Sleep is as important in addiction recovery as any therapy or treatment process that patients undergoing treatment for substance use disorders experience. At Aroha Rehabilitation Centre in Gurgaon, we emphasize the significance of getting enough sleep, as it helps individuals enjoy the best health and be at their best both in mind and body.
Why is sleep important in addiction recovery?
1. Helps in the Management of Anxiety and Stress
When you do not get proper sleep, the body produces hormones such as cortisol responsible for anxiety and tension. Thus, one would feel more relaxed and have the body in the correct hormonal balance after getting enough sleep.
Sleep also has an impact on your emotions, which is an important aspect of combating addiction. Lack of the required sleep impairs our ability to regulate our emotions, which results in impulses and wrong decisions. One can also note that proper sleep helps in mastering feelings and therefore dealing with emotions more healthily in case one is recovering from addiction.
- Improves Overall Mood
Lack or excess of sleep can also influence the mood of a person. Lack of sleep can make you feel moody and experience positive feelings about having low energy all the time feeling more depressed.
Although, if one gets enough sleep, one can feel rather rested, alert, refreshed, and positive. It is important in the management of most of your body’s hormones that influence your mood. If you get enough sleep, the level of serotonin is increased in your body and you are happy. Usually, sleep is rather restless when a person is in the process of recovery from addiction and it is important to attempt to sleep more to minimize the risk of relapse due to bad emotions.
- Enhances Cognitive Functioning
You speak in your sleep, and your brain’s at work linking those memories with prior experiences and the day’s occurrences. Alteration of sleep interrupts this process and other activities within the learning and decision-making areas that may reduce an individual’s cognitive abilities.
Sufficient sleep leads to an enhanced attention span and can reduce the signs of fatigue, hence boosting the individual’s concentration and problem-solving skills. If you are in recovery or suffering from an alcohol use disorder or being a functioning alcoholic, improved function of these pieces of the brain is advantageous as a result of the fact that you can make better decisions regarding the goals for your recovery and also set attention to progressive development. This paper explores the role played by sleep in the process of rehabilitation so that the necessary measures can be taken to ensure that sleep is not interrupted.
Sleeping Tips that Can be Followed during Recovery
When you have had a long-standing problem with poor sleep, it often becomes difficult to pinpoint what exactly went wrong or what you have to do to fix it.
- Establish a Sleep Schedule
One of them is making a schedule involving sleep and waking up as it can help in that aspect. If not set, one might go to bed late and have barely any sleep or have disrupted sleep throughout the night. Choose a certain time to be in bed each night and in the morning and attempt to remain on time throughout the week.
- De-Stress Before Bed
Engaging in set end-of-day activities and practices is a wonderful way to prepare oneself for bed. Some of the suggestions are not using your phone one hour before bedtime, taking a warm bath, and reading a favorite book. By doing these activities each night the brain can recognize messages from the body that it is time to shut down for sleep.
- Choose Your Bedroom as the Place That’s Meant Only for Rest
The bedroom environment has a significant impact on the quality of sleep one experiences. One can effectively make his or her bedroom suitable for sleep by eliminating every source of light and noise through the use of a blackout curtain and earpiece respectively. It also advised that you should only sleep in your bed because over time your body will know that when you are in bed, it is time to sleep.
- Do not take any form of exercise just before going to bed.
If you did not exercise in the morning as you would like to, you may consider trying it in the evening before sleeping. But if one exercises just before going to bed, this is likely to boost cortisol levels and therefore lead to increased wakefulness. It also increases the possibility of feeling sleepy in the evening as most people are advised to work out early in the morning.
Sleep may be defined as the natural period of rest during which a person’s body can restore its strength and prepare itself for a new day’s work and there can be no doubt that poor quality sleep can greatly affect the physical well-being of an individual. Ensuring that you can have enough sleep during the night will benefit greatly in your day-to-day activities as well as your sobriety. Hence it is very possible to be able to have enough sleep just by slightly changing what you do before you go to bed. Eventually, you will be utterly surprised why you never did these things before in the first place given the kind of improvement that will dawn over you.
