Why can't we sleep after drinking, William?

This is one of the biggest things for me.

And when I kind of got this sorted out in my head,

I think this was one of the biggest nails in the coffin of my drinking ever.

Because if we go back to the physiological side of things,

so you're taking this sedative and sedating yourself,

but when it wears off, you're left really hypersensitive.

And that hypersensitive feeling is almost like having too much caffeine.

You know when you drink too much coffee and you start to feel deeply unpleasant,

you know, your brain's kind of racing ahead and you feel all twitched up and you can't relax

and it's just not a nice feeling.

So what happened is usually about five hours after your last drink, that's when the scales tip and that oversensitivity really

kicks in. So what people find is five hours after their last drink, that's when they wake up.

So for most people, that's that three or four in the morning wake up. Someone said to me once,

oh, I don't know what you're talking about. I never get that. When I spoke to him a bit further, what he was actually doing

was drinking until about one in the morning. And then he'd set the alarm for six. So the wake up kind of

coincided with him getting up anyway. But this is why you wake up in the middle of the night.

And you don't wake up feeling relaxed and calm and

you know lie in bed and slowly drift off back to sleep you lie there feeling you know anxious

your heart's hammering you're worrying about anything and everything and you may be absolutely

exhausted but you can't sleep and it's to do with that chemical imbalance. Now, what people don't

understand is, or maybe don't appreciate enough, is that sleep isn't about lying down and going

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