How the Sober Brain Breaks Down Alcohol Associations (But They’ll Build Back Up if You Drink Again) (E273)
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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.
What to listen to next:
E267: Resources vs Support: Are You Setting Yourself Up for Success?
E202: WTF is "The Work"?
E270: Incubation of Craving
Resources I offer:
Sober Support:
• Community & Meetings: Living a Sober Powered Life
• Weekly emails on Fridays
Work with me:
Courses:
• Sober milestones: what to expect when you quit drinking
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Listen here. The episode will automatically load in your preferred podcast listening app.
Cite:
Gillian Tietz. How the Sober Brain Breaks Down Alcohol Associations (But They’ll Build Back Up if You Drink Again) (E273). Sober Powered. 2025
Please respect my intellectual property and properly credit me if you share my work.
Sources
Po Pyn Lay, B. Yon-Seng Khoo, S. Associative processes in addiction relapse: review of their Pavlovian and instrumental mechanisms, history, and terminology. Neuroanatomy and Behaviour. 2021.
Fisher, L. R., Bailey, A. J., Mayer, H. M., & Finn, P. R. Slower rates of learning to inhibit behavior in alcohol use disorder. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors. 2022
Kozanian, O. et al. Compulsive alcohol seeking and relapse: Central role of conditioning factors associated with alleviation of withdrawal states by alcohol. British Journal of Pharmacology. 2022.
Furlong, T., Pan, M. & Corbit, L. The effects of compound stimulus extinction and inhibition of noradrenaline reuptake on the renewal of alcohol seeking. Transl Psychiatry. 2015
Torregrossa MM, Taylor JR. Learning to forget: manipulating extinction and reconsolidation processes to treat addiction. Psychopharmacology. 2013
