Comment by 65
1 year ago
If anxiety is preventing you from falling asleep or staying asleep, I don't think alcohol is the right solution. Alcohol might make you fall asleep quicker, but it's invariably going to affect how you sleep, such as messing with your REM sleep, messing with your ability to stay asleep, and then affecting deep sleep (NREM).
https://www.hackensackmeridianhealth.org/en/healthu/2023/06/...
I would suggest sleep specific medicine, like NyQuil, rather than alcohol, which will not only long term negatively affect your sleep but also affect other parts of your body such as your ability to handle stress: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3860387/
Thus, alcohol might actually be increasing your stress and anxiety levels over time, rather than reducing them.
I agree with all of what you said until you started suggesting NyQuil instead. We don't have good data for long term effect of using antihistamine. Alcohol, in small quantity is not good but it's also not that bad especially in otherwise healthy and active people. Ideally, non medicated ways to reduce anxiety is a lot better.