In this episode, we talk about one of the main enemies of the addict - boredom.
In this episode, we talk about one of the main enemies of the addict - boredom.
Hello there everybody. This is M and we are back with another episode of thoughts of an addict. I think I uploaded one, two weeks ago and I promise you a weekly episode. But. The best laid plans of mice and men after glee. Said somebody. I don't really know what that means, but I think what I'm trying to say is I got COVID last week or something. Some kind of. Some kind of bug or virus, if you will. I don't know. I don't know what's going around right now. I went to class this week and every single person in there, coughing, sneezing, farting, don't know what's going on, but. If you're sick. Stay home. Don't get everyone sick. Thank you. That's the PSA today. Anyway, I'm feeling better today. I know that any day sick as a dog stuck underneath the covers. Sure. As hell. Pete. Any day of active addiction. But with some sleep soup. Healing. I don't know. I don't know what Kira stuff. I'm no doctor. I'm better now. Let's go baby. So today I woke up thinking, all right. It's time to turn, to push it out. And. I was waiting for some inspiration on what I was going to talk about today. And I took a look at my calendar. And there was nothing on there for the weekend. Yeah, I know it's Thursday. It's the weekend for me. That's business school, baby. Everyone should do it. Just kidding. And I actually had a surf trip planned for this weekend. I always try to have some shit on my calendar to fill my time. And I got absolutely dunked. By this nor Cal weather. Man you nor Cal NATO's. I don't know how you do it. But so that trip went completely sideways. And now I look at my calendar and there's nothing on there. Pretty much nothing. Friday Saturday, Sunday, and. No, you're thinking, oh, I'm what was you? You have a lot of free time. And this is exactly the subject that I wanted to talk about today. I wanted to talk about. In some ways. What the root of all evil is for the addict. We could say it's selfishness. We could say, I don't know, it's a brain fuck up some kind of dopamine issue, but today I'm going to say one of the roots of all evil for the addict is. Boredom. That's right. The melancholy state. Of boredom. And it's not just me saying this. This is written in a lot of literature in narcotics anonymous. But it was actually talked about 300 years ago. I think I mentioned this before, but I was a philosophy major when I was in undergraduate. Mainly because I was high 98% of the time, but. Not withstanding that there was this. Dutch Danish philosopher. Named Soren Kierkegaard. And he genuinely thought. That boredom. Not money boredom. Is the root of all evil and people in today. I'm going to expound a bit. On why boredom is so goddamned destructive, at least for the addict. So having been an addict for most of my formative years. I never actually learned. How to deal with boredom or really what it was like to be bored. I was never bored when you're in active addiction, you aren't bored that much. You know, why. Cause you getting fucked up. Oh, God, I have nothing to do today. And I'm hi. And when you're high, you're not bored. That's usually why you get high. To avoid that sense of boredom. So I was so used. To just being high all the time. And being okay with it, having nothing on the calendar, but being totally, totally fine with that because I knew that my mind was going to be in some kind of fucking days. Doubt, hazed out dopamine. Endorphin induced state. And if you're an addict that is suffering or you are an addict that is just becoming clean. You are going to notice something. You're going to notice. That you have suddenly been blessed. With the most important commodity. Than any human could have. Now you got time. Oh, man, you got lots and lots of time. Relative to when you were in active addiction. I remember I was planning my days. My weekdays around my drug use. Oh, okay. Sunday. That'll be a good Oxycontin day. Ah, Saturday. I got my weed dealer. I'll get high that day. But then when I got clean, I was like, holy shit. Not doing those things anymore. Now I got time. And. You might be thinking, oh, well, Um, that's a really good thing, right? To have all this free time. But for the addict. We don't really know. What to do with free time. I mean, our free time before it wasn't so free, our free time before. Was actually constrained by our addiction. We never got to experience that freedom because we're always controlled by a mind. That just wanted to use. So now. We're left. Wondering. What do we do with all this free time? And. It can be crippling. It can kind of be crippling in some ways to have all this free time. You ever heard of this idea of choice, anxiety? Probably hear about it a lot nowadays as well. If you have the ability suddenly. Okay. I just had a work week. Now, your Saturday is wide open. What can you do? You can do anything. You can go golfing. You can hang out with friends. You're not gonna be doing drugs. There are so many options out there that it could actually feel kind of crippling in some ways. You don't really know what to do anymore. I certainly didn't know what to do. Remember sitting there waking up Saturday. It's like, what am I doing today? Well, I'm not getting high. So, what am I going to do now? And the addict's mind during boredom because what's happening when you're experiencing boredom is not much dopamine going on. You're not feeling particularly good. So what the addict once during a state of boredom, His drugs, they want that hit. They want that fix for their boredom. And if we're left bored for too long we're going to relapse. Eventually. We're just going to cave. I don't know how long an individual. Can stay in a state of boredom for before, before they just lose it. And. The addict might find other ways to deal with boredom that are not productive and hell this isn't even an addict. This could be anybody right. You're bored. So what do you do? You pick up the phone, you pick up social media, you start flipping through. Duh. Ticky ticky talk and Instagram and whatever the hell everybody's using nowadays. I don't know. And you're just