Addiction is a disease of isolation. This means that the pandemic puts many people’s recovery at risk. While we are supposed to stay at home and avoid gatherings for our health and safety, it is jeopardizing the health and safety of some. Boredom can cause some people to slip into old bad habits, or cause other people to start new ones. To prevent this from happening, you will have to avoid forming bad habits during a pandemic.
How-to Avoid Forming Bad Habits During a Pandemic: Positive Behaviors
Stay Involved in a Community
Accountability and support go a long way for keeping people from starting or relapsing into bad habits. Support groups and communities like AA help people feel safe and not judged by others, because everyone in the group has struggled at some point. The pandemic really disrupted many of these support groups. Due to safety concerns, in-person group meetings had to stop. Many of these groups turned to online meetings instead. If you used to go to a support group and need that accountability, do not let the fact that you can not attend in-person sessions deter you. You will be able to find an online support group that can still provide you with the support and accountability you are wanting.
In addition, reach out to an accountability partner to help hold you accountable. You will be able to call this person whenever you are starting to struggle. It is important to have a friend or someone you trust there for you during this unprecedented time. Having someone there for you will really go a long way from keeping you on the right track.
Occupy Yourself
Do your best to find other things to occupy yourself. Perhaps you could start a home renovation project, or take up a new hobby. There are also a wide-variety of online classes that you could take to help you learn something new. Do an online exercise class to keep you moving and get your endorphins up. Keeping yourself occupied and busy with positive, meaningful tasks will help keep you from forming bad habits during a pandemic. If you are bored and stuck at home, you may fall into unhealthy patterns. These could be drug or alcohol use, binge-eating, or general laziness. Sitting around thinking about all of the bad stuff going on in the world will just cause you to get depressed. Do not let the pandemic cause you to go down a bad path. Instead, use this downtime to come out of the pandemic a new-and-improved version of yourself!