Sober Powered: The Neuroscience of Being Sober

So many people have reached out to me online and said “I wish I had your level of self-control” or “I wish I was disciplined like you are”. It’s not about self-control or discipline and by saying that you are making your drinking into a morality thing. In this episode we’re going to talk about why we are so quick to call ourselves losers and make it a self-control issue. If you’re stuck on this id...

It's hard to quit drinking when you feel like your drinking isn't that bad and you haven't had any consequences from it. We justify so many things and tell ourselves that "we're not that bad" and we should just learn to control it or drink less. That's why I had my friend Casey, host of the Hello Someday Podcast, on today. We talk about consequences and how our baseline for what's normal and accep...

I recently surveyed my audience to create a free eBook and one of the questions was what’s your biggest struggle in sobriety. I was shocked to see that almost every response said boredom. I know that’s a major trigger, but I expected more of a balance between boredom and negative emotions. In this episode you’ll learn about why some people are more likely to feel bored, how this relates to drinkin...

In this special episode I’m joined by Eric Zimmer from The One You Feed Podcast, Dave Wilson aka Sober Dave from One for the Road Podcast, and Casey Davidson from the Hello Someday Podcast. We wanted to get together to show you 4 different approaches to quitting drinking, not just in how we ended up getting sober, but you will also learn what held each of us back from quitting, the challenges we h...

I’ve stopped drinking 3 times, and each time I thought I could just stop and that was that. I thought stopping was the hard part and that drinking was my only problem. It wasn’t until I was months into my current sober streak that I realized I had to do a lot of work. We build our lives around alcohol, so if you just remove the alcohol, then you’re going to feel the void and be triggered all the t...

What can you replace alcohol with when you stop drinking? Many of us search for an alternative, and in this episode I’m going to discuss common transfer addictions that might show up when you stop drinking, like food, sugar, or cannabis. You’ll learn why transfer addiction happens, how to identify if you’ve developed another problem or if it’s not a big deal, and what to do to prevent transfer add...

Perspective can help you maintain your calm and not let other people have control over the way you feel. For people in recovery, being able to stay calm and manage our emotions is critical. In this episode I want to walk you through an example of a time where I was easily offended and flipped out over nothing, versus a time when something worse happened but I was able to have perspective and stay...

Cravings make it hard to stay sober. You may feel frustrated that you have so many cravings and be wishing you just had more self-control. In this episode we’re going to talk about why cravings can be so powerful and how you can learn to manage them. You’ll learn more about how alcohol dominates our thoughts, why we crave alcohol, and what you can do to reduce the amount of cravings you have and t...

One of the main characteristics of someone who struggles with alcohol is the obsession. We think about our drinking all the time. We do mental gymnastics and try to figure out how to control our drinking. We bargain with ourselves and talk ourselves into why drinking is a good idea. The obsession is frustrating and it continues into early sobriety too. I’ve seen so many people feel defeated becaus...

Have you been wondering how you should be eating to aid your recovery? Or why you have so many sugar cravings? In this episode we’ll talk about how the type of food we eat impacts our cravings and the amount of food we eat overall. You’ll learn about an interesting study that came out recently about protein and obesity, and how you might want to consider adjusting the foods you eat based on your g...

Why can’t I stop drinking once I start? Have you ever wondered this or beat yourself for not having enough self-control? There’s a pathway in the brain called the go, no-go pathway and I’ve been wanting to talk about it for a long time but haven’t found the right info until now. When you want to make a decision, like you want to moderate and stop drinking after 2 drinks, the go, no-go decision mak...

I celebrate 3 years of sobriety on November 9th and each year I record an episode about the past year of sobriety and how it went. What stood out to me the most this year is that I am getting tired of sharing my story and I feel weird about being personal. Lately, I have been asked to share my story a lot on other podcasts. I think sharing our stories is very important because it helps newbies or...

Can’t imagine your life without alcohol? Are you unsure if you truly have a problem and need to quit drinking? Maybe you look around and think, “everyone drinks like I do, I’m not that bad”. That’s why I asked Dr. Matt Glowiak, PhD, LCPC, CAADC, NCC, to join us and talk about the difference between a heavy or daily drinker and someone who has alcohol use disorder. In this episode you’ll learn how...

