How Long to Wait Between Drinking Alcohol and Bedtime

Although this means you might fall asleep quicker, drinking too much alcohol has been linked to poor sleep quality, which means you’re more likely to have a bad night’s sleep. During the second half of the night, sleep becomes more actively disrupted. The rebound effect may include more time in REM—a lighter sleep stage from which it is easy to be awakened. While consuming alcohol may have sedative effects, causing you to fall asleep more quickly, the body recognizes it as a toxin and goes into overdrive trying to expel it from your system.

How Does Alcohol Affect Sleep?

Adults who have confusional arousals sometimes come across as hostile or aggressive. Research suggests that confusional arousal happens when different regions of the brain fail to fully communicate with each other. As a result, some parts of the sleeper’s brain stay asleep while others suddenly awake.

Each stage is necessary for sleep to feel refreshing and for vital processes like learning and memory consolidation to occur. 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.

How Does Alcohol Make You Drunk?

But the truth is, drinking regularly—even moderate drinking—is much more likely to interfere with your sleep than to assist it. For adults, it also might be beneficial to cut back or quit drinking alcohol. And of course, it’s important to always get a full night of sleep, so adjusting your bedtime and creating a sleep environment that will help you get all the shut-eye you need also may help. People who experience sleep drunkenness are also more likely to have longer periods Your Ultimate Biofeedback Therapy Toolkit of deep sleep. Confusional arousals also most commonly occur in the first part of the night during your deep sleep cycle. Imagine being awakened from a deep sleep where, instead of feeling ready to take on the day, you feel confused, tense, or a sense of an adrenaline rush.

What stage of sleep is most disrupted by alcohol?

REM sleep has a restorative effect and plays a role in memory and concentration. Poor or insufficient REM sleep has been linked to not only grogginess the next day, but also a higher risk of disease and early death. Alcohol before bed has been shown to lead to fragmented sleep and frequent waking.

What about using alcohol as a sleep aid?

1. Responsible drinking and proper planning are key to avoiding the hazards of intoxicated sleep.
2. For more information about the relationship between Hone and the medical practices.
3. These fluctuations play a vital role in the sleep-wake cycle, and when they are weakened—or absent—a person may feel alert when they want to sleep and sleepy when they want to be awake.
4. This is because alcohol can make the tissue in the nose swell, which can cause congestion and create a need to breathe through the mouth, making you snore.
5. Finally, regular drinking has been linked to insomnia and other sleep disorders, especially later in life.

If you’ve had several drinks, it’s best if your last drink is finished at least several hours before you go to bed. While a drink now and then may have a sedative effect that causes you to drift off faster, research shows that it can impede sleep quality in the long run. Keep in mind that for people with AUD, sleeping issues may persist through the withdrawal phase.

Once in the liver, an enzyme called alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH) metabolizes the ethanol, which is the main ingredient and type of alcohol in, well, alcohol. When ADH breaks down the ethanol molecules, its structure changes and it becomes acetaldehyde, a toxic, carcinogenic substance. From there, another enzyme, aldehyde dehydrogenase turns the acetaldehyde into a less toxic substance called acetic acid.

The key is to drink in moderation and give yourself time before going to bed, so the alcohol can clear your system. If you pass the moderate threshold, though, you’ll get a lot more of that initial non-REM sleep, but significantly reduce the total percentage of REM sleep over the whole night. Alcohol has a diuretic effect that causes your body to release more water in the way of urine. The result is a lot of trips to the bathroom and a (mostly) sleepless night.

This plan should include setting limits on alcohol consumption, arranging safe transportation, and ensuring that you have a safe place to sleep with someone responsible to check on you if needed. Potential damage to vital organs is another serious long-term consequence of regularly sleeping while intoxicated. The liver, which is responsible for metabolizing alcohol, can suffer significant damage from chronic alcohol use. Additionally, the heart, pancreas, and brain are all vulnerable to the toxic effects of alcohol, particularly when exposure is frequent and prolonged. Whether you have had one or multiple drinks, it’s best to wait for your body to fully process the alcohol before heading to bed. In general, try to avoid drinking alcohol four hours before you plan on going to sleep.