Does Alcohol Cause Insomnia? Learn The Facts

Drinking alcohol can also increase your tolerance, causing you to drink more to experience its sedative effects. Individuals living with AUD experience much poorer sleep quality than those who consume moderate amounts of alcohol. However, in the second half of a night’s sleep, alcohol diminishes the amount of REM sleep. Alcohol’s negative effects on sleep quality worsen after several nights of drinking. Individuals with insomnia have difficulty maintaining a consistent sleep schedule.

Selection of Studies

Alcohol interferes with glutamate and gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), the central nervous system’s primary excitatory and inhibitory neurotransmitters. During the alcohol detoxification process, an imbalance in glutamate-mediated excitation and GABA-mediated inhibition occurs, triggering CNS hyperexcitability. Without proper treatment, returning to alcohol use may seem to be the only solution. ✔ Magnesium and L-theanine help calm the nervous system.✔ Melatonin (low doses, 0.5–1 mg) can aid sleep but shouldn’t be relied on long-term.✔ Herbal teas like chamomile or valerian root support relaxation before bed.

The withdrawal symptoms experienced in alcohol detoxification can be overstimulating and distressing, hence why alcohol detox programs provide round-the-clock supervision. Withdrawal symptoms like hallucinations, seizures, and severe agitation can accompany insomnia in drug and alcohol detox. Allowing at least three hours Oxford House between your last drink and when you go to sleep gives your body time to metabolize much of the alcohol.

We offer outpatient treatment programs tailored to each individual’s unique needs. Our team of medical professionals and addiction specialists is dedicated to providing compassionate care and support throughout recovery. Studies suggest avoiding nicotine and caffeine, as they are stimulants, at least four to six hours prior to going to sleep as they will make it more difficult to fall or stay asleep. Be mindful of when you eat, as if you go to bed with an empty stomach you may become hungry, which will disrupt your ability to fall or stay asleep as well. If you are hungry and it is close to your bedtime, eat a small, healthy snack.

• Attending psychotherapy and recovery support groups can help sustain alcohol recovery and offer encouragement.
• Individuals with RLS may experience worsening symptoms after consuming alcohol, particularly in the evening or at night, leading to difficulty falling or staying asleep.
• Individuals working night shifts or with irregular sleep schedules may be more susceptible.
• A person may also feel agitated in an environment that is stressful, unsafe, or overstimulating.

Excessive alcohol use and chronic insomnia can take a toll on your physical and mental health. More specifically, this combination can negatively affect your school or work performance, productivity, energy level, relationships, self-esteem and self-confidence, mood, health and well-being, and overall quality of life. So, even though alcohol may help you get some zzz at first, it can have the opposite effect over time.

• For practical tips, refer to our brief list below, and for more in-depth guidance, explore coping mechanisms detailed in the “How to Detox From Alcohol Safely & Symptoms of Withdrawal page.
• If you’re having sleep-related problems, consider cutting back or giving up alcohol.
• The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration advises consulting healthcare providers about sleep support during recovery, as doctors can recommend safe options that don’t interfere with recovery or cause dependencies.
• The majority of persons with sleep difficulty do not consult their physician with insomnia, which raises the question of how frequently alternative substances are used for sleep (6).

What Actually Triggers Alcohol Withdrawal Symptoms in Your Brain?

While withdrawal insomnia can be challenging, most people experience significant improvement in sleep quality as their recovery progresses. Understanding what to expect and how to support long-term sleep health is crucial for sustained recovery success. Individuals with co-occurring depression, anxiety, or trauma-related disorders often experience more severe and prolonged sleep disturbances during alcohol withdrawal. Well, to understand alcohol’s effects on sleep, you must first understand how the human brain works. Cells located in your forebrain are responsible for encouraging “wakefulness.” Research suggests that alcohol prevents gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), a neurotransmitter, from triggering these brain cells. When GABA is unable to activate your brain cells, it disrupts your circadian rhythms (sleep-wake cycles) and causes insomnia.

