I still remember the first time I stumbled onto the “sleeping aid” property of alcohol. I was 15, going through my first breakup, and had been losing sleep for nearly two months. The couple of beers “prescribed” by my roommate sent me into a slumber within minutes after my head hit the pillow. I remember feeling both comforted and thrilled the next morning, knowing that the sleeping aid I’d been longing for had been lying on the shelf of 7-11 only a block away, within reach anytime.
If you’ve been relying on a nightcap for quick sleep, you are not alone. “Alcohol helps me sleep better” is one of the top “benefits” of alcohol that many of my clients hesitate to give up on. After all, a good night’s sleep is essential for our well-being, both physically and emotionally. When researchers kept rats awake around the clock, the animals literally died within weeks, which shows just how primal our need for sleep really is. In this post, I’ll share the five vital functions of sleep—and why even one drink undermines them.
To understand why sleep is vital to our health, we first have to understand the maintenance roles that sleep plays in restoring the body, regulating the brain, and resetting emotions.
The Science of Sleep: 5 Vital Functions of a Good Night’s Sleep
Hormones: During sleep, stress hormones like cortisol slow down, while repair hormones like growth hormone increase, giving the body space to heal and rebuild.
Heart Health: Sleep gives our cardiovascular system some downtime. While asleep, our heart rate slows and blood pressure falls, allowing the cardiovascular system to rest and recover.
Immune System: At night, our body makes small proteins called cytokines that team up with white blood cells to fight infection. When sleep quality is poor, cytokine production drops.
Cognitive Ability: The downtime that comes with sleep allows our brain to undergo reconstruction, create new neural connections, and update existing pathways. Studies have found that good-quality sleep leads to better memory, concentration, problem-solving, and decision-making.
Mood and Emotional Regulation: Sleep is like “self-generated therapy.” REM sleep is especially vital in processing emotions. When we’re well-rested, we regulate our emotions better and are overall better at maintaining a more positive mood.
From this list, it’s clear why one would be motivated to do anything to ensure good nights of sleep, including self-prescribing a glass of wine each night.
Does Alcohol Really Help You Sleep? The Nightcap Myth
Toward the end of my decade-long drinking career, I started to notice that despite routinely getting 10-plus hours of sleep at night, I was regularly exhausted. You would never find me bouncing out of bed and skipping to the kitchen on Monday morning, no matter how much “good sleep” alcohol seemed to give me. Instead, I’d drag myself to my desk, clinging to that first cup of coffee just to start the morning. For a long time, I concluded that I was just getting older.
Only after I let go of alcohol did I realize that it wasn’t age that stole my energy, it was my “sleeping aid”—alcohol. Within just a few weeks free from alcohol, my energy returned and my mind cleared up. I would wake up feeling refreshed and well-rested, ready to lace up my shoes for a morning run, even after just eight hours of sleep.
Curious, I decided to dig into the research, and that was when I discovered exactly how much sleep alcohol was stealing from me—and how little it takes to ruin our quality of sleep.
How Just One Drink Can Cut Into Your Sleep Quality
Back in 2018, a group of Finnish scientists studied how alcohol affects sleep quality. They equipped 4,098 adults (ages 18 to 65) with wearable devices that measured heart rate variability (HRV)—a marker of how well the body switches into recovery mode at night. High HRV means the nervous system is relaxed and restoring itself; low HRV means the body is still in stress mode.
Their findings were eye-opening:
- Even a low amount of alcohol (less than two drinks for men, less than one for women) reduced sleep recovery by 9.3 percent.
- Moderate drinking cut recovery by 24 percent.
- Heavy drinking slashed it by 39.2 percent.
In other words, even one glass of wine can dramatically hurt our sleep quality. While a nightcap might help us feel like we’re asleep, physiologically, our bodies continue to be in overdrive, working under stress instead of resting and restoring. No wonder so many of us feel particularly exhausted after a heavy night of drinking—our bodies are honest.
Breaking the Nightcap Habit: 4 Pillars Alcohol-Free Empowering System
The good news is that we can restore quality sleep by simply skipping the nightcaps.
If you’ve been turning to the bottle as a “sleeping aid” for a while, breaking the pattern takes more than just deciding to “stop drinking.” In Sober Curiosity, we use a 4-pillar system to build an empowered alcohol-free life:
Pillar 1 — Value Alignment: Discover and realign with what truly brings satisfaction and fulfillment.
Pillar 2 — Belief Reconstruction: Rewrite the stories you’ve been told about alcohol—and about yourself.
Pillar 3 — Skill Expansion: Replace alcohol with empowering tools so you can finally let go of the bottle as a crutch.
Pillar 4 — Mindset Upgrading: Build the mindset that allows you to turn setbacks into stepping stones.
To break the nightcap loop, we need to swap the outdated belief “alcohol helps me sleep better” with “alcohol ruins my sleep.” At the same time, we can build the skill of ensuring a good night’s rest without alcohol.
To explore this further, start with the 5 Tips Guide to Get Through Your First Nightcap-Free Week.