Growing Joy with Plants - Wellness Rooted in Nature, Houseplants, Gardening and Plant Care
How Plants Hijack Your Brain's Reward System (In a Good Way): A Neuroscientist's Take on Houseplant Addiction: Best of Growing Joy Replay

How Plants Hijack Your Brain's Reward System (In a Good Way): A Neuroscientist's Take on Houseplant Addiction: Best of Growing Joy Replay

Author: Maria Failla- Happy Plant Lady and Author of Growing Joy: The Plant Lover's Guide to Cultivating Happiness
Published: Thu 31 Jul 2025
Episode Link: www.growingjoywithmaria.com/podcast

Today’s episode is about exactly what the title says: our brains… on plants, and what happens in our brains when we become plant people. When I was starting to move from plant killer to crazy plant lady, I noticed there were a few months at the beginning of my plant collection where I felt like the love for plants kind of took over my life. I was constantly buying new plants, going to plant shops, and researching plants on the internet. I was having so much fun with this new hobby, but for a moment, it felt like I couldn’t stop. Billy had to have a little intervention with me to slow me down and make sure we had the space and knowledge of the plants we already had. With his help (or maybe insistence), I put myself on a plant pause, which helped snap me out of that obsessive moment. But I’ve always thought about that particular phase in my life when I couldn’t stop.

Enter Dr. Caitlin Vander Weele, the answer to my “plant-iest” and “expert-iest” of dreams. Caitlin is not only an awesome listener of Growing Joy but also a neuroscientist and author with over 10 years of expertise in understanding how emotions and brain chemistry influence decision-making. She is also the founder of Interstellate, a movement that blends science and art with visual imagery to promote science education. Caitlin is really, really smart. And she is also a crazy plant lady, and this conversation blew my mind.

In this episode, we learn:

How Caitlin became a crazy plant lady
Maria gets real with Caitlin and explains the addictive behaviors she experienced early into plant parenthood.
Caitlin breaks down what exactly was happening in Maria’s brain in those first few months of buying as many plants as possible
What causes our brain to release dopamine and what it is
What compulsive behavior is
What our brain on dopamine does
What neurotransmitters, synapses and receptors are
The difference between endorphins and dopamine
Why we feel bonded to our plants: enter oxytocin
How these things are measured in our brains
4 phases of compulsive behaviors to look out for
How to cope with compulsive urges when growing your urban jungle