How Alcohol Withdrawal Disrupts Sleep Patterns

Alcohol also relaxes your throat muscles, which can worsen snoring and sleep apnea. It might come as a surprise, but having a few drinks before bed can increase sleep disruptions throughout the night. This is why alcohol and sleep problems (such as insomnia) go hand-in-hand. In fact, in one study on older adults those who binge drank frequently were 84 percent more likely to report insomnia symptoms than those who didn’t.

This can impact your sleep quality, leading you to feel more tired and less refreshed the next morning. So, while alcohol can help you fall asleep, it often impairs your sleep overall. It can lead to both worse sleep quality and sleep efficiency, which is the amount of time you’re in bed actually sleeping. In addition to impacting your cancer risk, alcohol also affects sleep quality. Keep in mind that for people with AUD, sleeping issues may persist through the withdrawal phase.

This creates a cycle where individuals feel they cannot sleep without drinking, leading to increased consumption and further sleep deterioration. Many people mistakenly believe that alcohol helps with sleep because it can initially make them feel drowsy and fall asleep faster. However, alcohol actually disrupts normal sleep patterns and architecture, leading to poor-quality rest even when sleep seems to come easily. Alcoholism can trigger insomnia or “sleepless nights,” but the reverse is also true. When you do not get enough quality sleep, it eventually takes a toll on your self-esteem and self-confidence, bank account, and relationships.

These include signs of severe depression or suicidal thoughts, hallucinations or severe confusion, dangerous behaviors due to sleep deprivation, and inability to sleep for several consecutive days. Implementing good sleep hygiene practices can significantly improve sleep quality during withdrawal and beyond. This includes maintaining a consistent sleep schedule by going to bed and waking up at the same time every day, even on weekends. Furthermore, studies indicate that alcohol can interfere with rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and non-REM sleep. So, although the exact relationship between alcohol and sleep is vague and even though study results have been mixed, alcohol appears to reduce REM sleep (overall).

Factors Influencing the Duration of Insomnia

Light is the primary stimulus involved in synchronizing an organism’s internal rhythm in the circadian clock with the external environment. In addition to light, other cues such as physical activity or feeding are considered as non-photic cues that can be used to reset the circadian clock. Non-photic phase-resetting is the process of shifting and/or synchronizing the circadian clock using non-photic stimulus.

The proportions of alcoholic and control subjects with clinically significant breathing problems (i.e., an AHI of 10 or more), however, did not differ. These inconsistent findings regarding REM sleep may reflect differences in alcoholic subtypes in the different studies. Thus, persistent REM sleep abnormalities were most evident in depressed alcoholics (Gillin et al. 1990a; Moeller et al. 1993) and alcoholics who subsequently relapsed (Gillin et al. 1994; Brower et al. 1998). One of the issues a person may find challenging to cope with is insomnia – the inability to fall asleep when all you want to do is close your eyes and rest.

• One standard drink (i.e., 12 ounces of beer, 5 ounces of wine, or 1.5 ounces of 80 proof distilled spirits) contains approximately 0.5 ounce of pure alcohol.
• This guide explores science-backed strategies to help you manage withdrawal symptoms, calm your nervous system, and get the rest you deserve.
• Individuals with alcohol use disorder face a higher risk of sleep-disordered breathing.
• Briefer periods of sleep disturbance are most often stress-related or due to acute illness (4).
• Similarly, the term “REM sleep latency” refers to the time between sleep onset and the onset of the first episode of REM sleep.
• For example, those who are sensitive to alcohol might get a rough night of sleep after only one or two cocktails.

Is Insomnia Normal After Drinking?

The question mark represents the untested hypothesis that treatment of sleep disturbances as an adjunct to alcoholism treatment can facilitate abstinence and decrease the risk of relapse. Purple arrows indicate processes that favor unhealthy patterns of drinking, blue arrows indicate processes that favor sleep disturbance, and yellow arrows represent treatment processes that may favor abstinence. Sleep problems, which can have significant clinical and economic consequences, are more common among alcoholics than among nonalcoholics. During both drinking periods and withdrawal, alcoholics commonly experience problems falling asleep and decreased total sleep time.