Why Boredom Makes You Want to Drink—And How to Break the Habit Loop Without Alcohol
Aug 08, 2025
Let me know if this sounds familiar.
It’s a regular Sunday afternoon, the laundry is finally done, but now comes the folding.
Socks, shirts, towels… You stare at the pile on the bed, your mind starts to wander: Maybe a glass of wine would make this feel less boring.
And if you have already quit alcohol, then there comes the wave of nostalgia and the reminiscence to the old days where you could just pour a glass of wine to soften the edge.
Does that sound familiar?
On the fast lane? Read the summary
Why We’re Wired to Hate Boredom
Quick Answer:
Many ex-drinkers find that boredom after quitting alcohol is one of the hardest emotions to deal with—especially when alcohol used to be their go-to solution for downtime or restlessness.
Whether it’s sorting through mail or paperwork. waiting for dinner guests to arrive, or helping your kids with math homework, the nagging restlessness that whispers“A glass of wine will make this better” is the same.
And you know how the rest of the story goes: in a moment of weakness, you give in to the desire and reach for the bottle. For a moment, it helps—you feel better, the discomfort melts away. You no longer feel bored.
But when the next evening rolls around again, you find yourself right back in the old cycle:
bored → drink → go to bed → rise and repeat.
Boredom drinking is a loop many of us know all too well, which made me wonder: But why do we keep doing this—even when we know how the story ends?
The quick answer is: Most of us hate boredom, like a lot.
The 30 Reasons Why People Drink Checklist
Go from “What’s wrong with me?!” to “Oh, there’s NOTHING wrong!”
This Study Shows People Would Rather Get Shocked Than Be Bored
Here is the thing: boredom is an incredibly uncomfortable state for many of us, and the lengths people would go to avoid feeling it may surprise you.
A few years ago, researchers at the University of Virginia did a really interesting experiment. They asked people to sit alone in a quiet room for 15 minutes, with no phone, no books, no distractions—just themselves and their thoughts.
The prompt was “Entertain yourself with your thoughts.”
Before going into the room, participants were given a mild electric shock and asked if they’d pay to avoid it. Most said yes.
But here’s the surprising twist: when left alone in the room with nothing to do, two-thirds of the men and a quarter of the women ended up shocking themselves on purpose. Just to ease to boredom.
That’s how uncomfortable boredom and stillness can be. Most of us would literally rather zap ourselves with pain than sit quietly with our own thoughts.
Quick Takeaway:
Why Alcohol Feels Like the Easy Fix for Boredom
Quick Answer:
In other words, it’s no surprise that many of us end up drinking out of boredom—we’re wired to avoid that restless, under-stimulated state.
If boredom already makes us squirm, then alcohol culture helped position drinking—especially boredom drinking—as an easy solution (one much preferable than zapping ourselves). The truth is, most of us didn’t just stumble on “using alcohol to solve boredom” on our own. The drinking culture and alcohol industry offered us a big nudge.
How Media Taught Us to Drink When We’re Bored
Tell me if you have seen these kinds of reels before: A creator doing chores—laundry, dishes, vacuuming—with a bottle of wine in frame. Caption says: “Enjoying cleaning with a buzz.”? Or perhaps you are familiar with the scenes when a TV character sighs dramatically while looking bored, before pouring a glass of wine without speaking. Penny from The Big Bang Theory comes to mind—half the time she’s in her apartment, bored out of her mind, she’s got a wine glass in hand
Speaking of media influence, we can’t leave out the alcohol commercials. The “On Hold” Ad from Bud Light is a perfect example. The ad starts with mundane hold music, one most of instantly associate with boredom. Then, beer is silently introduced, and the frustration quickly turned into a playful, upbeat dance.
Without a word being said, the message is clear: when life slows or gets dull, beer makes it better. The ad masterfully sends the subliminal message that their brand of beer can make any boring task enjoyable, subtly suggesting alcohol’s supposed ability to fix boredom.
No wonder so many of us learn to associate alcohol with the answer to boring tasks.
Why Drinking Feels Like It Works—At First
And those messages don’t just live in commercials or sitcoms—they show up in our real lives, too.
For a moment, the drink seems to help. After a few sips, the irritable boredom fades, replaced by a buzzing numbness. You exhale, “Now this feels better,” and conclude that the ad is right -- a glass of wine is indeed the solution for boredom.
Before we dive deeper to examine whether alcohol is really the answer to boredom, let’s first understand our discomfort with boredom, and the different forms it can take.”
Quick Takeaway:
What Causes Boredom and Why It Triggers Drinking
Quick Answer:
What Is Boredom, Really? The Psychology Behind It
Boredom is a state of restlessness or dissatisfaction that shows up when your mind is under-stimulated, under-engaged, or disconnected from meaning. It often arises when in a space that is empty of activity, engagement, or purpose.
