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Quitting drinking helped me get better sleep night after night — I'm sharing my story for Sleep Week
By the time I stopped drinking alcohol in April 2021, I was exhausted. Partly it was an emotional weariness, from a cycle of heavy drinking and the ever more severe anxiety I experienced as a result.
But it was also actual physical exhaustion, because I rarely slept well and was trapped in a cycle of trying to catch up by napping or sleeping all day.
Four years on, I have a completely different relationship with both alcohol and sleep. Now the former is no longer part of my life, the latter has been transformed.
Without wishing to sound smug (and please do read further down for all my horrible sleep experiences if I do), feeling calm at nighttime and falling asleep naturally (and more quickly), going an entire night without waking and actually feeling the positive effects of sleep the next day is, thankfully, my norm.
Since giving up alcohol, I’ve come to understand more about how it affects sleep and frankly, I still feel alarmed that I didn’t educate myself sooner. .
If you’re curious about the effects of alcohol on sleep and how your slumber can change when you quit booze, I'm sharing the bad, the ugly, and, ultimately, the good of my personal experience for Sleep Awareness Week 2025.
How I slept before I gave up alcohol
I had a shamefully inconsistent sleep schedule
In what will come as a surprise to no one, when I was a regular, heavy drinker, I was rarely tucked up in bed at 10pm. In fact, the idea of maintaining a sleep schedule didn’t even cross my mind.
My capacity to stretch ‘just one more’ into the early hours meant that on the nights I consumed alcohol (which increased dramatically in years leading up to 2021) a 1am bedtime became my norm.
That meant lurching out of bed minutes before 9am, often forgoing lunch in favour of a power nap, struggling to get to sleep on my hangover days and often spending all day in bed on weekends.
A 2021 study showed that irregular sleep schedules are linked to low moods and symptoms of depression, and I understand now that my own low feelings were likely related, at least in part, to my inability to stick to consistent sleep and wake times.
Those late nights, hangovers and erratic sleep times, meant I generally ate more junk food and ultimately, put on a lot of weight. Research from 2019 revealed that an inconsistent sleep schedule can have a negative affect on our metabolism (leading to weight gain) and put us at risk from developing diabetes.
I couldn't sleep through the night
While my sleep schedule was problematic before I stopped drinking alcohol, the main issue I experienced was nighttime waking. Even if I fell asleep almost immediately, I’d find myself awake, like clockwork, at 3am and remain that way for one to three hours.
There is little that is more unpleasant than being wide awake during the beginnings of a hangover, and when (in my case) the most anxious thoughts swirled.
I now understand that this is because alcohol disrupted my sleep cycles in different ways during the course of the night. Not only was it decreasing the amount of REM (rapid eye movement) sleep I got during the first part of the night (more on that below!), I was experiencing the 'rebound effect' in the second part of the night.
According to research, this 'rebound effect' occurs when alcohol has been metabolized. In simple terms, the initial effects of alcohol are replaced by an opposing state, where we spend more time awake or in the first, N1 stage of sleep, which is where we're transitioning between wakefulness and slumber.
Finally, in the absolute antithesis of glamour, I also found that I would regularly need to go to the bathroom during the night, thanks to the diuretic nature of alcohol.
I was constantly exhausted and unhappy
The cumulative effect of years of late nights and disrupted sleep — which I now realise was likely long-term sleep deprivation — when I was a drinker meant days where I felt tired and groggy, unhappy and irritable, vastly outweighed ones where I felt calm, energized and alert.
A third blow (a least for me) was that hangovers can even affect the following night’s sleep
And that’s without factoring the effects of a hangover, which in my experience, only became more acute as I hit my 30s.
The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism lists a horrifying array of symptoms we can expect from a hangover: “Fatigue, weakness, thirst, headache, muscle aches, nausea, stomach pain, vertigo, sensitivity to light and sound, anxiety, irritability, sweating, and increased blood pressure.”
A third blow (a least for me) was that hangovers can even affect the following night’s sleep which I can attest to, often finding it took hours to get to sleep when I had spent a day hungover.
Dr Olalekan Otulana, a doctor at Cassiobury Court, told us that, “typically, disturbed sleep and an increased resting heart rate are only experienced for the first night after alcohol consumption, though it can extend a further day after binge drinking, or if no food and water were consumed the second day before going back to sleep.”
4 ways my sleep changed after I stopped drinking alcohol
1. I fall asleep naturally and more quickly
This may seem like a strange point to highlight, but after years of regularly hitting the pillow in an alcohol-induced state, falling asleep when I naturally feel tired really reinforces my decision to quit.
