to the changes in brain chemistry (I would say mostly) and also in our routines. As active addicts, I think many of us also have a tendency to be addicted to intensity... Intensity of feelings, events, chaos, drama, all that. And, again, how we experience these things as active alcoholics/addicts. Now when we quit, suddenly a lot of that type of intensity disappears, and while it's temporarily "replaced" with another kind of roller coaster and new set of feelings, it's different... like you said, Awuh, it tends to lack the pleasure. But also, intense pain -- often we addicts get hooked on that as well.

So we can still try to fill our time with many (new) activities, but they don't feel the same, and this often makes us subjectively perceive that something is missing (or many things are missing) -- we identify this as boredom. This is the kind of "boredom" I've been though in the early days, and sometimes still, momentarily. (So then I sometimes find myself looking for new obsessions, or thinking something is "not enough".) Our brains remember that old intensity and madness, and while we may not consciously crave or miss it after a while because our awareness values the new sober new life so much more highly, there are still memories and unconscious feelings of "lacking". I think this is very pronounced in early sobriety and as far as I can see, it lingers for quite a while for many people. It's a change in perception and subjective experience.

I always felt unsettled through life, thoughts like "is this it??.... Is this life and I'm supposed to enjoy it??"

When I heard the phrase "restless, irritable and discontent ".... I remember thinking genius, that just summed up all those thoughts and feelings in 3 little words.

They now sum up "boredom " as I see it and just like the big book says.... That is something I need to remain vigilant about and watching for.

Thanks Awuh, great thread :)

easy does it , my husband relapsed after 4 months and b 4 his relapse he spoke exactly about this he is on cocaine 5 days now and i dont know what or how to get him to a meeting now i think this is it i am moving out by friday sometimes its more difficult *the relapse

I feel like I am less bored now(not in the very beginning though) because I have restarted doing things I used to enjoy like reading and just visiting with people. At the end of my drinking I was basically a hermit wallowing in my self pity. I am single and jobless because of my drinking.I brought it on myself and I have the self esteem now to fix it.

What I used to call boredom I now call Serenity.

Bunnez