If you drink, practice moderation and prioritize your health with strategies like staying hydrated and maintaining good sleep hygiene to minimize the negative effects on your sleep. Avoiding alcohol altogether is recommended for a truly restful and restorative night’s sleep. Beyond causing drowsiness and sleep disruptions, alcohol can have other adverse effects on your sleep quality. The effects of alcohol on these neurotransmitters is sedative, which is why alcohol initially makes you relaxed and drowsy and may help you fall asleep more easily.
How to Fall Asleep When You’re Drunk
The allure of “sleeping it off” after a night of heavy drinking what is smack in the dirt is a common misconception that can lead to severe consequences. While many believe that a good night’s rest is the cure-all for excessive alcohol consumption, the reality is far more complex and potentially hazardous. Getting a good night’s sleep can sometimes be a challenge when you’ve had one too many.
The Physical Risks of Sleeping While Drunk
Even though alcohol can make you feel sleepy, it may impact your overall quality of sleep. If you go to bed with alcohol still in your system, you may experience headaches, frequent awakenings, night sweats, more intense snoring, and nightmares. It is recommended that alcohol not be consumed in the last four hours before bedtime. Even though alcohol may help you fall asleep, it interferes with the quality of your sleep. If you are one of the nearly two thirds of Americans who drink alcohol, chances are, you’ve had a drink in the hours before bedtime. Maybe you enjoy a glass of beer or wine after dinner, or your weekends include drinking with friends at bars or social events.
- Sleep disruptions from alcohol consumption can harm your overall health and well-being.
- Your heart rate is elevated by 11 beats, and you know it’s going to be a long day ahead.
- Alcohol significantly affects rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, a vital sleep stage for cognitive functions like memory consolidation, learning, and emotional regulation.
Generally, if sleep drunkenness is not a regular occurrence, it’s not considered dangerous. Sleep drunkenness, however, bypasses the sleep inertia phase, so your brain and body don’t get the opportunity to transition into the awakened phase. Sleep drunkenness is when a person wakes up confused and disoriented, so much so that they are unaware of their behavior. Alcohol consumption can be a trigger for sleepwalking or talking during sleep. Sleepwalking can lead to injuries, disrupt sleep, and leave a person feeling fatigued and not well-rested after waking.
Here’s What Happens When You Drink Before Bed
Alcohol can worsen sleep apnea, a condition where a person’s breathing stops and regularly starts while they sleep. People’s tolerance to alcohol as a sleep aid rapidly increases, leading to insomnia and alcohol dependence. Older research suggests the effects on REM sleep appear to be dose related. Low and moderate doses of alcohol tend not to affect REM in the first half of sleep, while high doses of alcohol significantly reduce REM sleep reduction in the first part of sleep.
Disrupts the Sleep Cycle
If you’re in recovery, your healthcare provider will need to weigh the risks and benefits of prescribing these medications for insomnia. There are also some relapse-prevention medications that can help promote sleep. This type of behavioral therapy works to improve your sleep efficiency, or the time you spend asleep divided by the time you spend in bed. Sleep and circadian rhythm disruption from alcohol also contribute to next-day tiredness, fatigue, irritability, and difficulty concentrating. Even if it doesn’t present as a full-fledged hangover, alcohol-related sleep loss negatively affects mood and performance. Circadian rhythms regulate nearly all of the body’s processes, from metabolism and immunity to energy, sleep, and sexual drive, cognitive functions, and mood.
If you’re already intoxicated, consuming a light snack before bed might help alleviate nausea and provide some nutrients to aid in alcohol metabolism. While heavy alcohol use can trigger insomnia, the opposite is also true. People with insomnia have an increased risk of developing alcohol use disorder, potentially because many individuals turn to alcohol as a sleep aid.
When you drink alcohol, it’s absorbed through the stomach and small intestine and moves into your bloodstream. Alcohol can have a detrimental impact on sleep, but these problems can also persist once you decide to stop drinking. Finding ways to cope with insomnia and other sleep issues is important since poor sleep can be a risk factor for alcohol relapse. People in alcohol recovery take a long time to fall asleep, have problems sleeping through the night, and feel that their sleep is not restorative. If you drink to excess, even occasionally, you have probably experienced sleep problems. Educating others about the dangers of sleeping while drunk is an important step in promoting safer drinking habits and reducing alcohol-related injuries and deaths.
It may be possible to identify techniques or treatments to reduce their frequency. If all else fails, your healthcare provider may prescribe medication such as an antidepressant or a sleeping pill. These medications may disrupt sleep depth, reducing the likelihood of waking from a prolonged period of slow-wave sleep. In addition, there are devices such as the Lully Sleep Guardian that can prompt awakenings in children.