472: Why Boredom Makes You Want a Drink (and What Your Brain is Really Craving)
episode
Take a Break from Drinking: Practical Tools to Drink Less & Change Your Relationship with Alcohol
28 min
1 speaker
6 chapters
transcribed 1 month ago
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Why does boredom trigger the urge to drink alcohol?
If you have been spending years avoiding boredom, seeking out rewards, always wanting to be stimulated, always wanting to be entertained, always looking for that next little bit of dopamine, running from your thoughts, if you have been numbing yourself with alcohol or food or working or just constantly being busy, never allowing yourself to sit still, when you work on trying to change the habit, when you stop numbing yourself and Tune into your brain, it's gonna feel a little worse at first because you're gonna come face to face with all the thoughts that you have been running from.
Whether you want to drink less or stop drinking, this podcast will help you change the habit from the inside out. We're challenging conventional wisdom about why people drink and why it can be hard to resist temptation. No labels, no judgment, just practical tools to take control of your desire and stop worrying about your drinking. Now, here's your host, Rachel Hart.
I am so excited to talk to you today about boredom. Maybe you're listening to this podcast because you don't want to be bored, but this is going to be the perfect topic for you. Now, I hear about boredom from my clients a lot. So they take a break from drinking, maybe they even just start drinking less. And they come back to me and they say, Rachel, well now what? I'm bored. What am I supposed to do with all this time? I hate being bored. I'm sitting around in the evening with nothing to do. I don't want to feel this way. I want to feel better, not worse. I'm bored by my friends, or I'm bored by the people that I'm hanging out with, or I'm bored by my husband, or I'm bored with everything. And it feels like
Such a choice, right? The choice really is so I can stay bored, which nobody wants, or I can go back to entertaining myself with drinking. So what are you gonna do? And I'm gonna tell you, because it took me a very long time to figure this out, as someone who spent many an evening by myself thinking, God. This is just so dull, said Wish I had something to drink. Let me tell you, you have to change your relationship with boredom if you want to change the habit of drinking, pure and simple. And so that's what we're gonna be talking about on today's episode. What is boredom? Why is it a problem? What's the upside of being bored? Because surprise, there is an upside, which most people have no idea about. And how can you prevent boredom from being a problem and standing in the way of success when it comes to changing the habit of drinking?
So let's just start out. With what is boredom? I'm gonna tell you this. It is a normal human emotion. You are supposed to be bored sometimes. You might not want to hear it, but it is so true. We are meant to have the full spectrum of positive and negative emotions. That's how humans were designed. And guess what? Boredom is one of those emotions. I always talk about how you need the positive and the negative, the light and the dark. You need the contrast in order to experience the emotions that you want to experience. On the other side of boredom is interest and engagement.
How does the brain’s reward system turn boredom into drinking?
So if you didn't have boredom as something that you understood what it was and you understood how it felt, you wouldn't be able to experience interest and engagement because that would just be your norm all of the time. There would be no contrasting emotion. So your question may be, well, okay, but can't I just be interested and engaged with everything? And the answer is no. I'm gonna get to that a little bit later. I was looking up boredom in the dictionary when I was preparing for this episode, and the dictionary told me that boredom is a state of being weary and restless through a lack of interest. And I thought, yeah, okay, that sounds about right. And I was doing a little more research and then I came across this definition, which I love and I think really captures it so much more profoundly.
Boredom is the search for neural stimulation. And when you don't find that stimulation, you label how you feel as boredom. Mm-hmm. I love that.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
Why does boredom trigger the urge to drink alcohol?
0:00–3:46
2
How does the brain’s reward system turn boredom into drinking?
3:46–9:44
3
What is the evolutionary link between fermentation, wine, and modern drinking habits?
9:44–14:23
4
Why does constant stimulation make boredom feel intolerable?
14:23–19:36
5
How can embracing boredom reveal the thoughts that drive our cravings?
19:36–24:53
6
What practical steps can you take to practice being bored without reaching for a drink?
24:53–28:04
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from Take a Break from Drinking: Practical Tools to Drink Less & Change Your Relationship with Alcohol
481: Wanting to prove you can drink less
480: Tolerating the discomfort of not having another drink
479: How do I get back on track after I slip up and drink too much?
478: I've made so much progress with my drinking. So why doesn't it feel any easier? [Listener Q&A]
477: Chasing the Sweet Spot with Your Drinking
476: Why You Can Always Find a Good Reason to Drink