Sober Powered: The Neuroscience of Being Sober

I know it feels like alcohol is required to relax. I felt that way too, but it's not. Turning off your brain at the end of the day is not the same thing as relaxing. In this episode, I’m going to explain what the research tells us about alcohol and your stress system, why short-term relief doesn’t necessarily mean drinking is helping you cope over time, and how stress can become connected to the motivation to keep drinking. Let’s start with what happens when you drink after a stressful experience, because understanding why alcohol feels helpful is part of understanding why we become so attached to it.

Work with me:

• Community & Meetings: Living a Sober Powered Life https://www.soberpowered.com/membership
• Sober coaching https://www.soberpowered.com/sober-coaching

Weekly email:

• You’ll hear from me every week-ish https://www.soberpowered.com/email

Support the show:

• If you enjoyed this episode please consider buying me a coffee to support all the research and effort that goes into this podcast https://www.buymeacoffee.com/soberpowered
• Thank you for supporting this show by supporting my sponsors https://www.soberpowered.com/sponsors

Disclaimer: all of the information described in this podcast is my interpretation of the research combined with my opinion. This is not medical advice.

Sources:

1. Muehlhan M, Höcker A, Miller R, et al. HPA axis stress reactivity and hair cortisol concentrations in recently detoxified alcoholics and healthy controls with and without childhood maltreatment. Addict Biol. 2020
2. Blaine SK, Ridner C, Campbell B, et al. People who binge drink show neuroendocrine tolerance to alcohol cues that is associated with immediate and future drinking- results from a randomized clinical experiment. Neuropsychopharmacology. 2023
3. 
   
4. Adinoff B, Leonard D, Price J, et al. Adrenocortical sensitivity, moderated by ongoing stress, predicts drinking intensity in alcohol-dependent men. Psychoneuroendocrinology. 2017

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We believe alcohol is required for vacations, unwinding, dealing with stress, celebrating, and socializing. We have built up powerful associations in our brains to reinforce these beliefs through dopamine and repetition. After you get sober, facing life without alcohol can feel impossible. Everything reminds you of alcohol. You start to notice how prevalent it is on TV and in movies. In this episode, I’m explaining how the brain builds associations with alcohol, how that gets worse while we stay in the back and forth, and how we break down these associations after getting sober. 

Work with me:

Community & Meetings: Living a Sober Powered Life https://www.soberpowered.com/membership

Sober coaching https://www.soberpowered.com/sober-coaching

Weekly email:

You’ll hear from me every week-ish https://www.soberpowered.com/email

Support the show:

If you enjoyed this episode please consider buying me a coffee to support all the research and effort that goes into this podcast https://www.buymeacoffee.com/soberpowered

Thank you for supporting this show by supporting my sponsors https://www.soberpowered.com/sponsors

Sources are posted on my website

Disclaimer: all of the information described in this podcast is my interpretation of the research combined with my opinion. This is not medical advice. 

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Many of us, myself included, get stuck in a cycle where we keep convincing ourselves we can drink again and then we’re shocked when it doesn’t go well. There are a couple of reasons why this happens, and it’s not simply because you forgot. There’s more to it. You’re not doomed to keep repeating this cycle forever.

Work with me:

Community & Meetings: Living a Sober Powered Life https://www.soberpowered.com/membership

Sober coaching https://www.soberpowered.com/sober-coaching

Weekly email:

You’ll hear from me every week-ish https://www.soberpowered.com/email

Support the show:

If you enjoyed this episode please consider buying me a coffee to support all the research and effort that goes into this podcast https://www.buymeacoffee.com/soberpowered

Thank you for supporting this show by supporting my sponsors https://www.soberpowered.com/sponsors

Sources are posted on my website

Disclaimer: all of the information described in this podcast is my interpretation of the research combined with my opinion. This is not medical advice. 

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There is a difference between knowing that you need to be sober and accepting that you need to be sober. Acceptance changes the question from “can I drink?” to “since drinking is not an option for me, what do I need now, and what am I going to do next?”

In this episode, I’m going to talk about why accepting sobriety can feel like such a loss, how resistance shows up differently when you’re sober curious, newly sober, or years into sobriety, and why you can accept that you have to be sober without liking it, feeling peaceful about it, or pretending that it’s fair.

Work with me:

Community & Meetings: Living a Sober Powered Life https://www.soberpowered.com/membership

Sober coaching https://www.soberpowered.com/sober-coaching

Weekly email:

You’ll hear from me every week-ish https://www.soberpowered.com/email

Support the show:

If you enjoyed this episode please consider buying me a coffee to support all the research and effort that goes into this podcast https://www.buymeacoffee.com/soberpowered

Thank you for supporting this show by supporting my sponsors https://www.soberpowered.com/sponsors

Sources are posted on my website

Disclaimer: all of the information described in this podcast is my interpretation of the research combined with my opinion. This is not medical advice. 

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See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

There are a few stages that we go through on the path to truly acknowledging our drinking. One of the earlier ones is when drinking feels mysterious, so the “I drank and I don’t know why” or “it’s just a bad habit” person. Another one is getting really into learning and then doing nothing with everything you learn.

I got obsessed with the science when I quit drinking. It helped me understand myself and why this happened to me, but learning didn’t help me change what was causing all of my problems. I began shifting this podcast to talk more about behavior change once I noticed the same thing happening with my listeners. Sometimes I’d see people use scientific explanations before looking at the behavior right in front of them. They’d say they drank because PAWS is so hard to deal with, but they were on day 4. You can’t have post-acute withdrawal if you’re still in acute withdrawal. In that moment, the label became a way to explain the behavior without looking at what needed to change.

