Alcohol and Sleep: What Happens When You Drink Before Bed

A glass of wine to unwind. A beer after a long day. A nightcap before bed. For many people, alcohol is part of the evening routine, and falling asleep after a drink or two seems easy enough.

But there's a catch. While alcohol can make you feel drowsy and help you fall asleep faster, it doesn't help you sleep better. In fact, it often does the opposite. The sleep you get after drinking tends to be lighter, more fragmented, and less restorative than the sleep you'd get sober.

If you've ever woken up at 3 AM after a night of drinking, or felt exhausted the next morning despite going to bed early, you've experienced this firsthand. 

Here's a closer look at what's actually happening.

Why does alcohol make you sleepy?

Alcohol is a central nervous system depressant. It slows down brain activity, which is why you feel relaxed and drowsy after a drink or two.

Part of this effect comes from how alcohol interacts with neurotransmitters in your brain. Alcohol enhances the effects of GABA, a neurotransmitter that promotes calm and reduces neural activity.

 It also increases adenosine, a chemical that builds up throughout the day and makes you feel sleepy.

This combination creates a sedative effect. You feel tired, your muscles relax, and falling asleep becomes easier. For people who struggle with racing thoughts or tension at bedtime, this can feel like exactly what they need.

The problem is that sedation and sleep are not the same thing. Alcohol may knock you out, but it interferes with the processes that make sleep restorative.

What does alcohol do to your sleep cycles?

Your brain cycles through several stages of sleep each night: light sleep, deep sleep (slow-wave sleep), and REM sleep. Each stage serves a purpose, and you need adequate time in all of them to wake up feeling refreshed.

Alcohol disrupts this architecture, especially in the second half of the night.

The first half of the night

During the first few hours after you fall asleep, alcohol actually increases deep sleep. This might sound like a benefit, but it comes at a cost. Alcohol suppresses REM sleep during this time, which is the stage when your brain processes emotions, consolidates memories, and handles mental restoration.

You're essentially trading REM sleep for sedation. You're unconscious, but your brain isn't doing the work it normally would.

The second half of the night

As your body metabolizes the alcohol, things shift. The sedative effect wears off, and you experience what experts call a "rebound effect."

Your sleep becomes lighter and more fragmented. You're more likely to wake up, sometimes multiple times, and you may have trouble falling back asleep. REM sleep increases during this period, sometimes excessively, which can lead to vivid dreams or nightmares.

Many people who drink before bed find they wake up around 3 or 4 AM and can't get back to sleep. This is the rebound in action.

The net result

Even if you spend eight hours in bed after drinking, the quality of that sleep is compromised. You spend less time in the deep, restorative stages your body needs. You wake up more often, even if you don't remember it. And you miss out on normal REM sleep cycles.

The result is waking up feeling tired, foggy, or unrested, even when you technically got "enough" sleep.

How much alcohol does it take to affect sleep?

You don't need to drink heavily to see effects. Even moderate alcohol consumption can measurably disrupt sleep quality.

Research has shown that:

• Low doses (one drink) can reduce sleep quality by around 9%

• Moderate doses (two drinks) can reduce sleep quality by around 24%

• High doses (three or more drinks) can reduce sleep quality by nearly 40%

The effects are dose-dependent, meaning more alcohol leads to more disruption. But even a single drink in the evening can fragment your sleep if consumed close to bedtime.

Individual factors also play a role. Body weight, tolerance, how quickly you metabolize alcohol, and whether you've eaten all affect how much a given amount of alcohol impacts your sleep.

Does timing matter?

Yes. How close to bedtime you drink makes a significant difference.

Alcohol is metabolized at roughly one standard drink per hour, though this varies by individual. If you have a drink in the afternoon (say, 3 PM) and go to bed at 10 PM, most of the alcohol will be out of your system before you sleep. The impact on your sleep will be minimal.

If you have that same drink at 9 PM, much of the alcohol will still be in your bloodstream when you fall asleep. The sedative effects will be stronger, and so will the sleep disruption later in the night.

The closer you drink to bedtime, the more your sleep will be affected. Most sleep experts suggest finishing alcohol at least three to four hours before you plan to go to sleep.

Also Read: This Common Habit Makes Insomnia Worse

How does alcohol affect sleep disorders?

If you have an existing sleep condition, alcohol tends to make it worse.

Snoring & Sleep Apnea

Alcohol relaxes the muscles in your throat and airway. For people with obstructive sleep apnea, this can increase the number and severity of breathing pauses during the night. Even people who don't normally have sleep apnea may experience apnea-like events after drinking.

Studies have shown that alcohol before bed can worsen sleep apnea symptoms by 25% or more. If you snore heavily or have been told you stop breathing during sleep, alcohol will likely make the problem worse.

