Sleeping peacefully?

Woke up to 6 full days of sobriety this morning. So my topic for input is sleep patterns. My body is feeling a lot better internally. Not 100% by any means, but improving. I’m sleeping much differently though. I’m sleeping hard for about 4-5 hours then I’m wide awake. No more waking up every hour or so with a jug of water next to the bed needing to hydrate constantly. Believe me I’m not complaining. My thing is I’m wide awake, but then start to feel sleepy like I really need a nap about mid day early afternoon. Is this normal and is anyone getting their 7-8 hours of normal sleep out there?

Congrats on 6 days!! Thats awesome!! Ive got 8 days…Im not waking up at my normal 2 or 3 in the morning. But Im still sleeping pretty restless. And Ive noticed Im having a harder time falling asleep but my guess thats because Im not buzzed when I go to bed. Hopefully this will pass and sleep will become more peaceful.

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My sleeping patterns feel out of whack. While I have bursts of energy during the day, I am wiped out and exhausted around 8, so I listen to my body and crawl into bed. I’ll sleep quite deeply but will wake up around 3, restless for about and hour or 2. Then crash again. It’s bizarre but waking up hangover-free is priceless. Our bodies are readjusting and this early on, still detoxing. I think the process is kind of fascinating, and I’m excited to witness how things can only get better.

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I used to wake up at 2am like clockwork and lie there for hours (usually berating myself for being such a loser). Now I wake up, go pee, then fall back asleep. It feels great. I’m sure you’ll get there too. I know my first week was restless sleep, mostly due to the nightmares that have now gone too.

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Intrigued you mentioned nightmares. I too would suffer from bad dreams. Even night terrors sometimes. There was even a time I swore there were evil entities with me in my room terrorizing me… Mostly the dreams were guilt about my behavior and lifestyle. Funny, I haven’t had a bad dream I can remember in days. In fact, I think I’m sleeping so hard I haven’t remembered any dreams.

Yeah, the first week off booze I got really weird and disturbing dreams…but not about anything specific. I then read that it was a symptom of withdrawal. The dreams have now stopped and I agree, I think I’m sleeping too deeply to remember them.

I always gets the terrible nightmares when I quit drinking which are always really upsetting, it’s getting better now after day four and I’m really appreciating not having to pee in the night :wink: I feel weirdly like I’m being mum to my body to take care of it as it recovers so I’m going to the shop in the morning to buy something good for breakfast and soup for lunch to make sure my body is getting good things to get it better (l know I’m a nut!) Well chuffed I made it through my Christmas do with shining colours, all down to you guys for being here!

(65 days sober)

Our minds are readjusting to not being suppressed and depressed by alcohol.

My first two weeks were filled with not falling asleep very easily and vivid dreams.

Basically the mind starts to go into overdrive.

After two weeks or a shade more, things calmed down. I have no sleep issues to speak of now.

Some alcoholics I talk to in aa say that the drinking dreams can stick with you for years. They just tend to get less and less as time goes on.

@Goose. I guess time will tell. My nightmares occured when I was drinking every single day, granted that was only 8 nights ago I went to bed loaded. I hope the bad dreams don’t start reoccurring, but I feel the root cause which is guilt has been much resolved just by committing to being sober. I just feel lucky to have not done any serious damage to my family over the years. I am such a functional alcoholic and hid things so well that when I told my wife I was quitting for good she actually was surprised and asked me why. She doesn’t even know how bad things had/have gotten. Someday soon I will tell her the entire truth. For now the entire truth is that I’m sober and have never been more serious. So far I haven’t even wanted to drink. Last time I quit for 27 days and every hour was a constant battle. This time is different.

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