Episode 8, Alcohol & Sleep with Professor Michael Gradisar
In today’s episode, we talk to sleep psychologist Professor Michael Gradisar from Wink Sleep all about alcohol & sleep. Not only do people fear not being able to fall asleep when taking a break from alcohol but this fear can often be a reason for not staying the course. So we thought let’s get an expert on to answer our questions and learn some tips! We discuss how the first week of removing alcohol can resemble insomnia and how it can take a week or two to transition into a restorative sleep pattern. Michael explains how being forearmed with this knowledge minimises your fear of falling asleep by empowering you to know this is normal and that steps are available to make it easier, including cognitive behaviour therapy techniques, improvements to your sleep environment and bringing in your screen to help you doze off to a calming show (yes you heard that right!). We also discuss how drinking dreams actually help us remain alcohol free. We hope you enjoy this as much as we did! Look out for Wink Sleep’s eBook, How to Ride the Wave: Sleep and Alcohol, How to Make it Easier when Making a Change which can be found at https://winksleep.online/ as well as links to daily videos discussing what you can expect in the early days of going alcohol free together with some tips to ride the wave.
