Why We Keep Believing it’ll be Different this Time (E 97)
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Gill discusses our ability to learn and adapt from our experiences. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, and that doesn’t feel too far off from what we do with our drinking. We always seem to believe it’s going to be different this time, even when it’s consistently been horrible every single time before. In this episode you’ll learn about cognitive flexibility, how being inflexible greatly increases the risk of developing a problem with alcohol, and one reason why addiction is progressive. She has a lot of interesting studies to go over about how alcohol affects our ability to adapt the way we think and learn new information, and at the end of the episode she explains 5 tips for becoming a more flexible person.
What to listen to next:
E30: Gray Area Drinkers
E60: How Alcohol Affects Our Cognitive Abilities
E61: How Alcohol Memories are Triggered in Sobriety
E68: How Heavy Drinking Changes the Way We Make Decisions
Sources
Shnitko, T. et al. Low cognitive flexibility as a risk for heavy alcohol drinking in non-human primates. Alcohol. 74:95-104. 2019.
Shnitko, T. et al. Behavioral flexibility in alcohol drinking monkeys: the morning after. Alcohol Clin Exp Res. 2020
Sebold M, Nebe S, Garbusow M, et al. When Habits Are Dangerous: Alcohol Expectancies and Habitual Decision Making Predict Relapse in Alcohol Dependence. Biol Psychiatry. 2017;82(11):847-856.
Julia Watzek, Sarah M. Pope, Sarah F. Brosnan. Capuchin and rhesus monkeys but not humans show cognitive flexibility in an optional-switch task. Scientific Reports, 2019; 9 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41598-019-49658-0
De Falco E, White SM, Morningstar MD, et al. Impaired cognitive flexibility and heightened urgency are associated with increased alcohol consumption in rodent models of excessive drinking. Addict Biol. 2021;26(5):e13004.
Cite this episode
Tietz, G. Episode 97: Why We Keep Believing it’ll be Different this Time. Sober Powered. 2022.
