Recover from the Substance Load
Find out — for yourself, with data — how much your baseline energy, sleep, and mood are being held down by alcohol, caffeine timing, and digital load. By day 30 you have a personal experiment behind you that tells you what to keep and what to cut.
Who this is for
Adults who suspect alcohol is degrading sleep and don't want to either ignore it or quit forever. Heavy caffeine users. People whose evenings have collapsed into screens + a glass of wine and want to test what changes. Not for active dependency — please see a clinician if you have physical-dependence symptoms.
The sequence
topic
Topic: Alcohol and healthRead first. Conservative framing on the evidence shift; signals for when to seek help.
topic
Topic: Sleep betterThe most measurable cost of alcohol shows up here. Frame what good looks like.
topic
Topic: Circadian rhythmCaffeine and alcohol both jam the body clock. Understand the mechanism before changing anything.
- 14 min
worksheet
Caffeine and sleep logTwo-week log. Don't change anything yet — get the baseline first.
- 5 min
- 15 min
worksheet
Sleep environment audit - 20 min
worksheet
Digital hygiene checklistScreens are the third leg of the substance load. Most adults under-correct here too.
7-day quickstart
- Day 1 — Read the alcohol-and-health topic. Note specifically: how many UK units (or US drinks) per week are you actually on? Don't change anything yet.
- Day 2 — Start the caffeine and sleep log. Track for a baseline week. No changes yet.
- Day 3 — Read the sleep-better + circadian-rhythm topic hubs. Set a fixed wake time for the next 14 days.
- Day 4 — Run the sleep consistency tracker. Score honestly.
- Day 5 — Do the sleep environment audit. Fix the largest single offender this week.
- Day 6 — Read the recovery-and-energy topic hub. Note: which of the upstream conditions are currently underdone?
- Day 7 — Weekly review: what does the baseline week of data tell you? What's the one experiment for week 2.
30-day plan
Week 1
Baseline (no changes)
- Track honestly. Don't cut anything yet.
- Caffeine and sleep log fully populated.
- Sleep consistency tracker scored.
- Read alcohol + sleep + circadian + recovery topic hubs.
Week 2
Caffeine + screens experiment
- Cap caffeine after 1pm (or noon if you're a fast metaboliser).
- Phone out of the bedroom. Screens off 60 minutes before bed.
- Continue the caffeine and sleep log. Compare to week 1.
- Add 20-minute morning daylight walk daily.
Week 3
Alcohol-free week
- No alcohol for 7 consecutive days. (If physical-dependence symptoms appear, stop and see a clinician.)
- Continue the caffeine and sleep log.
- Notice: morning energy, evening calm, sleep depth, weight, skin.
- Plan one social event that you'll attend without drinking, to test the social side.
Week 4
Decide what to keep
- Compare the three weeks of data. Which change moved the needle most?
- Decide your durable rules for the next 90 days — caffeine cutoff time, weekly alcohol cap, screen-off time. Write them down.
- Re-run the sleep consistency tracker. Compare to week 1.
- If alcohol turned out to be the dominant cost, plan whether to make week 3 the new permanent normal — and what support you'd want if so.
Completion checklist
- Alcohol + sleep + circadian + recovery topic hubs read.
- Two weeks of caffeine and sleep log data collected.
- Sleep consistency tracker run twice (week 1 and week 4).
- One alcohol-free week completed.
- Caffeine cutoff and screen-off rules written and followed for ≥ 7 days.
- Durable rules for the next 90 days written down and visible.