High Dopamine, Low Effort Behaviors and Making Sobriety Feel Less Hard (E274)

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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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Cite:

Gillian Tietz. High Dopamine, Low Effort Behaviors and Making Sobriety Feel Less Hard (E274). Sober Powered. 2025

Please respect my intellectual property and properly credit me if you share my work.

Sources

1. Dopamine promotes cognitive effort by biasing the benefits versus costs of cognitive work. Westbrook A, van den Bosch R, Määttä JI, Hofmans L, Papadopetraki D, Cools R, Frank MJ. Science. 2020 Mar 20;367(6484):1362-1366.

2. Salamone, J. D., et al. (2016). The role of dopamine in the regulation of motivated behavior. Neuron, 90(3), 470–485. 

3. Koob, G. F., & Volkow, N. D. (2016). Neurobiology of addiction: a neurocircuitry analysis. The Lancet Psychiatry, 3(8), 760–773.

4. Volkow, N. D., Wang, G. J., et al. (2011). Addiction: Decreased reward sensitivity and increased expectation sensitivity conspire to overwhelm the brain’s control circuit. Bioessays, 33(9), 737–744.

5. Robertson, C. L., Ishibashi, K., et al. (2016). Exercise and dopamine: a review of recent evidence. Brain Sciences, 6(4), 57.

6. Garland, E. L., et al. (2017). Mindfulness-oriented recovery enhancement reduces opioid misuse and strengthens positive psychological processes: a randomized controlled trial. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 85(9), 850.

7. Keller, J., & Bless, H. (2008). Flow and regulatory compatibility: An experimental approach to the flow model of intrinsic motivation. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34(2), 196–209.

8. Treadway, M., Zald, D. Dopamine impacts your willingness to work. Journal of Neuroscience. 2012