The Relationship between Boredom Proneness and Sensation Seeking among Adolescent and Adult Former Drug Users

Boredom has been shown to be associated with a variety of untoward individual subjective feelings including worthlessness, having nothing to do, feeling that time is going slowly, dissatisfaction, hopelessness, fretfulness, stress and feeling trapped. These feelings can be caused by situations outside the individual that are repetitive or unstimulating or by the tendency of the individual to find ordinary situations boring. This condition in individuals is thought to be related to maladaptive sensation-seeking behavior such as drug abuse as a form of fulfillment of the need for stimulation through novel and intense stimulus. This present study attempted to examine the relationship between boredom proneness and sensation-seeking among adolescent and adult former drug users. Participants in this study were 68 males (32 adolescents 16–25 years old and 36 adults 30–59 years old), collect through non-probability sampling. Participants were former drug users who were in rehabilitation at Balai Besar Rehabilitasi Badan Narkotika Nasional, Indonesia. Using quantitative research and a correlational research strategy, this study found a positive and significant relationship between boredom proneness and sensation-seeking among former drug users (r total = 0.248, p = 0.021, significant with level 0.05 one-tailed). Correlations show a significant relationship among adolescent participants (r = 0.371, p = 0.018, significant in level 0.05 one-tailed) but no significant relationship among adult participants (r = 0.177, p = 0.151, coefficient value is not significant in level 0.05 one-tailed). Our major conclusion is that a higher level of boredom proneness is associated with higher levels of sensation-seeking behavior and vice versa.