Alcohol and Sleep: Why a Drink Ruins Your Night and When to Stop Before Bed (UK)

Does alcohol help you sleep?

Partly, and only at first. Alcohol is a sedative, so after a few drinks many people nod off more quickly. The catch comes later: as your body clears the alcohol, sleep becomes lighter and more broken, and you get less REM sleep, the dreaming stage linked to feeling refreshed. The NHS puts it simply: drinking can help some people fall asleep quickly, but it can disrupt your sleep patterns and stop you sleeping deeply. Drinkaware adds that even a couple of drinks will have an effect.

A 2001 review also found that people quickly build up tolerance to alcohol’s sedative effect, so a nightcap tends to work less well over time. If you’ve got into the habit of drinking to get to sleep, see our guide to insomnia.

For a warm, alcohol-free alternative, see our guide to the best tea for sleep.

Looking for a nightcap swap? Some people use a few drops of CBD oil in their evening routine instead, and our guide to the best CBD oil for sleep in the UK covers strengths and the FSA’s 10mg a day advice.

What alcohol does through the night

A London Sleep Centre review of every known study in healthy volunteers (Ebrahim and colleagues, 2013) is the clearest summary. At all doses, alcohol shortened the time it took to fall asleep, made the first half of the night more settled and increased sleep disruption in the second half. The first REM period was delayed at every dose, and total REM fell at moderate and high doses.

This is why drinking so often means waking at 3 or 4am, thirsty and needing the toilet (Drinkaware notes alcohol is a diuretic). See why you wake up at 3am for other causes. The extra early deep sleep comes at the cost of a broken, REM-light second half; our guide to deep sleep explains why the whole night matters.

How much alcohol affects sleep?

Less than most people think.

• A 2025 meta-analysis of 27 studies (Gardiner and colleagues) found that REM sleep was delayed and reduced even at the lowest doses studied, and got progressively worse as the dose went up. Falling asleep faster only showed up at high doses, roughly 7 UK units or more for a 70kg adult.
• A real-world study of 4,098 Finnish employees wearing heart rate monitors (Pietilä and colleagues, 2018) compared each person’s nights with and without alcohol. Their overnight recovery score in the first three hours of sleep fell by an average of 9.3, 24.0 and 39.2 percentage points after low, moderate and high intake. For a 70kg adult, low was roughly up to 2 UK units, moderate about 2 to 6.5 units and high more than that. Being young or physically active didn’t protect people.

That is what many people see on their sleep trackers after even a couple of drinks. For context, the UK low risk drinking guidelines say men and women should not regularly drink more than 14 units a week, spread over 3 or more days, with several drink-free days if you want to cut down.

How long before bed should you stop drinking?

There is no single official UK figure for everyone, but there are three useful markers:

• If you struggle with insomnia, the NHS self-help advice is not to drink alcohol (or tea or coffee) for at least 6 hours before going to bed.
• As a rule of thumb, the NHS says one unit is about the amount of alcohol the average adult can process in an hour. Drinkaware gives the same figure and adds that six units would take the average person about six hours.
• US sleep health advice commonly suggests stopping at least 3 to 4 hours before bed, and longer if you have drunk more.

Here is the one-unit-an-hour rule applied to common drinks, using NHS unit figures.

So if you plan to be in bed by 11pm and fancy two standard glasses of wine, finishing by about 6 or 7pm gives your body a fair chance. It is a rough guide only: body size, sex, age, food, liver health and medicines all change it. Clearing the alcohol also doesn’t mean your sleep is back to normal, so earlier is better, and less is better still. For an evening that doesn’t hinge on a drink, try our 60-minute bedtime routine.

Is there a best alcohol for sleep?

No. It is the alcohol itself, and how much of it you drink, that affects sleep, whether it comes as red wine, whisky or beer. A hot toddy still contains alcohol, and REM sleep is affected even at low doses. What makes a difference is the number of units: a pint of 5.2% lager has half as much alcohol again as a pint of 3.6%. Lower-strength or alcohol-free drinks and smaller measures are the closest thing to a “better” drink for sleep.

Alcohol, snoring and sleep apnoea

Alcohol relaxes the muscles in your throat, mouth and nose, so air doesn’t flow as smoothly and the tissue is more likely to vibrate, which is why people often snore more after drinking, Drinkaware explains.

It matters more if you have, or might have, obstructive sleep apnoea, where your breathing stops and starts in your sleep. The NHS lists drinking alcohol among the things linked to sleep apnoea, and its advice is “do not drink too much alcohol, especially shortly before going to sleep”. See a GP if you gasp or choke in your sleep or always feel very tired in the day. Read more in our sleep apnoea guide and on the NHS sleep apnoea page.

How to sleep better after drinking

If you’ve had a few drinks, these steps limit the damage:

• Alternate with water or soft drinks through the evening, as Drinkaware suggests.
• Eat a proper meal before or while you drink, rather than a heavy meal right before bed.
• Stop early. Use the units table above to set a last-drink time.
• Go to the toilet before bed and keep a glass of water by the bed.
• Keep your usual wake time the next day, and keep any nap short.
• Don’t take sleeping pills or melatonin to make up for it (see below).

If someone has drunk so much that they have passed out, don’t leave them to sleep it off alone. The NHS advice is to stay with them, put them in the recovery position and check they are breathing properly, and to call 999 if you think they have alcohol poisoning.