Alcohol’s sedative effect meant I didn’t often have too much trouble falling asleep when I finally made it to bed, but there is a singular pleasure in dozing off thanks to a nighttime routine that I’ve perfected in the years since I quit.
Mine involves avoiding sugar in the few hours before bedtime, having a hot shower about 20 minutes before I want to fall asleep and (though I fail at this one regularly) trying to avoid tech after that.
Having a regular nighttime routine can help signal to the body that it's time to sleep, and the dip in temperature experienced from stepping out of a steaming bathroom into a cooler bedroom mimics the body's natural drop in temperature at night, which in itself triggers the release of melatonin (the sleepy hormone).
I also typically found that hangovers would trigger insomnia, or at least, a period of several hours spent lying in bed waiting for sleep. Since I haven’t had a hangover for years, I can almost always fall asleep within about 30 minutes.
2. I finally experience uninterrupted sleep
Perhaps I have a low bar, but I can still remember the intense joy I felt when I first woke up a full eight hours after falling asleep.
It was shortly after I had quit alcohol for good, and it was so unprecedented that I’m pretty sure I texted someone to tell them (read: bore them) about it.
Without the disruptive impact of booze on my sleep (see above), I find that I consistently get the recommended 7 to 9 hours sleep a night, and it's regularly undisturbed.
3. I'm getting more REM sleep and deep sleep — and the benefits of both
As an elder millenial, I can barely manage just Instagram, TikTok and WhatsApp, so I haven’t ever analyzed my sleep forensically, despite the plethora of sleep tracking apps that are now available.
However, since I sleep for longer and my sleep is less disturbed, I am much more likely to be cycling through all four sleep stages and completing each sleep cycle fully.
The four sleep stages include N1, where you're transitioning from wakefulness to sleep, N2, the lightest sleep stage, N3, deep restorative sleep and REM sleep, the stage we dream in.
As neurologist, sleep specialist, and Sleep Unplugged podcast Dr Chris Winter has previously explained to us, the third, deep sleep stage is incredibly important as it "is restorative, it's when our bodies release the most growth hormones and is the sleep that ensures we no longer feel sleepy when we eventually wake."
REM sleep is also vital as it helps us to process the experiences we've had while awake, and plays a role in memory storage. Happily, I now get to reap these benefits more fully.
4. I wake up calm and with more energy
One of the only regrets I have about giving up alcohol, is that I didn't do it sooner. Simply because the impact on my mental and physical well-being has been so significant.
Maybe it's the benefit of getting a proper, restorative night's sleep, or perhaps it's more to do with the lack of hangovers, but I quickly noticed that I no longer wake up riddled with anxiety.
One of the only regrets I have about giving up alcohol, is that I didn't do it sooner
In fact, I normally feel pretty serene. And, as I realized several months into life without alcohol, that composure typically lasts throughout the day.
I also have a lot more energy nowadays. Yes, I do still partake in an afternoon nap from time to time, but it's more of an indulgence than an absolute necessity born from utter, hungover exhaustion.
And according to Harvard Health, that newfound energy is likely a result of getting enough N3 deep sleep, which, "is the main time when your body renews and repairs itself. This stage of sleep appears to be the one that plays the greatest role in energy, enhancing your ability to make ATP, the body's energy molecule."
How does alcohol affect sleep?
So, what's the science behind alcohol's impact on sleep? A 2018 study showed that high alcohol consumption reduced sleep quality by 39.4%, because, the researchers said, “alcohol intake disturbs cardiovascular relaxation during sleep in a dose-dependent manner in both genders.”
Alongside this, alcohol has been proven to impact our sleep cycles. We typically have around four to six cycles of sleep each night, made up of four stages. Research shows that its sedative quality may help you fall asleep faster, but it takes longer to get to the REM stage of sleep and this stage is disrupted and decreased during the first half of the night.
REM sleep is the fourth stage of the sleep cycle where we dream. It helps memory, concentration and focus, so it tracks that not getting enough is going to have a pretty significant impact on your waking hours.
Its sedative quality may help you fall asleep faster, but it takes longer to get to the REM stage of sleep
In the second half of the night, as your body has metabolized the alcohol, you may spend more time either awake or in the first stage of sleep, when the body is not yet completely relaxed or asleep, and which is meant to account for only 5% of your night.
More of this means you’re not getting as much of the other sleep stages, including the third, deep sleep stage, which is vitally important for ensuring your sleep is restorative.
Add to this that alcohol is a diuretic, which dehydrates you and is likely to make you want to urinate more.
