Find out about the damaging effects of using alcohol to get to sleep.

Alcohol helps us to relax and nod off in no time, but even just a couple of drinks can radically affect the quality of our sleep.

If you're regularly drinking more than Govt guidelines recommend, you may find you wake up the next day feeling like you haven't had much rest at all. Regularly drinking alcohol will disrupt sleep. For example, a heavy drinking session of more than six units in an evening can make us spend more time in deep sleep and less time than usual in the important Rapid Eye Movement (REM) stage of sleep, which is an important restorative stage of sleep our bodies need.