Insomnia

The relationship between alcohol and insomnia is complicated. Many people with insomnia use alcohol to help them fall asleep. In the short term, it works. But over time, this creates a pattern that makes insomnia harder to treat.

As your body develops tolerance, you need more alcohol to achieve the same sedative effect. Meanwhile, the sleep disruption from alcohol continues, which worsens overall sleep quality. You become dependent on alcohol to fall asleep while getting progressively worse sleep.

Breaking this cycle often requires addressing both the insomnia and the drinking habit together.

Parasomnias

Parasomnias include sleepwalking, sleep talking, confusional arousals, and similar behaviors that happen during sleep. Alcohol can trigger or worsen these episodes.

The connection comes down to how alcohol affects your sleep stages. Alcohol increases deep slow-wave sleep during the first half of the night, and this is exactly when most parasomnias occur. At the same time, alcohol fragments sleep and causes more partial awakenings. This combination creates ideal conditions for parasomnia episodes.

People who are already prone to sleepwalking often report that their episodes are more frequent and more intense after drinking. If you or your partner has noticed unusual sleep behaviors, alcohol may be a contributing factor worth eliminating.

Sleep paralysis

Sleep paralysis happens when you wake up unable to move or speak, sometimes with a sense of pressure on your chest or the feeling that someone is in the room. It occurs when your brain wakes up before your body exits the muscle paralysis that normally accompanies REM sleep.

Alcohol can increase the likelihood of sleep paralysis because of how it disrupts REM sleep. During the first half of the night, alcohol suppresses REM. Then, as your body metabolizes the alcohol, REM rebounds strongly in the second half. This REM rebound, combined with the fragmented sleep and multiple awakenings that alcohol causes, creates more opportunities for your brain and body to fall out of sync during sleep transitions.

If you experience sleep paralysis occasionally, it may be worth noting whether episodes follow nights when you've been drinking. Reducing alcohol, especially close to bedtime, may reduce how often it happens.

Restless leg syndrome

If you experience uncomfortable sensations in your legs at night along with an urge to move them, alcohol may make it worse. Research on the connection between alcohol and restless leg syndrome is mixed, but many people with RLS report that their symptoms are more severe after drinking.

Part of this may be indirect. Alcohol disrupts sleep, and poor sleep can worsen RLS symptoms. Alcohol also affects dopamine activity, and dopamine dysfunction plays a role in restless leg syndrome. Whatever the mechanism, if you have RLS, paying attention to whether alcohol affects your symptoms is worth doing.

Circadian rhythm disruption

Your body runs on an internal clock that regulates when you feel awake and when you feel sleepy. Alcohol interferes with this system in several ways.

Alcohol suppresses melatonin production. Your body normally releases melatonin in the evening to signal that it's time to wind down, but alcohol can reduce melatonin levels by as much as 20%. This disrupts the hormonal cues your body relies on to maintain a consistent sleep schedule.

Alcohol also affects the genes that control your circadian rhythm. Research has shown that even moderate drinking can alter the expression of clock genes, which may explain why regular drinkers often struggle with irregular sleep patterns even when they're trying to stick to a schedule.

For people who already have circadian rhythm disorders, or those who work night shifts or irregular hours, alcohol makes things worse. It might seem like a drink helps you fall asleep at an unusual hour, but it's actually pushing your internal clock further out of alignment. Over time, this makes it harder to establish any consistent rhythm at all.

Alcohol, anxiety, and the sleep-stress cycle

Many people drink in the evening to manage stress or anxiety. A drink takes the edge off, helps quiet a busy mind, and makes relaxation feel more accessible.

The problem is that alcohol ultimately makes anxiety worse, not better.

Alcohol disrupts sleep, and poor sleep increases anxiety. It also affects neurotransmitter balance in ways that can heighten anxiety the following day (sometimes called "hangxiety"). Over time, using alcohol to manage stress creates a cycle: you drink to calm down, sleep poorly, feel more anxious the next day, and reach for alcohol again that evening.

If stress or anxiety is driving your desire to drink before bed, addressing the underlying anxiety is more effective than masking it with alcohol.

Also Read: Mental Health Disorders Affect Sleep: Here’s What to Do

What about the "nightcap" tradition?

The idea of a nightcap, a small drink before bed to promote sleep, has been around for centuries. It's a cultural norm in many places. But the science doesn't support it.

A nightcap might help you fall asleep faster, but it will likely disrupt your sleep later in the night. The short-term sedation comes at the cost of sleep quality. For occasional, light drinking, the effect may be minor. But as a regular habit, it works against the goal of waking up rested.

If you enjoy a drink in the evening, timing it earlier (with dinner, for example) rather than right before bed minimizes the impact on your sleep.

What should you do instead?

If you've been relying on alcohol to wind down or fall asleep, there are alternatives that won't compromise the quality of your sleep.

