Alcohol is a sedative, not a sleep aid

Sedation and sleep look similar from outside. They are not the same thing.

A drink shortens the time it takes to lose consciousness. That is the entire case for it, and it is true.

What follows is not ordinary sleep. Alcohol suppresses REM in the first half of the night. As the body metabolises it, the sedative effect gives way to a rebound: the second half becomes lighter and more broken, with more brief awakenings — often including an inexplicable one at three or four.

It buys the first half of the night from the second, at a poor rate.

There is a mechanical problem alongside the chemical one: alcohol relaxes the muscles of the upper airway, which makes snoring and disordered breathing worse in anyone who already has some.

None of this is an argument about whether to drink. It is only an argument about what a nightcap is doing. If it is helping you fall asleep, it is doing that — and it is also doing the rest.

The longer answer

A bedtime routine for adults keeps alcohol away from bedtime along with caffeine, and sleep hygiene looks at what that rule, and the others on the familiar list, are worth one at a time. If the drink is the ritual, the sleepy girl mocktail looks at an alcohol-free one, and at what its ingredients can and cannot do.