This is an audio clip from Sober Podcast #218 sent to sober podcast members.
K sent me an email, requesting a personalized audio: “I think what I need is something that will help keep me on track at around 3 pm when I’m contemplating the evening ahead and all the time I have to fill in between school pick-ups and dinner and kids’ bedtimes. And then there is 8 pm and I am sitting there twiddling my thumbs, BORED OUT OF MY BRAIN. I can’t always go out and I am yet to find a hobby that I enjoy as much as wine.”
below i’ve posted a 1.5 minute clip from the audio, all i ask is that you put in a message below in the comments. If you’d like to listen to the whole thing, you can use the link to download at the bottom of the post.
Question:
Is drinking a ‘hobby’? Is life without alcohol boring? What do you do with all this new time?
Download the entire podcast episode #218 Sign up for the monthly podcast membership |
(ps, my blog allows for anonymous comments – so you don’t have to fill in a name or an email address to post your comment below).
Comment from listener SamiM: “Just listened to audio 218 Bored, oh my goodness I loved it. Was contemplating drinking today, you know why bother trying not to drink its too hard, I am hopeless, lost cause, who am I kidding. After listening to this audio I thought no, I am going to push thru & get away from day 1 as you said!”
drinking does become our hobby–or it did for me. How to do it, when to do it, what I was going to drink. How to make it my special time. GOD—my special time. Really? I roll my eyes as I type this. We fill our time with drinking but, really we just lose our time to drinking. We lose all this time…all this precious time. Then the further away you get you realize that there are all these cool things you can do and then there are so many cool things you want to do that you can NOW do ! I think it’s exciting. Silly as that sounds I think all these opportunities that all the normies take for granted that we took away from our selves. Then when you stop you see all these cool things you can do now. I get excited every day just with possibilities! Sober is exciting and fun and cool….the sober club is where all the cool kids hang out now…LOL
I hadn’t realized it at first, but YES, wine had become my hobby. As others said above, it made the boredom bearable. In the beginning, the evenings are soooo long and boring. I went to a meeting the other day where someone shared “sometimes you have to let your life move around you”. I thought that was a great nugget. No need to act or change or do anything, just let your life move around you in those boring moments and sit tight.
I was nodding and agreeing whilst listening to this Belle. Day 225 and there is not even a whisper any more. But I know she is still there, the witch is waiting for a moment when she can pounce and bring her daily pokes and prods and whimpers back to haunt me and take my new life away. Thank you for being there xx
Awareness of boredom has been the key to turning around my relationship to alcohol. The first post from “thanks for the fish” briefly mentions my view: alcohol makes the boredom bearable.
But I asked myself “why is that?” It doesn’t change the situation. It doesn’t actually add fun. It doesn’t make me or my friends funnier. It only makes me think both are. Alcohol only changes my perception of my circumstance, not my circumstance.
It also doesn’t make problems go away or any smaller. When I wake up there’s the same old problem. Maybe it’s worse. And probably I’ve added feeling like shit to my problem.
So now I picture myself in a situation with and without alcohol. And which version of me do I want to be?
The numbed version who doesn’t have the sense to recognize that he’s bored? Doesn’t have the faculties to address his problems?
Or the engaged, alert, focused, and present version of myself. Present for me, my loved ones, and friends.
I’ll take he later. The former reminds me of chickens who look up when it’s raining but are too dumb to go inside and they drown.
Is that even true? I doubt it. Probably just some urban legend I heard when I was a kid. (Rural legend, I suppose)
I am 51, and for the first time ever – I am thinking about not drinking. Your words help so much, maybe I can do this. Try it on for 100 days. I wonder what that would be like.
On day 4. Was thinking of drinking tomorrow, you know the weekends here.Then thought about the holidays coming up and I thought just 2 more months of drinking then I can start abstinence on 1/1. Listened to your 1 minute “bored” and I will pass on drinking this weekend
I heard a podcast on “the one you feed” which discusssed addiction as a learning disorder. I found it very interesting. Primrose mentioned it on her four-year anniversary blog post. Her blog is Taking a new path. I recommend it. She cites Belle a number of times. You “learn” to drink by repetition and it becomes a habit and a hobby. Baredom is as Belle says, the absence of caos. I guess caos is an addiction too and it takes time to reprogram yourself to a calm brain setting.
At day 70 I can confirm it gets easier! I don’t have a witching hour anymore. I have filled the time with exercise, reading, TV and jewelry making. I do think about wine but more so around will I drink after day 100. THAT is Wolfie. I know!
The witching hours really do go away, I’m on day 138. Like Belle said, they dwindled from a 3hour window/ to a small glitch in the day, then just the weekends, and about a month ago I realized I was enjoying my whole weekend without any anxiety, or boredom. I know what my triggers are and I prepare for them in advance, I can see them coming. For me a walk with an audio at the beginning of my witching hours is what got me through, if I couldn’t go for a walk, I’d put my head phones on and clean, in the beginning distraction is what worked for me along with Belle’s voice and wisdom to guide me.
Boredom was one of my triggers for a long time. Then something clicked, with the help of Belle and lots of reading, I started to accept boredom as a part of life and a way of being, and that it is completely ok to feel it, whereas I’d been resisting that feeling all these years trying to drink it away.
Boredom is also a judgement of the mind so I’ve learned to try not judging it as anything, and instead sit in the nothingness. Nothing to do, nothing to fix, nowhere to go, just sitting in my humanity. Sometimes I get restless, sure, but I’ve sat through that boredom enough now to be able to bash wolfie on the head when he tells me I need a cure for boredom. In fact, he’s hardly ever there anymore. Thanks Belle! xo
Yes drinking was a hobby. At the end it took over my life.
I agree with your answer the further away from day 1. The less bored I was and the quieter Wolfie voice was.
Yes, now that you mention it, drinking had become a hobby for me. –Not many supplies required, always readily available and easy to pick up and get started on! Suuuuper! Uh, not. Outside hobbies and exercise (walking, biking, gardening) work well for me, but I found out the hard way that I need other hobbies, too, for days when it’s just too nasty to get me outside for those things. I actually have a list of things now to turn to when I’m at one of those points in the day where I look around and think “Okay, now what can I do/want to do for a little while?”. We all know what the answer to that one used to be.
for me drinking was often a response to exhaustion after a hard day at work. I just wanted to knock myself out and veg in front of the tv. and tv is mostly so crap that only alcohol made it bearable.
to be honest, now, sober, my problem is being too busy / full of energy. I want to drink to calm myself down. The best alternative for me is meditation. And slow cooking. and nice drinks like cranberry and tonic, a slice and ice. and the occasional choc ice. and making plans which I have some chance of doing something about. I have already bought 4 christmas presents (normally I do this on Christmas Eve, and buy expensive bottles of alcohol for my drinking friends – they’re going to get a shock this year!)