Nix the Nightcap: How Alcohol and Marijuana Can Harm Your Sleep

Nightcaps come in all shapes and sizes. Some people like to have a drink before bed, while others like to take a good inhale. But while these caps can help you fall asleep faster, they may not give you the rest that your mind and body really need.

Generally speaking, consuming a little alcohol or marijuana here and there probably won’t cause you any major health problems. But both substances affect your sleep, and sleep is an important component of your physical and mental health . To understand what these substances do, we spoke with Dr. Nitun Verma, sleep medicine specialist and chief medical officer of Peerwell , a chronic disease management company.

What a good dream looks like (and why it matters)

Before we can talk about how alcohol and marijuana affect your sleep, let’s talk about what “good sleep” really is. Most adults need about seven or eight hours of sleep each night . But there is a big difference between being unconscious for eight hours and getting full sleep. Ideally, when you sleep, you should go through four main stages of sleep without interruption:

1. NREM 1 (N1) : Also known as slow eye movement 1 or light sleep. Your body temperature, heart rate, respiration rate, and energy consumption are falling all over the place. Your muscles are still active and you can still respond to environmental stimuli. Basically, you fall asleep.
2. NREM 2 (N2) : Movement towards deep sleep. It’s harder to wake you up, and the conscious awareness of your surroundings goes away. This stage accounts for about half of your sleep.
3. NREM 3 (N3) : deep sleep or slow sleep. Environmental stimuli no longer elicit any responses. It is believed to be the most restful phase of sleep, accounting for about a quarter of your sleep. This phase leads to the fourth phase and is sometimes also considered part of the fourth phase.
4. REM (Rapid Eye Movement) : Also known as the “sleep state”. Your muscles are paralyzed and your breathing and heart rate are no longer regulated. The true function of REM sleep is unknown, but its absence can impair your ability to absorb difficult tasks. This phase also accounts for about a quarter of your sleep.

During good sleep, you will go through each stage several times over several cycles, each lasting about 90 minutes. Ideally, the process goes in this order: N1, N2, N3, N2, REM. Then it is repeated. In an eight-hour sleep session, you will go through the entire process about four or five times, with each stage taking a different length of time in each cycle. Dr. Michael Tveri, a sleep expert at the National Institutes of Health, explains that when a cycle is disrupted or altered in any way, you miss out on the restorative benefits of sleep, even if you’re wasting time. You can literally waste your time unconscious and complicate your tomorrow. Let’s talk about a shitty deal.

According to Dr. Merrill Mitler, a sleep expert at the National Institutes of Health, striving for seven to eight hours each night is essential if you want to improve your mood and maintain higher levels of reasoning, problem solving, and attention. detail. Mitler also believes that good sleep means faster reflexes and reduces the likelihood of being involved in a traffic accident. Good sleep affects every tissue in your body, including the immune system, growth hormones and stress hormones, appetite, breathing, blood pressure, and cardiovascular health.

Bottom line: your body needs sleep, and it needs that “good sleep” when it can go through all the normal stages and cycles. Both alcohol and marijuana can alter these sleep stages.

How alcohol affects your sleep

Alcohol is the original nightcap, and for obvious reasons. It has actually been shown to help most people fall asleep . As Verma explains, this is quite effective, but only in the short term:

Alcohol shortens the time you fall asleep and changes the threshold of arousal (while under the influence of light noise you will not be awakened). It passes in the middle of the night, so your arousal threshold changes. This is bad, because small noises and things wake you up more, and the other half of the sleep is rather poor quality.

Basically, alcohol helps you reach NREM (N1) faster and gives you more opportunities to ignore environmental stimuli so you can doze off. However, as Verma explains, the effect doesn’t last forever. Your body is still trying to process alcohol and remove it from your body.

Alcohol can also cause REM sleep fragmentation, which disrupts your normal sleep cycle by lengthening or shortening REM sleep, Verma said. Alcohol affects most stages of sleep, especially REM sleep, according to research by Dr. Richard B. Yuls and published in the Archives of General Psychiatry . Participants were given a nightcap for five consecutive nights, followed by four nights of recovery. Their REM sleep was suppressed the first night, returned to normal for the next three nights, and then far exceeded normal levels each night until the fourth night of recovery. This inconsistency can wreak havoc on your sleep patterns, as it can shorten some stages and lengthen others. You can potentially swing between half-asleep and half-asleep while skipping the NREM 3 (N3) deep sleep phases necessary to recover from daily activities . Other studies, such as this one by Laverne Johnson, Ph.D. and published in the Archives of General Psychiatry , have come to a similar conclusion about alcohol and its effects on various stages of sleep.

