Ask HN: Alcoholism and Career in Software

Post by floppydisc » Tue, Nov 01, 2022, 5:31 PM UTC

thebigspacefuck wrote: post #36

floppydisc wrote: post #17

The most disturbing part of drinking to your mental faculties is how it effects your sleep. It leaves you in a haze and that accumulates. Once you stop, sleep will help you get back on track again. You still have time to recover. My father did the same thing as you are doing. He's recently stopped. He's sharp as a knife again after a very short amount of time after years of being, which I can best describe as, out-of…

I got a Garmin watch and it has a feature called “body battery”. I noticed this doesn’t recharge at all after drinking, even if I felt I slept okay. I always suspected pot affected my sleep quality too. If something isn’t working out in your life, sleep is one of the best things to work on to try to fix it.

Post by throwaway987642 » Wed, Nov 02, 2022, 1:46 AM UTC

floppydisc wrote: post #40

throwaway987642 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people don't think of it from this angle. There was a period where I pulled a few days to catch up on work with very little sleep and no drinking. And the end of this period, I noticed that I felt the same being sleep deprived as I did after a heavy night of drinking. At that point, I realized that much of the feeling of hangover was likely sleep deprivation.

Goddamn, what an amazing insight you gained. I was under the illusion, for most of my life, that alcohol helped with sleep, until I did some research and found out it practically does the opposite. Or honestly, listened to the book "Why do we sleep" by Matthew Walker https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34466963-why-we-sleep . It is absolutely fascinating and worth a read/listen for anyone wondering what we know about…