brain receptors have become numb, and my senses don’t relay the information as well, and so memories aren’t formed. I don’t completely recall the embarrassing things I say or do while I’m drunk. I don’t feel the pain I’m trying to escape. The stress from the workday fades away for a little while. But the stress remains when I sober up, and it’s compounded by the hangover I’m suffering from. The embarrassing photos show up on Facebook. And my best friend won’t talk to me because I pissed her off so badly . . . somehow . . . I’m not really sure what happened.
If you’re reading this book, you know what I’m talking about. The initial rush doesn’t last. The more drunk you get, the more you regret it when you sober up. It’s a downward spiral. And if you’re like me, you blame yourself. Why can’t I get it together? Why am I so weak? What’s wrong with me?
TODAY, realize that the cycle has nothing to do with you being strong or weak. It has nothing to do with you being a good or bad person. It’s a chemical chain reaction that happens to everyone. Although we all feel the effects slightly differently based on our age, weight, sex, and environment, the biological reactions are the same.
Day 3 Reflections from alcoholexperiment.com
“This is my third day and already I feel like I slept better. I woke up happy that I finally committed myself mentally. It is a shift I have a hard time explaining or putting my finger on. I am embracing the idea that I do not need to hit rock bottom. It is hard to break that way of thinking, but I believe in my heart now that is true. I can quit right now, feel better right now, and not drink again. It is that simple. An aha moment!”
—MONICA
“I had a situation last night that would typically send me straight to the bottle or a six-pack of beer. I won.”
—BRADY
“This is the first Saturday in as long as I can remember when I haven’t woken up hungover and miserable. I am anxious, which feels like a craving, but I recognize that it is because I have so much time on my hands. What shall I do? I’m going to need to get some hobbies!”
—PENNY
When I started researching this book, I sent out a survey asking people what their biggest fears were about giving up alcohol. I was surprised to see sleep come up high on the list. It’s a huge fear for people that they won’t be able to fall asleep or they won’t be able to stay asleep. Let’s name this belief:
“I need alcohol to sleep.”
If you’re struggling with this belief, you’re definitely not alone. One of my favorite authors, William Porter, who wrote Alcohol Explained, is well versed in alcohol’s effects on sleep, and he explains this topic brilliantly. So let’s dig into this belief a little deeper.
I’m not sure how much the media is responsible for this particular belief. There’s not a lot of insomnia portrayed in the movies or on TV. However, if you’ve ever had a bout of sleeplessness, you know how disconcerting it can be. Sleep is critical to our mental and physical well-being. And when you can’t sleep, you’ll do anything to be able to fall asleep. Lack of sleep has been linked to serious health problems, including cancer, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, infections, and obesity. It also affects alertness, mood, and physical strength. This is because your body repairs itself while you sleep. It’s also a time when your mind digests what happened during the day. It assimilates the information and often comes up with solutions to problems. So when you wake up, you feel better physically and mentally. That means if you’ve experienced alcohol helping you sleep, then this belief takes hold very quickly.
Regular, high-quality sleep is essential to our well-being. So let’s look at how sleep actually works. There are two levels of sleep: rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and deep sleep, or slow-wave sleep. Every night, you go through several cycles of both levels. First, you dip into REM sleep, when you’re a bit restless and your eyes are literally darting back and forth inside your eyelids (which is where the name comes from). This is light sleep, but it’s crucial to your good health. Scientists don’t actually know why REM is so important, but they’ve done studies where rats were deprived of REM sleep and it killed them in just a few weeks. Once you cycle out of REM, you go into a deeper level of slow-wave sleep. That’s when the body does the repair work that needs to happen to keep you healthy. When you’re getting a good night’s sleep, you go through six or seven cycles of both REM and deep sleep.
Now, what happens when alcohol is introduced to the equation? Alcohol is a chemical depressant, so it reduces neural activity in the brain. Normally, your brain releases a variety of chemicals and hormones at different times to help bring you back to homeostasis. As you already know, homeostasis is the delicate balance where all the systems in your body are working correctly. When you drink, you’re introducing a foreign chemical. And in order to reach homeostasis, your brain has to release powerful counter-chemicals and stress hormones.
So the cycle looks like this:
You have a drink, and you stimulate your pleasure center while the blood alcohol is rising. But as time goes on and the alcohol levels start to go down, your brain knows there’s a depressant in your system. So it releases stimulants (adrenaline and cortisol) to bring you back up into homeostasis. Unfortunately, the depressant alcohol wears off before the stimulants do, and you’re left with an overstimulated brain for hours after the drinks have worn off. It’s as if you drank alcohol and a triple espresso at the same time. The alcohol wears off, but the espresso is still affecting you hours later.
The alcohol is disrupting your sleep schedule. After you drink, you go into a deep sleep for the first five hours or so. That might seem great, but you don’t get into REM sleep. And you need both. So while your body is trying to process all the chemicals in your body, your cycles are completely thrown out of whack. You wind up with only one or two cycles of REM sleep instead of the six or seven you actually need.
After those first five hours, you wake up and can’t get back to sleep. Many people wake up at three or four in the morning and fret about everything they can think of. The worry and regret creep in, and the negative thoughts take over the brain. All this is happening because you’re overstimulated and your body chemistry is completely out of balance. Here’s the thing—any amount of alcohol will disrupt your sleep. It doesn’t matter if you have one drink or you go on a margarita binge-fest. You’re not going to sleep well. If you do this night after night, the lack of quality sleep cycles will begin to take its toll.
And there’s another big problem. When you start getting ready for bed without alcohol in your system, your body releases its own chemicals to quiet you down and prepare you for sleep. But when you drink regularly, you train your brain to utilize the artificial depressants in the alcohol to do that job. So that means you’re relying on alcohol to put you to sleep. But you still aren’t rested, because your natural sleep rhythms are out of whack.
So what does this mean for you during this experiment? It means that for the first two to five nights of not drinking, your body may