REM sleep and dreams occurring at this time are still a mystery, but there are several hypotheses about the primary function of REM sleep.The editorial staff of Neuroscience briefly explains a few :

Francis Crick (known by DNA) and Graham Mitchison proposed that dreams act as a “learning” mechanism, in which certain modes of neural activity are erased by accidental activation of cortical connections … By analogy, these “parasitic” modes of activity can be unwanted thoughts or erroneous information that, if not removed, can become the basis of obsession, paranoia, or other pathologies of thought that prevent the “system” from working as efficiently as it should. On the other hand, Michel Jouvet suggested that dreaming reinforces behaviors that are not usually found during wakefulness (aggression, frightening situations) by rehearsing them during sleep. Another hypothesis is that REM sleep and dreams are involved in the transfer of memories between the hippocampus and the neocortex.

Despite the mystery, the researchers know that REM sleep is important, and any inconsistency in any stage of sleep can disable all other stages. This can be especially frustrating for those trying to quit smoking and drinking every night, Verma said. As Verma has told us in the past , consistency is the key to good sleep. Anything that changes this, regardless of how long you sleep, could harm your rest.

How marijuana affects your sleep

Marijuana is known for its anti-anxiety effects, which can often lead to sleepiness, but despite its popularity, there is not much research into its relationship to sleep. However, this is enough to draw several conclusions.

First, Verma explains that marijuana also interferes with your REM sleep. However, unlike alcohol, marijuana does not cause REM sleep fragmentation; it just cuts down on the amount of REM sleep you get. Smoking marijuana and oral administration of tetrahydrocannabinol (or THC, the active ingredient in marijuana) shorten REM sleep in all respects, according to a study published in the journal Sleep Medicine Reviews . This means that the more you consume, the less likely you are to dream. The first couple of times you can still dream, but over time, researchers believe that eating habitually will significantly suppress your REM sleep. And according to research, after you stop sleeping, you are likely to suffer:

Sleep problems and strange dreams are some of the most commonly reported symptoms of acute and subacute withdrawal symptoms. Longer sleep onset latency, reduction in NREM sleep, and recovery of REM sleep are observed.

Basically, as Verma explains, marijuana can shorten the time it takes to fall asleep, but if you don’t swallow and smoke constantly, it will take you longer to fall asleep. You will also likely experience a rebound of REM, which means you will dream more the first few nights after you quit. Your nights will be filled with vivid dreams, as if you were letting go of a pinched garden hose; and, depending on your mood, it could mean a blissful night of adventure or a restless night of intense nightmares. Plus, it can increase the duration of deep, slow-wave sleep (NREM 3), which is good because, according to experts, this is where most of your actual recovery happens. However, as you continue to consume, your slow-wave sleep will be severely curtailed, diminishing the peace of mind your sleep is supposed to provide.

In the first four days of regular marijuana use, there may be a spike in slow wave sleep, according to a study published in the journal Biological Psychiatry . Then by the eighth day, slow-wave sleep may worsen significantly, continuing to decline even if you stop using. Basically, your body starts to experience mild withdrawal symptoms. Symptoms are quite mild compared to other medications, but their duration depends on how long and how often you have been taking them. The withdrawal period can last from a couple of days for casual users to several weeks for daily users. All this leads to a clumsy catch-22:

• If you start, you will have a great rest – from the beginning.
• If you don’t stop, you end up with less restful sleep, missing out on most of your deep sleep, no matter how long you don’t count.
• If you do stop, it will be much more difficult to fall asleep at first, and your dreams will be much more intense for a few days to several weeks after you stop regular use.

None of this means marijuana is harmful. This is a huge help for many people with anxiety, chronic pain, and even severe insomnia. Many doctors even prescribe it for insomnia and anxiety-related insomnia, where it is allowed. And when you cannot sleep at all, it is better to get some sleep than nothing at all.

However, if you’re an amateur hobbyist, it’s all about moderation. Habitual use can disrupt your sleep cycle, so it can be helpful to take breaks for a week or pop out of the clouds every couple of weeks. Not because the pot roasts your brain like an egg in a bad 80s ad, but because good sleep is important to your health.

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