Want an easy way to deal with cravings and negative emotions? Want to build back some of the brain volume you may have lost from drinking 1,000 drinks? Well, the answer is exercise! I hope you didn’t just roll your eyes at me. It’s true. We are usually looking for this complicated secret that’s going to help our sobriety, but usually, it’s the simple things that have the biggest impact. The trick...

Many of us will go back and forth between drinking and not drinking for years, and what holds us back is this idea that our drinking isn’t “that bad”. So what are we supposed to do if our drinking makes us unhappy, but we haven’t experienced a rock bottom yet? You may beat yourself up for not being motivated enough to quit or wishing you had enough self-discipline or courage, but it has nothing to...

Everyone knows chronic stress is bad, but did you know that chronic stress can actually change your brain? And just like everything else we talk about, it can change the brain in ways that makes it easier to be stressed or to turn to something like alcohol to attempt to cope. In this episode you’ll learn what chronic stress does to the brain, results from the 2022 Stress in America Survey, and how...

Some people just can’t cope. It’s not because they’re weak-willed losers, but it can definitely make us feel like that is the reason. I had a stressful situation last week and I wanted to understand why I escalated it so much in my mind. In this episode I want to share with you why some of us just can’t cope. Both nature and nurture is involved, and at the end of the episode I will share how you c...

Sober sex can be very intimidating, especially if you believe alcohol helps you feel more confident, comfortable, and in the mood for sex. I’m joined by Dr. Nazanin Moali, host of the Sexology Podcast, to discuss why we think alcohol is essential for sex, why sober sex can be so scary, and tips for singles and couples who are trying to get comfortable with sober sex. Dr. Moali shares strategies fo...

When someone quits drinking for good they usually say something like, “it just feels different this time”. That’s how I felt too this time around. It just felt different. So why did it click for me after 7 years of drinking but maybe it took you 20 or maybe it hasn’t clicked for you at all yet? In this episode you’ll learn how alcohol impacts our decision making process to put us into auto-pilot,...

Have you ever wished you could just be “normal”? I used to think that all the time and sometimes I still do. Feeling envious of people who can have 1 drink and move on is totally normal, but we have to be careful that this doesn’t lead into thinking trying to moderate is a good idea or lead us into victim mentality. In this episode you’ll learn about drinking envy, how it can hurt your sobriety, a...

If you’ve been in sober Facebook groups then you have probably seen some comments saying “you’re just not ready yet” or maybe they’ve even been said to you before. These comments used to infuriate me, but now that I’m sober I see how true it is. It’s a long process to get ready to quit drinking, and most of the time we say we want to stop drinking when really we just want to drink less. One import...

When you think about quitting drinking you might feel sad and anxious at the thought of never drinking again. How is it even possible to have a good life without drinking alcohol? We have all of these beliefs that alcohol helps and it’s essential for happiness and connection, but it’s really not. It’s just a drink. We rationalize why it’s helpful because we’re obsessed with it, but when we get som...

I told you recently about how I quit my full time job to work for myself, but I didn’t tell you what I was doing. In this episode I want to fill you in on my business, how that impacts you, and what I’ve been up to this summer while preparing for this launch. I’m going to tell you the story of my business from the very beginning and all the challenges I faced on the path to becoming a business own...

Have you noticed that you’re drinking more coffee in sobriety? Recent surveys from the National Coffee Association have found that 70% of Americans drink coffee every week, and 62% drink it daily. Surveys on people in AA found that 90% drink coffee daily. That’s a big difference. Lots of people recently have been mentioning that they drink way more coffee in recovery, so Gill thought she'd try to...

Drinking alone let's us drink the way we really want to, but it greatly increases your risk of developing alcohol use disorder. In this episode, Gill will describe some recent studies from the past few years about solitary drinking, and one study even called it “serious drinking”. In this episode you’ll learn more about how drinking alone increases the risk of developing a problem and especially d...