How much sleep do you get each night?
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that all adults get at least 7 hours of sleep each day. That may not seem possible to those who are juggling numerous responsibilities and facing dozens of stressful moments throughout the day.
If you are on a substance use disorder (SUD) recovery journey, it’s essential that you get enough sleep consistently, not just for your physical health but for your mental health as well.
Quality Sleep Is a Big Part of Your Recovery Journey
Sleep is something that seems easy to put off. You can sleep in tomorrow or over the weekend. You may believe that one more hour staying up isn’t going to matter in the grand scheme of things. The problem is, a consistent lack of sleep is problematic for anyone with a SUD.
The outlook for someone with an SUD can be improved when routine sleep, along with other healthy strategies, is in place to better manage day-to-day demands on the brain.
Sleep does numerous things for you:
It promotes your body’s natural healing.
Your cells go to work restoring proper function and flushing toxins while you sleep. It’s one of the best times for organs, tissues, and individual cells to recover from the stresses of the day. Your immune system gets a boost from sleep, too, helping to keep you healthy.
For those with a history of SUD, your body needs sleep to promote healing. Your cells are constantly working to heal from the damage those substances caused.
Encourages emotional well-being.
By sleeping, you’re giving your brain a few hours off. That means less thinking and worrying and time to recover from the constant levels of high cortisol moving through your blood system during the day. Sleep can help with:
- Reducing the severity of anxious thoughts and feelings
- Reduce irritability and mood swings
- Improve depression symptoms
- Support health emotion communication
- Reduce pent-up feelings
All of this can help your mental health and SUD treatment therapies work more effectively. Emotion is always going to be a part of your day, but with sleep, you can think and feel a bit clearer than without it.
Helps manage cravings.
Getting enough quality sleep could help with relapse prevention. It can also help minimize the risk of strong cravings that put you on the path to relapsing. A person who lacks enough quality sleep is more likely to:
- Make poor decisions
- Act in a less rational way
- Make decisions with less focus on what is best for them in the long term
When you’re tired and overwhelmed, you’re more likely to give in to the demands of substances in your mind. Many people find themselves unable to resist the urge to turn to a substance for help. As you learn in addiction treatment, removing risk factors for relapse is always a critical part of protecting your future.
Sleep makes stress easier to manage.
Incorporating a routine that encourages consistent sleep may help you have the tools and brain power to manage stress more effectively. Stress will always be a part of your life in one way or another. You cannot eliminate it, but you can give your brain the tools and resources to better manage it.
With routine sleep, you may have lowered levels of cortisol in your bloodstream. This hormone is the direct link to stress. When you don’t sleep, there’s more cortisol present, which directly increases your frustration and makes you feel more aggravated. With sleep, you may have a calmer and more focused approach to higher stress levels.
How to Get Better Sleep
That’s the trick question for many people, but learning to sleep better with an SUD often means working towards consistency. Here are some tips that can help.
- Get into a routine. That means going to bed and getting up around the same time every day. That sets your body’s natural sleep cycle, encouraging you to drift into sleep more easily.
- Make your bedroom sleep-friendly. Ditch the electronics and TV. Instead, focus on a dark, peaceful space with fewer distractions.
- Avoid the use of stimulants. This includes nicotine and caffeine, both of which can increase your brain’s function. When you limit them, especially in the afternoon and evening hours, there’s less of those substances in your body, and that means your brain is better regulated.
By taking these steps, along with establishing a healthy lifestyle in general, you may be able to stay on the path to recovery a bit more easily. It’s not simple, but treatment can help to make sleep more accessible.
Let Our Team at Anabranch Help You
Take the time now to meet with our team to learn how we can help you get on the road to addiction recovery. No matter what complexity you are facing right now that’s keeping you from sleeping well, we can help you. Contact Anabranch now to learn more.
