Sober Day #60! Revisiting the Power of Sleep

Yesterday I had an interesting reminder of the power of sleep!!

In my former drinking life, I was a 4-5 hour a night sleeper.  At the time, I felt like this was sufficient to 'get by' on.

In the first weeks of sobriety, I was up to 8-10 hours of sleep each night- mainly because of going to bed very early to avoid evening temptation to drink.

Over the last weeks, however, my sleep time has been shrinking again as I get more enthusiastic and drawn-in by some of my sober evening activities: Just one more square for this quilt, just one more set of glass beads, maybe another chapter of this book... and bedtime creeps later and later.

Everyone 'knows' that sleep deprivation leads to multiple dysfunctions, including slowed reaction time (physical and mental), less creativity and flexibility, and often less optimism.  On the other hand, however, most of us, while acknowledging that this is true for others, somehow think of ourselves as 'immune' to this effect.

There is a notoriously poor connection between one's subjective assessment of fatigue or sleepiness, and objective measurements of these.  (How do you objectively measure sleepiness?- one way is the Multiple Sleep Latency Test).  This means we often think we feel 'fine', are doing just 'great' after our sleep-deprived nights- whereas in reality, we are not functioning so well.

How did my life remind me of this yesterday?  By way of a game!

A few months ago, surfing around about 'successful aging' topics, I came across an online site called Luminosity.  It has a set of game-like activities purported to keep brain agility challenged.  One signs up for a nominal feel, plays different games as assigned, and sees scores comparing oneself with ones own former performance, as well as compared to age-based peers.  The website emails a daily reminder to visit and play the 5 games it has assigned to you for that day.  I find it a lot of fun.  And as a highly competitive person, I love seeing my scores in various categories improve day-by-day.  I almost always have a new Personal Best or at least a Top Five score on most of the games each day.

Yesterday, my performance was sub-par.  I didn't even hit the Top Five score for any of the games.  Hey, What's up?

Later in the day, it occurred to me.  The night before was a very short sleep night- only about 4 hours, because of getting to bed a little late, and having to get up unusually early for a must-keep commitment.

I think these games are an unusually good discriminator of reaction time and brain connection time, since they depend on quick responses requiring both mental and physical agility.  I hadn't noticed any other performance deficits for yesterday.  I wasn't depressed, unusually drawn to alcohol, having trouble driving or any other actions I usually think of as resulting from sleep deprivation.  But here was concrete evidence that apparently short sleep, even for just one night, DID impact my ability to function 'on all cylinders'.

So:  I am re-committing to getting at least 7 (and preferably 8 or more) hours of sleep each night.  I think Enough Sleep is also important in helping me meet this 100 day challenge, and figure out what I want to do after that.

Ciao!

Sober Day #43- Sober Bedtimes

For the first couple of weeks of this challenge, time in the evenings seemed so empty.  About 4 PM, wine started calling to me.  It felt like a physical effort to resist it-  almost like there was an actual Wolf in the room with me, trying his smarmy best to have me join him in hoisting a celebratory drink.  (What celebration? Well, uh, you know, this is Wednesday and, uh, um, oh, it snowed last night...always something!).

By the time I got to 7 PM, I felt like I'd been through 20-30 rounds in a boxing ring, with an opponent who out-weighed me by about a hundred pounds.  I would tuck myself in bed by 8 PM because (a) I was exhausted and (b) at least in my sleep I wouldn't be thinking about alcohol.

Now, even though I'm only 6 weeks into abstinence, my evenings feel very different.  It didn't take long for me to find all sorts of cool, enjoyable things to fill my evenings:  Household projects, evening Pilates classes (I couldn't trust my driving to attend these while drinking), crossword puzzles, working on quilts, making glass beads, cooking, keeping up to date with professional literature, even playing Candy Crush...

Now I've swung to the other end of the pendulum-  there is sooooo much I want to do, that I have trouble tearing myself away and going to bed.  My total time in bed has been creeping downward again.

While drinking, I typically slept about 4 hours a night.  In my first few weeksof the 100-Day-Challenge, it was regularly 8, 9, even 10 hours.  Since I get up at 5:30, when I go to bed determines how much sleep I get.  I think 8 hours is ideal for me, which means being in bed by 9:30- and I've been fighting to get myself into bed by 11 PM.

My new sleep challenge:  Aim for being in bed by 9:30 most nights.  Sleep is so important for resilience and good-decision-making-  I need to remind myself that by leaving whatever fascinating thing I am doing and going to bed at my target time, I am equipping myself for better success in this sobriety project.

Sober Day #35- Sleep vs. The Attractiveness of Alcohol

Yesterday was the first time in a number of weeks that I felt a yearning for alcohol.  Specifically, I wanted the rosy-hued lenses supplied by about 2 glasses of wine.  I wanted that feeling of remembering all I had to do, all the commitments coming due-  and not really caring.  That feeling of being in a protected place where nothing bad could touch me, where nothing demanding really mattered.

WTF?  I said to myself.  Why now?  What's going on here?  I remain committed to doing these 100 days without alcohol, but found myself thinking longingly to Feb 2014 when the 100 days will be up-  wouldn't a nice glass of dry sherry taste good, sitting by the fire and gazing at the snowy landscape outside?  Mmmmmm.

And then I saw a possible connection.  For most of my almost-5-weeks of abstinence, I've been sleeping a lot.  Seven hours at a minimum- sometimes 9, once even 10 hours!  This is in contrast to my former staying-up-late-having-one-more-glass-of-wine, with about 4 hours as my usual time in bed.

Sunday night I stayed up late finishing a fabulous book.  It was after 1 AM when I got in bed, and I was up as usual at 5:30, meaning just a few minutes more than 4 hours of sleep.  It was the first time since starting this challenge that I got so little sleep, and the first time since starting this challenge that alcohol seemed so attractive.

I am guessing there is a connection, that insufficient sleep decreases my psychic resilience, my ability to cope gracefully with daily life.  Therefore leading to more stress (even though I didn't overtly feel more stressed than usual).  And this, in turn, leading to feeling the need for relief in the form of alcohol.

Hmmmmmmm.

Perhaps a productive approach for me would be:  When alcohol is calling to me louder than usual, look carefully for what sources of stress might be in play.  And tackle the stressor directly, rather than seeking to quiet it temporarily with alcohol.

Sober Day #21- That's right, Three Weeks!!

I'm settling in to this new way of life, and I'm curious- to see how things will go from here.  For so many years my metabolism has been ruled by processing all the alcohol first- perhaps it will be easier to drop a percentage point or two in body fat?  I've been stuck at 24% for about 3 years, and would dearly love to get under 20%.

My anxiety levels have dropped, and the quality and quantity of my sleep has increased dramatically.  Surely this is accompanied by a significant drop in cortisol levels.  I keep staring at my face in the mirror to see if it looks any different.  Is it my imagination?  Or is my complexion a bit brighter, a bit healthier looking?

As I mentioned yesterday, the more dramatic changes in how I feel that happened during my first week have settled down now, and I am in a holding pattern- which is overall pretty good.  This allows me to direct more of my energy toward strategizing new behaviour patterns to work on developing to support me in this sober life.

One foot in front of the other, again and again.  It is working for now.