Sober Powered: The Neuroscience of Being Sober
Being sober isn't a punishment. Sober life is not a last resort for weak-willed losers who aren't strong enough to figure it out. You can be sober without feeling deprived or left out. Millions of people wake up with another hangover and Google, "how do I know if I'm an alcoholic?". We get stuck on the label and the stigma, when instead we should be asking ourselves, "is alcohol making me miserable?" and "would I be happier if I quit drinking?" In the Sober Powered Podcast, Gill, a former biochemist turned sober coach, walks you through the latest research on alcohol use disorder using her own sober story as a case study along the way. The science of how alcohol affects the brain can help you depersonalize your drinking experience so you can finally say goodbye to your hopes and dreams of moderating someday (because you clearly can't moderate!). Getting sober doesn't mean you are a weak-willed loser with no self-control, it simply means you are a person who can't drink. Your brain loves it too much and you are too hardcore. Each episode features in depth explanations of what is going on in the brain along with the tools and mindset shifts that Gill works on with her clients to help them accept being sober, let go of shame, and learn the coping skills required to manage stress and emotions sober -in the hopes of helping you do the same. Website: www.soberpowered.com
Episodes
June 27, 2025 • 33 mins
Join me for a special Q&A episode. We talk about my story, my work, my gaming history, book writing, what I've noticed in the sober community, and more! Thanks to everyone who submitted questions
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 on Fridays http...
Mark as Played
June 27, 2025 • 31 mins
On June 25, 2020 I decided to start this podcast. You’ll learn the story of how this podcast started, how it’s changed my sobriety, how it’s changed me professionally, how it’s helped me do my own “work”, and some of the hurtful things people have said to me over the years. I want to share about the shifts I’ve had to make to sustain being a public person. These are, addressing my addiction to work, learning to not depend on extern...
Mark as Played
June 20, 2025 • 22 mins
Besides not drinking, one of the simplest ways to heal the damage left behind from your drinking days is to exercise consistently. In this episode, I’ll explain how exercise helps to heal the body and brain, specific types of exercise that are beneficial, and how exercise can increase the likelihood that you’ll resist cravings and stay sober. You’ll learn 5 ways to get started if making exercise a consistent routine is difficult fo...
Mark as Played
June 13, 2025 • 19 mins
When we quit drinking, it’s pretty common to pick up another crutch or transfer the addiction to something else like food, work, cannabis, shopping, etc. Your brain still wants comfort, relief, stimulation, and escape and it’s easy to use other methods of relief instead of doing the emotional work and not needing relief. In this episode, I discuss the desire to replace alcohol with something else, how we do this in unhealthy ways, ...
Mark as Played
June 6, 2025 • 18 mins
Learning to put effort into our lives, be patient, and not rely on instant gratification is challenging. Alcohol teaches us that we can have what we want immediately and with no effort. Real life doesn’t work that way. In this episode, I explain alcohol myopia, which is how alcohol narrows our focus and prevents us from accurately thinking about the future. You’ll learn about how your brain is wired for instant gratification and ho...
Mark as Played
May 30, 2025 • 19 mins
Maybe your drinking isn’t/wasn’t that bad, but does that mean it’s good? If you don’t truly face what you’re doing, then how can you expect to change and move forward? In this episode, we dig into the psychological tricks we use to protect ourselves from the truth about our drinking- minimizing, rationalizing, and rewriting the past. I explain how cognitive dissonance, memory decay, and emotional self-protection keep us stuck in th...
Mark as Played
May 23, 2025 • 18 mins
When the sun comes out, so do the memories of “fun” drinking days, but are those memories even accurate? In this episode, I break down how your brain edits the past to make alcohol look better than it really was. I’ll explain how dopamine, emotional memory, and the fading affect bias distort your perception of your drinking life, and why the “good times” are often more fantasy than fact. You’ll learn how to interrupt the craving cy...
Mark as Played
May 16, 2025 • 18 mins
Are these harmless thoughts or do they lead to relapse? In this episode you’ll learn what is going on in your brain when you romanticize alcohol, how this can make being sober more challenging, and 3 ways to break the romanticizing loop. I’ll share a story from 4 years ago about when I romanticized alcohol, how I used tools, and what that same situation would look like today.