looking for that quick little dopamine hit. Right? Exact same thing is using drugs. But eventually. That's going to go away. Using these social media devices, it's just like using drugs, right? Like, You're just going to be using it, using it, using it, and then you're going to, you're gonna build a tolerance and then you're going to get bored from that. So that's not a cogent solution. But it raises the question. What about drinking? Six red bulls. And then just masturbating furiously all day. What about just trying to maximize your dopamine, trying to trick your brain. Without technical, using a mind altering substance. I mean, are you really clean at that point in time? I guess you're not technically using drugs. But you're still being controlled. You're still being controlled by this endless ceaseless desire. To just have this dopamine hit. And I don't know. I don't even think you're clean at that point in time. You're certainly not free. So then the question becomes, and what I want to answer today is. New addicts. New people recovering. How do we deal? With boredom in our lives with all of this time that just opened up. What I did. His eye. Reflected on everything that I wanted to do. When I was younger. That I was totally just unable to do because I was an addict because I didn't have time. To do. Anything productive. So these can be really simple things. They don't, you don't have to go out and save the world. You don't have to go out and become an astronaut. Uh, for me, it was, I wanted to learn how to golf. That's something that I could do to fill my free time. And I fucking suck naturally. That's not the point. There's something to do. So I would highly recommend choosing something. That you can actually see yourself improving in. Because if you find even minimal improvements, Then you're going to be, you're going to be more committed to the craft. And now's an excellent, excellent time for you to start getting good at things. It was probably really fucking hard for you to get good at anything while you were in a state of active addiction. Because it was hard to maintain, focus on anything at a time, but now. Now you've got that time. And now you got that focus. And. Not only that. Not only are you going to get the enjoyment of seeing yourself improve at something? But it's also going to help you stay clean and for you, non-addicts out there. It's going to help you stay off of Instagram. It's going to help you. Stop masturbating all day, whatever you're doing. To just fill that free time. If you see yourself making 1% point, 1% improvements to. The things that you want to do. That is one serious way to escape boredom. My second advice on how to escape boredom. It's volunteer. There is nothing out there in the world. And I think this is proven by psychology or something. That will make you feel better. Then helping other people. You're looking for that. You're looking for that dopamine hit. Well guess what volunteer is going to give you that? But it's also going to be sustained. It's called the warm glow effect. So you addicts out there looking for a way to get high. This is this, my friends. This is the most natural high that you can get. Giving of yourself, volunteering your time. Not only is it going to help you? Not be bored anymore. But it's going to help restore you to sanity a lot too. Finally, I would recommend working on mindfulness practices. Meditate. Journal. Do yoga. Practice gratitude. Not only is this going to make you feel good? Not only is this going to give you that natural dopamine hit. But, and this is key. It's also going to make it so you're less bored more often. When you're able to live. More fully. In each moment to moment. You're going to find that you're not bored as often. So definitely practice some of these. Some of these mindful practices. And I know, I think out in the last part, I prac I promised you all that. I'm going to give you some of these and I'm cooking something up. Don't worry. But. Yeah, definitely work on some of these. They're going to help with the boredom a lot. I know when I saw that I had nothing going on this weekend, actually. Put me into a bit of a state of anxiety. Because there's always that fear. There's always that fear of oh shit. If I'm doing nothing for two, three days on end. I know what my fucking addict brain's going to start doing. but. The way that I stave that off. It's to keep myself busy and here's my message. To the addict today. Do something. Just fucking do something. Anything. Anything beats active addiction. And. Most anything beats just fucking staring at a wall. Because if you allow yourself to be bored for too long, you're going to relapse. It's just going to happen. We see it time and time again. So you need to figure out for yourself, what do you want, what do you want to do? And, maybe you don't have that answer right now. And that's okay. Just be honest with yourself. Try new things, try new fucking things. The world is your fucking oyster. Now. Okay. You've got time. You've got your freedom back. You got your freedom back, man. So just go try new things and then eventually you're going to find. These little things called hobbies. Oh man. And once you have your hobbies, My hobbies are what keep me clean today. It's a huge, huge part of it. And you're not going to have hobbies the day you get clean. You're not going to have hobbies, maybe even in the month or the year after. But just keep trying new things and then you're going to find things that you love and those things that you love. Those are going to replace the drugs. Now. I crave. Surfing I crave golfing. I'm not craving fucking Oxycontin anymore. And surfing and golfing or sure. A lot more healthy. Then fucking, just degenerating my brain on drugs. So hopefully this podcast today didn't bore you. That would be horribly ironic. Hope this didn't go over like a fart in church. And if you're listening to this right now, because you're bored. Fuck it, go do something. Go have some fun. You probably deserve it. Just don't be destructive. I love you all so much. Thank you for listening. This is Anne with thoughts of an addict. Try to get more of a routine now. Have a beautiful rest of your day.