This video is part of SDA 73
How long does the tiredness and not sleeping last when you suddenly stop drinking after being quite a heavy drinker? Transcript
Second question comes from David Vose on Facebook:
How long does the tiredness and not sleeping last when you suddenly stop drinking alcohol after being quite a heavy drinker? Any help or advice please?
It’s one of the only things that I ever went through while I was quitting. It’s going to last as long as it can.
I still get tired. It’s the nature of being alive and of aging. The sleeplessness is another thing for me. It lasted a month. It was gradual. The first few days were pretty bad, sleeping hardly anything.
Your whole body is trying to balance itself out. The longer you’ve been drinking, the more your body is used to knocking itself out at night just having the alcohol and being that tired.
To be honest, one of the best ways that your body knows how to deal with alcohol is to shut most of the stuff down and that includes your consciousness. Your waking brain takes a lot of the energy just to stay awake. Of course when you are awake and moving around, by putting you asleep, at least the body is conserved a lot more energy and can put a lot more energy into getting rid of the poison.
How to Deal With Tiredness and Sleeplessness
One of the things you can do is try to prepare yourself for bed. That’s one thing that we’re also not used to doing. We’re so used to being able to hop into bed and fall asleep because we’re drunk that we don’t have to go through any rituals.
There are a lot of things that you can do to try to get yourself ready for bed like an hour beforehand. Take a warm bath.
One of the things that you have to do at the beginning of this is just to accept that you’re not going to get any sleep and build that into your life. It’s not going to last long. Your body can’t really deal with that. It needs you to get enough rest so it’s going to do its best to try to bring things back into balance.
Whether or not you get down to get a pill, it’s up to you. I don’t like it so I wouldn’t do that. If you’re not having sleep after the first week or so, then definitely go down to your doctor. Try some homeopathic remedy.
I haven’t heard of people having sleep problems after a month. In general, it’s either between a couple of weeks or a couple of months. It’s not something that happens all of a sudden. It’s a gradual process. It’s just your body getting used to not having the alcohol in your body anymore.
The only thing that I can really say to you is that it is going to take what it is. You have to wait these things up. What is good for you? Is it good to carry on drinking, doing the damage that way? Or are you going to put up with the discomfort for a few days or a few weeks or even a couple of months? If that’s what needs to happen, only you can do it.
Thanks for visiting the site.
Until next time…
Onwards and Upwards!
Kev
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Alcohol Mastery on Facebook
Alcohol Mastery on Twitter
I’ve been drinking since I’m 13 and I’m 60 now.it never seemed to affect my ability to work or hurt my marriage however the last two years I began drinking from morning till nite things got really bad . I started taking other drugs like cocaine even heroin at times . I’ve quit all that and then alcohol just 12 days ago . I can’t sleep most nites feel bad most days walking around in a fog.Hard to get motivated to do anything.Ifind myself like now wanting a drink just to feel better what can I do will 1 drink stop the feeling? I’m not going to go back to drinking just wanted to know what you think I’m not gonna try a drink if it’s gonna get me started again.Hope you can help.Im gonna watch more of your videos and try stay strong
Thank you