10 Ways to Relax Without Drinking Alcohol
Your doctor can help identify the issue and work with you to develop a treatment plan. Taking less than 10 minutes to fall asleep may indicate that you are sleep-deprived. On the other hand, taking too can’t sleep without alcohol long to fall asleep is considered a symptom of insomnia and may be a marker of unhealthy sleep. When initially beginning meditation methods, you may find it takes longer to reach a state of relaxation.
- To promote better sleep, limit your exposure to electronic devices, such as smartphones, tablets, and computers, in the hour leading up to bedtime.
- In other cases, they are necessary, but not sufficient to guarantee that you get the best night’s sleep possible.
- When she quit drinking in 2019, she dedicated herself to learning about alcohol’s influence on the brain and how it can cause addiction.
Stretching Before Bed
Lying down during this period can cause discomfort or feelings of nausea and slow the digestive process in some people. For example, the liver, harmed by excessive alcohol, can start healing. Calories saved from alcohol can also contribute to weight loss and better cardiovascular health. Furthermore, breaking free from alcohol dependency can also improve the skin, as alcohol causes dehydration leading to premature skin aging.
Strategies for Overcoming Insomnia
- Once you experience the benefits of an alcohol-free January, maybe you’ll make it a dry February and beyond.
- Alcohol interferes with these circadian rhythms regulating the liver, and can contribute to compromised liver function, liver toxicity, and disease.
From tailored care to accredited facilities, find effective treatment for addiction. From effective treatment strategies to peer support, find the path to lasting recovery. Firstly, regular use of alcohol to aid sleep can lead to tolerance, requiring higher amounts to achieve the same sedative effect. This can potentially develop into alcohol dependence or addiction.
Try meditation or mindfulness
The collective wisdom of support groups can be the key to conquering insomnia. Research from 2024 shows this change to sleep architecture persists across consecutive nights of pre-sleep alcohol. When we looked at the sleep needs of 1.95 million RISE users aged 24 and up, we found it ranged from five hours to 11 hours 30 minutes, but 48% needed eight hours or more sleep a night.
- One 2021 study found that using a mobile screen for more than 8 hours a day or for at least 30 minutes before going to bed can negatively affect sleep.
- However, as we discussed earlier, normalizing your brain chemistry during the day can help you sleep better at night.
- Doing so without medical supervision can trigger a new addiction to another substance.
Bhavsar first participated in Dry January in 2023 but has spent other months of the year without alcohol due to the positive experience. Not only was he hoping to improve his health, mental well-being, and sleep, but becoming a father was another motivating factor in his decision to begin to limit alcohol. “Men and women process alcohol differently for [a few] different reasons, one being the amount of water in the body,” Miller says. The other is that women have less of the enzyme that helps metabolize alcohol, so they can’t process alcohol as efficiently as men. Some 36% are seeking better sleep – and they may have a good chance of success.
Disrupted sleep cycle
Should I Pull an All-Nighter or Sleep for Three Hours?
- Published in Sober living