Boredom and Evolution: Why It Drives Us to Act
From a survival standpoint, the aversion of boredom might’ve served a real purpose: it nudged our ancestors to explore, hunt, innovate, or connect, rather than stay complacent. If someone in the tribe were just sitting around and doing nothing all day, they wouldn’t be helping the group thrive.
So boredom may have evolved as a motivational signal—“go do something more useful, more stimulating, more connected to your purpose or survival.”
In that sense, boredom was a survival tool.
Why Society Taught Us to Avoid Boredom at All Costs
From a cultural perspective, boredom doesn’t just feel uncomfortable—it feels wrong.
Many of us grew up being told we shouldn’t be bored. I still remember as a kid, if I was caught just sitting around doing nothing, my mom would say, “If you're bored, I’ll give you something to do!” ...and I’d be sent off to do chores I definitely didn’t want.
We live in a culture that praises productivity and condemns stillness. Being bored is often associated with laziness or a lack of direction.
No wonder brain scans show that boredom activates parts of the brain associated with discomfort—sometimes even on par with disgust.
We’ve been taught that feeling boredom means something’s wrong with us. That we’re doing life wrong.
The Sober Curiosity Micro-Dose
Bite-sized sober curious tips + inspiration you can read while waiting for your morning coffee to brew. Twice a week, straight to your inbox—helping you effortlessly drink less without sacrificing the joy of life.
What Is Existential Boredom? (And Why We’re Not Going There Today)
But sometimes, it’s not just the noise outside us that makes boredom feel unbearable—it’s the emptiness inside. That lead us to another flavor of boredom: existential boredom. That deeper, emptier “What’s the point of all this?” kind of feeling.
Viktor Frankl, often called the father of existential psychology, believed that humans are driven by two powerful instincts: the will to survive and the will to find meaning in that survival.
In modern day, most of us are relatively safe and our basic needs are met, and as a result, we are left to face the second type of boredom: existential boredom. Unlike situational boredom, which stems from a lack of stimulation. Existential boredom is about a lack of meaning,
Frankl believed that existential boredom signals a crisis of meaning—what he called the “existential vacuum.
Many of the people I work with know this feeling well. We perform our jobs to earn money, use that money to escape on vacations, and then rise and repeat through the same loop again. And when the void creeps in, drinking becomes the easiest escape.
I’ll be exploring that in a future piece, but for now, let’s stay focused on the more everyday boredom that shows up during chores, traffic, and those painfully slow moments of life. And take a closer look at if reaching for the bottle is really the answer we want.
Quick Takeaway:
Alcohol and Boredom: A Loop You Can Break
Quick Answer:
Situational Boredom Explained (And Why It’s So Triggering)
If you have been around Sober Curiosity for a while, you know that alcohol’s “help” often comes with fine print. So let’s take a look at what tends to happen when we use alcohol, or any distraction, as a way to respond to these two different types of boredom.
If existential boredom is about a lack of meaning, then situational boredom is about a lack of stimulation. Whether it’s folding laundry, waiting for a guest to arrive, or spending hours sitting through an unengaging conversation, situational boredom is a common reason for many of us to feel restless and irritable.
But whether we like it or not, boredom without alcohol is something we all have to navigate—especially if you’re trying to stay alcohol-free. It’s nearly impossible to live a life that is constantly stimulating. So what do we do when the restlessness hits? In my experience, we have three options…
- Avoid or exit when possible
- Numb or distract from it.
- Engage with it
3 Better Ways to Deal with Boredom Without Alcohol
#1. Bored? Try Saying No: How Opting Out Creates Freedom
Believe it or not, in my experience, up to 30–40% of situational boredom can actually be avoided or reduced. Opting out is an underrated and underutilized option—especially for high-functioning people who are used to pushing through.
Whether it’s a social obligation that drains your energy, busywork that could be delegated or skipped, or spending time with people who leave you feeling more bored than nourished, learning to say no can be liberating.
Many people I’ve worked with say that learning to say “no” gracefully is one of the most empowering skills of their alcohol-free journey. That’s why we have dedicated a lesson specifically to the skill of saying no.
7 Graceful Ways to Say No to a Drink Without Being Awkward
Feel tongue-tied when turning down a drink? These mindset shifts + mini scripts will help.
#2. Why We Numb: The Hidden Cost of Distracting from Boredom
That leaves us with the other 60–70% of boredom—the kind that sticks around even after we’ve quit drinking, and can lead to relapse if we don’t know how to handle it. Doing dishes. Sitting in traffic. Folding the same pile of laundry every week. Waiting for someone who’s running late.
For those tasks that cannot be eliminated, many of us tend to default to numbing or distracting ourselves from them. We scroll through social media, snacking without thinking, or if drinking is in the mix, reach for a glass.
And in the short term, it helps. The relief is almost instant, the irritation fades, and we feel just engaged enough to keep going. But there’s often a hidden cost: It reinforces the boredom → drink → repeat loop.
And before long, our brain would even stop searching for an exit or try to make the situation more engaging. Instead it would just default to drinking whenever a sign of boredom arose.
