Posted by Anonymous on 2019/05/13 under Life can relate to getting up early in the morning for work. I was up at 5am for most of my working life. As far as the self-medication goes, I think we can all relate to that – to one extent or another. When I quit drinking, I probably went for over a month with difficulty either falling asleep or staying asleep. Having said that, I never got a good night’s sleep before I quit drinking. I could ‘fall asleep’ quickly enough, sometimes it felt like before my head hit the pillow, but I’d always wake up after a couple of hours. Depending on how much I’d had to drink, I would either be wide awake and tossing and turning, or wide awake with my heart pounding in my ears, my head aching, my throat feeling like a desert, and I’d be tossing and turning and unable to get back asleep. I much prefer where I am now. I still have a restless night now and then. The reasons are nothing to do with alcohol though. Maybe I’ve drank too much coffee during the day. Perhaps I’m a little anxious about something, slightly stressed because a plan didn’t come to fruition, or a hundred other normal things that have kept us humans awake since year dot. But I don’t have those lovely hangovers to look forward to, nor do I wake up in the middle of the night fearing that I’m gonna have a heart attack or a stroke or some other god awful self-caused death. You have to put up with the sleepless nights for a while… that’s just it! How long will the sleeplessness last? Who knows! Everyone’s different. It’s going to depend on many factors, all of them individual to you. You just have to accept it and do what you can put yourself in the mood for sleep. Your body is not used to falling asleep on its own, without being boinked to sleep by booze.