How Long to Wait Between Drinking Alcohol and Bedtime

Whether or not you’ve eaten affects how quickly alcohol enters your bloodstream. Female bodies also tend to contain less water to dilute alcohol and produce less of the enzyme dehydrogenase, which helps the liver break down alcohol. This means that if you go out drinking with a friend who weighs more than you do, your BAC will be higher and it’ll take you longer to sober up even if you both drink the same amount. Alcohol enters your bloodstream within minutes of ingesting it.

Common Triggers of Sleep Drunkenness

At this time when poly-substance dependence iscommon, it also is becoming increasingly relevant to investigate the interactive effects ofsubstances of abuse on sleep behavior and regulation. Effects of an acute pre-bedtime dose of alcohol on sleep have been extensivelystudied although methodology has varied greatly between studies in terms of dose and timingof alcohol administration, age and gender of subjects, and sample size. In the second half of thenight, sleep is disrupted, with increased wakefulness and/or stage 1 sleep.

Circadian Misalignment

Your blood alcohol level can continue to rise even after you pass out. Many approaches to improving sleep start with healthy sleep hygiene. By optimizing your bedroom environment and everyday habits and routines, you can eliminate many common barriers to sleep. Setting a regular bedtime and sleep schedule, avoiding alcohol and caffeine in the evening, and minimizing electronics in the bedroom are a few examples of sleep hygiene tips that can make it easier to rest well each night. 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.

Other Potential Causes of Sleep Drunkenness

Part of the problem is that alcohol lowers the quality of your sleep. Several studies have shown that a bit of booze before bed can actually make you doze off more quickly, but things take a turn in the second half of the night as the body metabolizes all that alcohol. The body experiences a “rebound effect” as it pushes back against the physiological effects of alcohol, which knocks things out of whack once there isn’t any alcohol to counteract. So in contrast to that super deep initial sleep period, we get the icky, post-drinking feeling of being kind of awake, but definitely not rested.

1. By contrast, primary insomniacs have greater betapower during NREM sleep than normal sleepers, thought to reflect higher levels of corticalarousal (Riemann et al. 2010).
2. Sleep occurs over a sustained period, typically lasting approximately 8 hours inhumans.
3. The percentage of the night spent in different sleep stages (Rechtschaffen and Kales 1968) in men and women with alcoholdependence and sex-matched control.
4. The more you drink, and the closer your drinking is to bedtime, the more it will negatively impact your sleep.

Disrupted circadian rhythm

Sleep drunk episodes may last for just a few minutes or up to an hour. You’re sound asleep when your alarm goes off or your partner tries to wake you. You open your eyes and get out of bed, but you’re not 10 ways to control high blood pressure without medication fully awake. You wander around, say strange things or give blunt answers when someone talks to you. It’s illegal in every U.S. state to drive with a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of 0.08 or higher.

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People in the midst of an episode of confusional arousal are not fully aware and may not be able to think clearly. Individuals may even experience hallucinations or attempt to sleepwalk. If you try to talk with them in this state, you may get nonsensical answers or blunt responses due to the lack of a conscious filter. As you can imagine, in a state of confusional arousal, speech is bound to be slow. The person may be trying to gather their thoughts or even try to speak, but their muscles may be delayed despite their mental attempts due to their disoriented state. People who go to bed with alcohol in their system may be more likely to wake early in the morning and not be able to fall back to sleep, another consequence of the rebound effect.

Ian M. Colrain

However, the difference between someone without confusional arousal and someone with it is that the affected individual won’t fully wake up immediately, they may even wake up and not remember much during the episode. Both alcohol and drug abuse[9] can trigger confusional arousal. More research needs to be done on this topic to determine exactly how the two are related. For now, scientists do know that taking drugs can cause confusional arousal and other sleep disorders. Those who consume alcohol are more likely to display this behavior, even though it doesn’t have anything to do with being drunk.

In addition, there are devices such as the Lully Sleep Guardian that can prompt awakenings in children. If you’re a parent and have ever witnessed your child seem to wake up and “stare right through you” or not respond when you say her name, in all likelihood they were having an episode of confusional arousal. Adults who have confusional arousals sometimes come across as hostile or aggressive. Children, especially kids under 5, are most likely to experience confusional arousals as compared to adults. According to the American Association of Sleep Medicine (AASM), around 17% of children have confusional arousals. Dr. Greuner says that while alcohol can depress your nervous system, helping you sleep soundly during the first half of the night, it can cause you to wake up a few hours later feeling alert.

Kuhlwein, Hauger and Irwin (2003) reported lower cortisol early inthe night and higher levels later in the night in their African American alcoholics aftertwo weeks. During confusional arousal, a person’s behavior may seem a lot like that of someone who’s intoxicated. In fact, a nickname for confusional arousal is “sleep drunkenness.” This isn’t your average snore that many back-sleepers know well. It’s possible to experience sleep apnea, which is a pretty common disorder, often undiagnosed, where some has one or more pauses in breathing when sleeping, says Dr. Sujay Kansagra, director of Duke University’s Sleep Medicine program.

When your blood alcohol level drops, your sleep is shallower, and the fact that you’re waking up more frequently means it may be easier for you to recall your dreams,” Dr. Greuner explains. So if you have a horrible nightmare, you might wake up feeling a little on edge, as you’ll remember more of those grueling details. For people with sleep deprivation, insomnia, sleep apnea, or other conditions that prevent them from getting adequate rest, short-term daytime cognitive impairment is common. Improving sleep quality can boost drug rash and eruption cognitive performance, promote sharper thinking, and may reduce the likelihood of age-related cognitive decline. An indirect test of the neuronal loss hypothesis of K-complex amplitude deficitin chronic alcoholism was conducted using gray matter volumes from structural MRI dataacquired from the subjects in Colrain et al.(2009). Statistical models were constructed to determine the extent to whichcortical and subcortical volumes could predict evoked potential component amplitudes insleeping alcoholics and controls.

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. Dr. Singh is the Medical Director of the Indiana Sleep Center.

Throughout the night, your liver will have time to metabolize (break down) all the alcohol in your system. It is not known if excess sleep is caused by a coexisting health condition that may also predispose someone to cognitive problems. Overall, these research findings are an important reminder to get the right amount of sleep each night.

How much alcohol gets you to that concentration or higher, how long it stays in your system, and the duration of the effects vary based on a range of factors, including your body composition and how quickly you’re drinking. Moreover, it can take one hour for your body to process one serving of alcohol. If you’ve had several drinks, it’s best if your last drink is finished at least several barbiturates: usage effects and signs of barbiturate overdose hours before you go to bed. If you drink alcohol at night and have trouble falling or staying asleep, you might wonder how long you should wait between your last drink and going to bed so your sleep isn’t impacted. If people wake up in the middle of the night after an evening of drinking, they should try relaxation techniques, such as deep breathing, to calm down, Morrow said.