If you have been using alcohol to cope with boredom for a while, you may even find yourself starting to drink preemptively before boredom hits. Over time, it can dramatically diminish our tolerance to boredom, and our brain starts needing that loop to get through anything tedious at all.
#3. How to Engage with Boredom and Feel Alive Again
Instead of numbing or avoiding, engagement asks us to lean toward the experience with curiosity and intention—to find a way to connect with the moment, whether through creativity, mindfulness, or a spark of play.
Sometimes it’s as simple as putting on a favorite playlist while folding laundry, letting your breath guide you through the dishes, or making up a mental game to bring mastery to even the most tedious task.
It’s not usually the first option that comes to mind—because unlike distraction, engagement takes effort. It has to be earned.
But engagement is also the only path that allows us to feel fully alive in even the most ordinary moments.
Quick Takeaway:
How Alcohol Creates a Boredom Loop You Can’t Escape
The hidden downside of using alcohol to cope with situational boredom is that it often keeps us stuck—tolerating situations we might otherwise exit, transform, or outgrow.
This One Example Shows How Drinking Keeps You Stuck
Here’s an example:
Maybe you have a friend you find kind of dull. Every time you hang out, you feel disengaged and slightly irritated. That’s what psychologists call situational boredom—and it’s one of the most common triggers for boredom drinking or mindless snacking
Then you have three options:
Option #1: Engage the moment.
You could get curious, ask better questions, see if there’s a spark of interest you missed. Sometimes we’re surprised—people open up when we shift how we show up.
Option #2: Exit.
If you do try to engage and the result is still “nope, not for me,” then you have the right to reduce or walk away from the relationship. That’s what boundaries are for.
3-Step Boredom-Drinking Interrupt Sheet
Why Alcohol Delays the Real Decision You Need to Make
But here’s what often happens when drinking is on the table:
We default to Option #3: Numb or distract.
We drink to make the dull conversation more tolerable… and we stay longer than we meant to. Not because it’s fulfilling, but because the wine made it just tolerable enough to not rock the boat.
Over time, alcohol becomes the thing that keeps us in boring situations we don’t actually want to be in. We lose the ability—or even the desire—to change them.
How to Break the Boredom Drinking Habit with These 4 Tools
That’s why, at Sober Curiosity, we don’t just focus on stopping drinking.
We focus on rewiring the belief, building the skills, shifting the mindset to change how you respond to life’s boring, stressful, or emotionally itchy moments—without needing to numb them away.
It takes four core sobriety pillars to break old drinking patterns and build a thriving alcohol-free life:
Pillar 1 — Value Discovery:
to reconnect with what truly gives us satisfaction and fulfillment
Pillar 2 — Belief Upgrade:
to rewrite the story we’ve been told about alcohol and about yourself.
Pillar 3 — Skill Building:
to replace alcohol with empowering tools to meet the needs that alcohol once helped us meet in life.
Pillar 4 — Mindset Shifting:
to cultivate a mindset that allows you to turn any setback or challenge into stepping stones.
To break the boredom drinking loop asks us to upgrade the beliefs that alcohol is the answer to boredom and to build the skill of find engagement and joy even in the tedious tasks.
If you’d like to explore this further, check out Sober Curiosity Society, an non-AA community for growth-minded folks to break the drinking pattern and go from white-knuckling, feeling deprived, and missing the buzz to feeling free, confident, energized, and genuinely good about saying 'No' to a drink.
Sober Curiosity Society
an non-AA community for growth-minded folks to break the drinking pattern and go from white-knuckling, feeling deprived, and missing the buzz to feeling free, confident, energized, and genuinely good about saying 'No' to a drink.
TL;DR – Why Boredom Makes You Want to Drink (and How to Break the Loop)
Life Without Alcohol: Will You Check Out or Show Up?
As human beings, our time here is limited. I did math, even if we live to 90, that’s just 32,872 days on Earth. And most of life isn’t big, dramatic, or dazzling. It’s made of small moments—including the mundane, repetitive ones.
There’s a modern myth that life is supposed to be fun and exciting all the time. But the truth is, most of life is ordinary, with brief moments of joy and surprise in between.In fact, it’s the ordinary that makes those moments of excitement feel so exhilarating.
As Thích Nhất Hạnh wrote,“The miracle is not to walk on water… but to walk on the green earth, dwelling deeply in the present moment and feeling truly alive.”
If we all have to face the ordinary from time to time, then the real question is: Do we choose to check out—or do we choose to show up?
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If you want to keep rewiring the beliefs and habits that keep you stuck in the drinking cycle, come get my Sober Curiosity Micro-Dose emails—sent twice a week with short, powerful insights to help you shift, reflect, and stay alcohol-free with confidence.
They’re like bite-sized sober curious snacks that go perfectly with your morning coffee—no overwhelm, just small sparks of clarity to help you drink less without losing the joy.
The Sober Curiosity Micro-Dose
Bite-sized sober curious tips + inspiration you can read while waiting for your morning coffee to brew.