Insight gives us a reason to explain our behavior without having to change it.

Work with me:

Community & Meetings: Living a Sober Powered Life https://www.soberpowered.com/membership

Sober coaching https://www.soberpowered.com/sober-coaching

Weekly email:

You’ll hear from me every week-ish https://www.soberpowered.com/email

Support the show:

If you enjoyed this episode please consider buying me a coffee to support all the research and effort that goes into this podcast https://www.buymeacoffee.com/soberpowered

Thank you for supporting this show by supporting my sponsors https://www.soberpowered.com/sponsors

Sources are posted on my website

Disclaimer: all of the information described in this podcast is my interpretation of the research combined with my opinion. This is not medical advice. 

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Your brain is wired for quick hits of dopamine, or high-reward, low-effort habits that feel good in the moment but sabotage your long-term goals. Over time, this conditions your brain to expect rewards without effort, making real change feel harder than it actually is. In this episode, I’ll explain how these patterns destroy motivation, fuel inconsistent effort, and keep you stuck in the cycle of short bursts of change followed by slinking back to your old ways. You’ll learn how high dopamine, low effort behaviors impact the brain, how this makes us resistant to putting in effort, and 3 ways you may be making being sober feel more difficult for yourself than it needs to be- and how to shift that.

What to listen to next:

E265: Rewiring Your Reward System After Getting Sober

E263: Sugar Cravings After Quitting Drinking

E145: ADHD and Alcohol

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 Weekly email:

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Sources are posted on my website

Disclaimer: all of the information described in this podcast is my interpretation of the research combined with my opinion. This is not medical advice.

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When you're thinking about your relationship with alcohol you may stay stuck in, "am I bad enough?" for years before taking the next step. This episode is a way to think about the question and the ambivalence of wanting to quit but also secretly hoping you can drink without the consequences someday.

Work with me:

Community & Meetings: Living a Sober Powered Life https://www.soberpowered.com/membership

Sober coaching https://www.soberpowered.com/sober-coaching

Weekly email:

You’ll hear from me every week-ish https://www.soberpowered.com/email

Support the show:

If you enjoyed this episode please consider buying me a coffee to support all the research and effort that goes into this podcast https://www.buymeacoffee.com/soberpowered

Thank you for supporting this show by supporting my sponsors https://www.soberpowered.com/sponsors

Sources are posted on my website

Disclaimer: all of the information described in this podcast is my interpretation of the research combined with my opinion. This is not medical advice. 

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

There’s a difference between wanting the pain to stop and being willing to change the pattern, between wanting the benefits of sobriety and being willing to accept what sobriety requires, between saying, “I want to quit,” and actually becoming someone who protects that decision after the urgency fades. Wanting alone will keep you in the same loop if part of you still hopes that alcohol will stay available as an option.

Work with me:

Community & Meetings: Living a Sober Powered Life https://www.soberpowered.com/membership

Sober coaching https://www.soberpowered.com/sober-coaching

Weekly email:

You’ll hear from me every week-ish https://www.soberpowered.com/email

Support the show:

If you enjoyed this episode please consider buying me a coffee to support all the research and effort that goes into this podcast https://www.buymeacoffee.com/soberpowered

Thank you for supporting this show by supporting my sponsors https://www.soberpowered.com/sponsors

Sources are posted on my website

Disclaimer: all of the information described in this podcast is my interpretation of the research combined with my opinion. This is not medical advice. 

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is where I think people misunderstand what “doing the work” actually means. Doing the work is not just listening to sobriety content, understanding the science, or listening to people do the work in meetings. That information matters, but information alone isn’t going to change the pattern. You may have noticed how this podcast has evolved over the years. Each episode used to be a deep dive into the science, and then I’ve talked about it less and less. I learned that understanding what’s going on helps a lot, but it’s really the beginning of the story, not the end. 

Work with me:

Community & Meetings: Living a Sober Powered Life https://www.soberpowered.com/membership

Sober coaching https://www.soberpowered.com/sober-coaching

Weekly email:

You’ll hear from me every week-ish https://www.soberpowered.com/email

Support the show:

If you enjoyed this episode please consider buying me a coffee to support all the research and effort that goes into this podcast https://www.buymeacoffee.com/soberpowered

Thank you for supporting this show by supporting my sponsors https://www.soberpowered.com/sponsors

Sources are posted on my website

Disclaimer: all of the information described in this podcast is my interpretation of the research combined with my opinion. This is not medical advice. 

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

I'm working hard on the last part of the dabbling series, but it's delayed by 1 week because I've been sick. Please enjoy this popular replay about how many times it takes to quit drinking for good.

Multiple quit attempts are common when you are trying to get sober, but how many tries does it take before it finally sticks? In this episode I’ll cover the statistics on relapse rates and share all the data I’ve found on the number of quit attempts it takes to stay sober for good. You’ll learn about what makes sobriety more challenging, and what you can do to make this quit attempt your final try.

What to listen to next:

E249: Alcohol and Cortisol: Extra Stress and Extra Cravings

E248: You Can’t Be Comfortable AND Stay Sober

E238: Why Moderation Doesn’t Work

E197: Making the DECISION to Quit Drinking

Sober Support:

Thank you for supporting this show by supporting my sponsors. Learn more:

⁠⁠https://www.soberpowered.com/sponsors⁠⁠

If you enjoyed this episode please consider buying me a coffee to support my work⁠⁠ https://www.buymeacoffee.com/soberpowered⁠⁠

Sources are posted on my website

Disclaimer: all of the information described in this podcast is my interpretation of the research combined with my opinion. This is not medical advice. 

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.