Sober Powered: The Neuroscience of Being Sober · Gillian Tietz, MS, CPRC

E295: The Feeling of Lost Time From All the Years We Spent Drinking

·20 min·1 clip
The host explains that quitting drinking reveals not just lost time, but a 'lost self'—the person you didn't become.
The host explores the painful feeling of having wasted years to drinking that often emerges in early sobriety, sharing her own struggle after quitting at age 29. She examines why younger and middle-aged adults wrestle with this regret more intensely than those over 65, introducing neuroscience and psychology concepts like 'counterfactual thinking,' the 'positivity effect in aging,' and 'alcohol myopia' to explain the differences.

As heard by us

A clear, sober look at regret that turns lost years into present-tense work.

This episode takes on the harder side of sobriety: the feeling that years were spent drinking while life kept moving. The host is open about worrying that speaking about lost time might sound wrong because she quit at 29, and that concern gives the piece its shape.

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Why you'd press play

You keep replaying the years you drank.

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