For the morning after, see our guides to hangover cures that actually work and hangxiety, the anxious feeling many people get after drinking.

Alcohol with sleeping pills, melatonin or magnesium

Never mix alcohol with sleeping pills or other sedatives. The NHS warns that alcohol with the sleeping pill zopiclone can cause breathing problems and make it very difficult to wake up, and that alcohol with melatonin can make you sleep so deeply that you don’t breathe properly. Melatonin is prescription-only in the UK; see melatonin in the UK. If you take any medicine that makes you drowsy, check the leaflet or ask a pharmacist before drinking.

Magnesium won’t cancel out alcohol’s effect on your sleep; see magnesium for sleep for where it fits in a wind-down routine. Wondering about CBD with a drink? Read CBD and alcohol first.

What happens to your sleep when you stop drinking

For most people who drink socially, sleep is one of the first things to improve. Drinkaware lists better sleep and finding it easier to wake up among the early benefits of stopping, and the NHS says cutting down should help you feel more rested when you wake up.

Many people doing Sober October or Dry January describe a pattern like this:

• First few nights: it can take a little longer to drop off without the usual drink.
• First week or two: some people notice unusually vivid dreams. This is often put down to REM sleep, which alcohol suppresses, bouncing back.
• After two weeks or so: fewer early-hours wake-ups and mornings that feel clearer.

After long-term heavy drinking it’s different: a 2014 review (Colrain and colleagues) found sleep problems linked to alcohol dependence can last long into abstinence, and the NHS lists difficulty sleeping as a withdrawal symptom.

Rather cut down than stop? See damp drinking. And with party season coming, our Christmas stress guide covers keeping drinking and sleep on track in December.

Swap the nightcap

Often the drink is really about the ritual that marks the end of the day. Keep the ritual and change what’s in the glass.

• A warm reishi hot chocolate or a fizzy cherry mocktail. Our Sober October nightcaps guide has seven ideas.
• The sleepy girl mocktail: tart cherry juice, magnesium powder and sparkling water.
• A caffeine-free herbal tea such as chamomile.

Our Reishi Mushroom Adaptogenic Complex is a hot chocolate powder made with cocoa, reishi mushroom, maca, cinnamon and coconut sugar. Cacao contains a little natural caffeine, so if you’re sensitive to caffeine, have it earlier in the evening. Our Magnesium Glycinate Sleep Complex is a berry-flavoured powder with magnesium bisglycinate and citrate, glycine, L-theanine, chamomile, passionflower, hops and oat straw. Magnesium contributes to normal psychological function and the normal functioning of the nervous system. Both are vegan and alcohol-free, and our products are for adults only. We don’t recommend our products during pregnancy or breastfeeding.

When to get help

iSee a GP if:

• you regularly drink to get to sleep, or can’t sleep without a drink
• poor sleep has lasted for weeks and is affecting your day
• someone has noticed you stop breathing, gasp or choke in your sleep
• you get shaking, sweating, anxiety or nausea when you don’t drink

If you’re worried about your own or someone else’s drinking, you can call Drinkline, the free national alcohol helpline, in confidence on 0300 123 1110 (weekdays 9am to 8pm, weekends 11am to 4pm). The NHS alcohol support page lists other services. Call 999 for severe withdrawal symptoms such as seizures, hallucinations or severe shaking.

Related guides

• Drinking at bedtime is also linked with night terrors in adults.
• Lucid dreaming and how to protect your REM sleep.
• Why REM sleep matters and how to protect it.
• Alcohol is a common reflux trigger too: see acid reflux at night.
• Alcohol makes you pee more, which is one reason for night-time trips to the loo; see why you wake up to pee at night.
• If you keep waking in the small hours, see our plan for how to sleep through the night.
• For other reasons dreams can become intense, see our guide to vivid dreams.
• Drinking late can also play a part in sleep paralysis, and the NHS advises avoiding alcohol shortly before bed.
• Beer and spirits are the drinks most linked to gout; see what causes gout and what helps a flare.
• Alcohol is also one of the commonest triggers for facial flushing in rosacea.
• Disturbed sleep in the second half of the night is also when nightmares are most likely, which is why heavy evenings and bad dreams often go together.
• Drinking also makes your kidneys pass more magnesium; see magnesium for men for how to keep your intake up.
• Heavier drinking is also linked with higher cortisol; see how to lower cortisol naturally.
• If you want an alcohol-free evening drink, see how much tart cherry juice for sleep and the sugar to watch.
• If you’re swapping a nightcap for something warm, our guide to chamomile tea for sleep covers when to drink it so you’re not up for the loo.
• For men cutting back this autumn, our guide to Movember and men’s health has a simple 30-day checklist.
• If you take ashwagandha for sleep, read can you take ashwagandha at night, including why we’d keep it away from an evening drink.
• Evening drinks are also a common trigger for sleep talking.
• Alcohol is one of the everyday reasons people feel tired all the time, even after a long night in bed.
• Broken sleep in the early hours hits light sleepers hardest, because it takes less noise to wake you later in the night.
• Swapping your evening drink? An alcohol-free magnesium drink for sleep routine is one option some people try.
• Alcohol is one of the most common reasons for a high Garmin stress score at night.