What to listen to next:
E269: Autopilot mode
E273: Ho...
Mark as Played
May 9, 2025 • 25 mins
When we start doing “the work”, it’s normal for your behavior to swing hard in the other direction. Emotions become more intense, old memories flood back, or you may feel like everyone needs to know how they’ve wronged you. This is the pendulum effect. We are learning how to do life without alcohol, and that process takes experimentation. In this episode, I explain why the pendulum effect happens, what to expect, the most common th...
Mark as Played
May 2, 2025 • 22 mins
We’re used to intrusive thoughts about drinking while we’re trying to quit and in the early days, but these thoughts can continue to pop up months or even years later. Does this mean you’re on the path to relapse? In this episode I’ll explain where intrusive thoughts about drinking come from and 3 strategies to deal with them. You’ll learn the 4 most common times when someone thinks about drinking again, my experience with these th...
Mark as Played
April 25, 2025 • 20 mins
I thought getting sober was the end of the story. I did it, I succeeded, now life will be amazing forever. But the parade never came. Instead, I started to get uncomfortable and notice patterns in my behavior that I didn’t like, and without alcohol around, I couldn’t unsee it. This is where a lot of people fall off. Their work begins to show up, it gets uncomfortable, and instead of facing it they talk themselves into how drinking ...
Mark as Played
April 18, 2025 • 26 mins
Many people experience a noticeable shift in mental clarity around 60 days sober. When it happened to me I felt like I was waking up from a long dream and I could finally use my brain again. This may feel like being present, having patience, better focus and attention, improved memory, and reduced mental clutter. In this episode, I’ll explain how alcohol causes cognitive impairments, why we have mental clarity around 60 days in, an...
Mark as Played
April 11, 2025 • 25 mins
Alcohol damages every area of the body, but in this episode we are focusing on the heart. I’ll explain 3 ways that alcohol damages the heart, how the heart heals after we get sober, and 5 things you can do to have good heart health moving forward.
What to listen to next:
E232: The 3am Wake Up
E266: Can You Drink After Taking a Break?
E268: Is Moderate Drinking Healthier? Here’s Why So Many Studies Say Yes
E247: Sober Sleep is the ...
Mark as Played
April 4, 2025 • 27 mins
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 ...
Mark as Played
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 bu...
Mark as Played
March 21, 2025 • 24 mins
When we develop a problem with alcohol, it becomes the center of our lives and most or all decisions are made after taking alcohol into consideration. When you remove alcohol, there’s a big empty hole in your life. You can fill this hole with other substances, sex or relationships, gambling or shopping, sitting around sad, or you can make some changes in your life. I’ve slowly made changes over the past 5 years to now have a life w...
Mark as Played
March 14, 2025 • 27 mins
“I function just fine, it’s not like I’m missing work”, I said until I started missing work. “I have a masters degree, I couldn’t have gotten this far if I was an alcoholic.” Have you ever thought things like this to yourself? Most drinkers are able to function. Most will never reach the stereotypical alcoholic that we think of. High functioning doesn’t mean not a problem, and in this episode we’ll discuss drinking to cope with car...
Mark as Played
You probably expect that the more sober time you have, the less you crave alcohol. That’s true for some people, but others experience an effect called incubation of craving. This is where cravings build up over time and peak around 60 days, then again around 6 months sober. In this episode, I’ll explain the research on incubation of craving, what you might experience, why this happens, and what you can do to stay sober.
What to lis...
Mark as Played
February 28, 2025 • 31 mins
Regular drinking and early sobriety often feel like living on autopilot, where we are repeating the same routines without conscious awareness. Alcohol changes the brain to increase mindless activity, which can lead to rumination, excessive self-focus, anxiety, and addiction-related thought loops. In this episode, you’ll learn about how alcohol affects the brain and puts us on autopilot, how this keeps us stuck, and when this recove...
Mark as Played
February 21, 2025 • 33 mins
Making new friends as an adult is difficult enough, but when you're sober, it adds an extra layer of difficulty. In this episode, we're talking about how to find friends in sobriety with a focus on what's the block from putting yourself out there, what do we have control over, how much armor do we have up, a fear of rejection, and how we can start attracting the right people in our direction.
My guest today is a 42 year old woman w...
Mark as Played
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