Sleep disturbances are a sad fact of life for many people in recovery from substance use disorders. Sometimes sleep problems put people at risk for addiction, sometimes people develop sleep problems because of the drugs they take, and sometimes both. But causality aside, the correlation between disturbed sleep and substance use disorders is indisputably high.
Sleep disturbances are known to occur across widely different substance use disorders, including nicotine, alcohol, opioids, and cocaine. Alhough sleep disturbance is a common experience, different substances affect sleep in different ways.
Alcohol helps people fall asleep faster and increases slow wave sleep in the first half of a sleep period. For this reason many people have turned to alcohol to cope with sleep problems, especially if they have a co-occurring mental disorder. Yet alcohol disrupts the second half of a sleep period, reducing overall REM sleep for the night and ultimately making sleep problems worse.
People dependent on cocaine and alcohol tend to have disturbed sleep architecture as they age, with increasing REM (Rapid Eye Movement) and accelerated age-related decreases in slow wave, stage 3 sleep. People trying to become abstinent from cocaine report better quality sleep, but one study reveals that even as their perception of sleep quality goes up, their actual quality and quantity of sleep goes down. People recovering from cocaine substance use disorders may therefore be at higher risk of relapse because of poor sleep without knowing it.
Opioids are notorious for detrimentally affecting sleep, but in a different way. Long-term opioid use causes sleep apnea (in 30-90% of long-term opioid users) and otherwise disrupted breathing, sometimes resulting in hypoxia, and contributing to fatal overdose. Unfortunately, though indefinite buprenorphine and methadone maintenance are most promising for treatment of opioid substance use disorders, methadone is documented to cause sleep problems and burpenorphine may as well.
Studies of alcohol substance use disorders have demonstrated that greater severity and frequency of sleep disturbances put people at greater risk of relapse. Researchers think this correlation may be generalized to all types of substance use disorders. Berro et al., in 2014, found that sleep deprivation affects the dopaminergic systems in the brain in a similar way to psychostimulants, like cocaine. They hypothesized that sleep deprivation could prolong recovery by extending the association of cocaine with environmental cues, and so cause people to relapse.
Poor quality sleep is known to cause other health problems, and to compromise immune function, an especially grim prospect for any person who contracted HIV or hepatitis while using. Improving sleep quality is thus an important goal for anyone in recovery to reduce risk of relapse and reduce craving, and also to improve quality of life overall.
Addictions treatment providers may help their patients tremendously by providing cognitive behavior therapy to encourage beliefs and behaviors that improve sleep, and to refer people in recovery to sleep specialists when possible.
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This post is one our series of reports on what the current science says about addictions and addictions treatment.
Partial list of reports, listed most recent first:
- Addiction and Sleep, 9/30/16 (this post)
- Addiction and Social Support, 9/27/16
- Addiction and Trauma, 9/16/16
- Addiction, Emotion Regulation, and DBT, 5/4/16
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