I would probably distinguish between drinking to dull the pain ("The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation") and drinking to ameliorate boredom. I would also be very wary of structuring your life to receive easy, cheap, and fast "jolts" -- that's unlikely to end well.
Off-the-top of my head alternatives: Sex. Intense exercise (e.g. parkour instead of jogging). Diving into another world (replace addiction to alcohol with addiction to e.g. Eve or Warcraft).
Can your problem be described as "How can I feel alive"?
Can your problem be described as "How can I feel alive"?
Perhaps yes. I have intense exercise (boxing) 3 times a week, and don't feel strong urges afterward, although, still use it, interestingly for the opposite purpose: to calm down, mellow out and be able to sleep. To a brain used to boredom a boxing training is so intense in impressions that sleeping for hours afterwards is impossible, as images and sounds go running around and twitches of muscles repeating movements and so on.
But on normal days, the feeling alive thing is certainly missing...
This thread is for asking any questions that might seem obvious, tangential, silly or what-have-you. Don't be shy, everyone has holes in their knowledge, though the fewer and the smaller we can make them, the better.
Please be respectful of other people's admitting ignorance and don't mock them for it, as they're doing a noble thing.
To any future monthly posters of SQ threads, please remember to add the "stupid_questions" tag.