Can alcohol make you sleepy?

Can alcohol make you sleepy?

Yes, alcohol in low doses is definitely soporific, so it allows one to go to sleep. If anything, it acts as a relaxant. As you increase the doses, then it takes one into a state of unconsciousness rather than into sleep and then as the brain metabolizes the alcohol away, it then reacts to the lack of alcohol and awakens itself so that the night is quite a poor night. Over and above that, alcohol is a bit of a muscle relaxant and it depresses breathing so breathing tends to be poorer during the night, snoring increases during the night and people, if they've been drinking, say lots of beer will find themselves going to the loo, so the whole night is hugely disturbed. So whereas on the one hand, one would say, yeah, one or two glasses of wine are reasonable before going to bed as a relaxant, anything higher than that and you'll just get a hugely disturbed night's sleep. The long-term effects of drinking too much alcohol is to reduce deep sleep so the long-term sleep is poorer still.