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Count The Drinks

Find out what alcohol is actually costing your sleep.

Almost nobody can say accurately how much they drank last week. The estimate people give is reliably lower than the number, and not because they are lying.

Alcohol is sedating, which is why it feels like it helps sleep, but it fragments the second half of the night and suppresses REM. You fall asleep faster and sleep worse, and because the sedation is the part you notice, the cost is invisible. Counting makes the total visible, and a short break makes the effect on sleep obvious in a way no amount of reading does.

  1. 01

    Write down every drink for one week

    Not units, not estimates. Each drink as it happens, in a note on your phone. The act of writing it down is doing half the work.

  2. 02

    Look at the week, not the nights

    Most people are fine on any given night and surprised by the total. The weekly number is the one that matters.

  3. 03

    Take two weeks off

    Long enough to feel the difference in sleep and mood, short enough to be a decision rather than a lifestyle. Two weeks is the experiment.

  4. 04

    Decide with the data

    Compare how you slept and felt. Then choose deliberately rather than by default. Some people go back to the same amount and that is a real answer too.

Go deeper

What the paid version adds to this one.

  • What the sleep data actually shows at one, two and four drinks

  • How to run the two weeks without it dominating your social life

  • What to drink instead that is not just sugar

  • The interaction with training and recovery