Address the underlying need. Ask yourself why you're reaching for a drink in the evening. Is it habit? Stress? Difficulty relaxing? Identifying the root cause helps you find solutions that actually work.

Build a wind-down routine. Your body needs time to transition from the activity of the day to the calm needed for sleep. A consistent routine, whether that's light stretching, reading, or a warm bath, signals to your brain that sleep is coming.

Try relaxation techniques. Breathing exercises, progressive muscle relaxation, and meditation can activate your parasympathetic nervous system and promote calm without the downsides of alcohol.

Limit caffeine in the afternoon. Caffeine can linger in your system for hours and make it harder to relax in the evening, which can make alcohol more tempting.

Consider natural sleep aid. If you're looking for something to help you unwind without a nightcap, options exist. Sip2Sleep® is a melatonin-free sleep aid made with Montmorency tart cherry extract and Rafuma leaf extract (Venetron®), which can help promote relaxation and reduce anxiety without disrupting your sleep stages the way alcohol does.

When should you be concerned?

Using alcohol occasionally and in moderation isn't likely to cause lasting harm to your sleep. But certain signs are worth paying attention to.

Talk to a doctor or consider making changes if you:

• Difficulty falling asleep on nights when you don't drink

• Needing more alcohol than you used to in order to feel sleepy

• Waking up multiple times during the night or waking up too early and being unable to fall back asleep

• Feeling exhausted in the morning despite spending enough time in bed

• Waking up with headaches, a racing heart or palpitations, or a dry mouth

• Gasping, choking, or pauses in breathing during sleep, whether you notice it yourself or a partner tells you

• Heightened anxiety or low mood the day after drinking

• Finding it difficult to cut back on evening drinking, even when you want to

These signs can indicate that alcohol is interfering with your sleep in ways that are affecting your health and well-being.

The bottom line

Alcohol makes you drowsy, but it doesn't give you quality sleep. It disrupts your sleep cycles, fragments your night, and leaves you feeling less rested than you would have been without it. The more you drink and the closer to bedtime you drink, the greater the impact.

If alcohol has become part of your bedtime routine, consider whether it's actually helping or quietly making things worse. There are better ways to relax and wind down that won't cost you the restorative sleep your body needs.

References: 

1. Md. Noor Alam & Dennis McGinty (2017). Acute effects of alcohol on sleep are mediated by components of homeostatic sleep regulatory system. Journal of Neurochemistry, 142(5), 620–623. https://doi.org/10.1111/jnc.14100

2. Hamel R, Demers O, Boileau C, Roy ML, Théoret H, Bernier PM, Lepage JF. The neurobiological markers of acute alcohol's subjective effects in humans. Neuropsychopharmacology. 2022 Nov;47(12):2101-2110. doi: 10.1038/s41386-022-01354-w. Epub 2022 Jun 14. PMID: 35701548; PMCID: PMC9556716.

3. Ebrahim IO, Shapiro CM, Williams AJ, Fenwick PB. Alcohol and sleep I: effects on normal sleep. Alcohol Clin Exp Res. 2013 Apr;37(4):539-49. doi: 10.1111/acer.12006. Epub 2013 Jan 24. PMID: 23347102.

4. National Sleep Foundation. (2025, October 22). Alcohol and sleep. Sleep Foundation. https://www.sleepfoundation.org/nutrition/alcohol-and-sleep

5. Simou E, Britton J, Leonardi-Bee J. Alcohol and the risk of sleep apnoea: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Sleep Med. 2018 Feb;42:38-46. doi: 10.1016/j.sleep.2017.12.005. Epub 2018 Jan 3. PMID: 29458744; PMCID: PMC5840512.

6. Chakravorty S, Chaudhary NS, Brower KJ. Alcohol Dependence and Its Relationship With Insomnia and Other Sleep Disorders. Alcohol Clin Exp Res. 2016 Nov;40(11):2271-2282. doi: 10.1111/acer.13217. Epub 2016 Oct 5. PMID: 27706838; PMCID: PMC7486899.

7. Park SY, Oh MK, Lee BS, Kim HG, Lee WJ, Lee JH, Lim JT, Kim JY. The Effects of Alcohol on Quality of Sleep. Korean J Fam Med. 2015 Nov;36(6):294-9. doi: 10.4082/kjfm.2015.36.6.294. Epub 2015 Nov 20. PMID: 26634095; PMCID: PMC4666864.

8. Rupp TL, Acebo C, Carskadon MA. Evening alcohol suppresses salivary melatonin in young adults. Chronobiol Int. 2007;24(3):463-70. doi: 10.1080/07420520701420675. PMID: 17612945.

9. Udoh, U.S.; Valcin, J.A.; Gamble, K.L.; Bailey, S.M. The Molecular Circadian Clock and Alcohol-Induced Liver Injury. Biomolecules 2015, 5, 2504-2537. https://doi.org/10.3390/biom5042504