There are many facets to addiction recovery, and an assortment of mental problems can get in the way of making meaningful progress. One such example of this is how insomnia can get in the way of the habits that are important to develop to maintain your steps on the path to recovery. One of the simplest things that people can do to help improve their chances of a lasting recovery is to get enough sleep, and insomnia obviously undercuts that possibility. Here’s a little more information about how insomnia harms the your potential during addiction treatment…
Healthy Sleeping Habits Restore Brain Chemistry
As stated above, getting into a regular, healthy sleeping pattern is an important step to take during recovery. This helps get your circadian rhythm back on track, which helps your brain chemistry restore the balance that was lost during continuous substance abuse. Addiction is a behavioral disease that thrives on disorder and chaos in your brain. When insomnia comes into the picture, it makes it difficult to heal that chaos.
Insomnia Spurs Mental Disorders
Sleep isn’t just important for fighting addiction! It’s also an important component of maintaining mental health. Keeping things like anxiety and depression, which are often prevalent in cases of substance abuse, at bay during recovery is an imperative step of treatment. Insomnia, however, enables those mental disorders to spiral out of control, and can lead to dangerous thought processes that lead to people continuing to self-medicate, which is how the cycle of addiction thrives.
How to Prevent Insomnia
In order to prevent insomnia, or to reduce its effects when you already experiencing it, there are several things that you can do to help.
- Don’t have caffeine late in the day.
- Refrain from any sort of entertaining distractions in your bedroom, whether that be your phone, your television, or even a good book.
- Engage in taxing physical activity shortly before you go to sleep, such as exercise.
- Go to bed and wake up at the same time, every day.
- Practice breathing and relaxation techniques right before you try to go to sleep.