Psychedelics & Sleep: What We Know

Sleep is easy to take for granted - until you can’t get as much as you need. CDC data tells us that around one-third of adults in the United States get fewer than 7 hours of sleep in a 24-hour period.

People turn to all sorts of solutions to catch their Z’s - from hot showers to slow music and sleeping pills - and some are more harmful than others. But what about psychedelics and sleep? Psychedelic drugs have limited evidence regarding improving sleep directly; however, the circumstantial benefits make a stronger case.

How Sleep and Mental Health Influence Each Other

Sleep isn’t downtime. The hours between bedtime and breakfast are crucial for your brain to reformat, reorganize, and recover from the cognitive load it undertakes during the day. Research indicates the risk of mental health conditions like depression shoots up significantly when our brains starve for sleep.

A man in blue pajamas sits awake on his bed at 3 a.m. as a thought bubble links a crescent moon to a brain.

Our contemporary understanding of the relevance of sleep to mental health stands in contrast to earlier findings; previously, insomnia was considered a byproduct of deleterious mental health.

That’s still true to a degree, but there’s a clear two-way relationship at play - poor mental health can worsen sleep, and poor sleep habits can worsen mental health. If left ignored, this two-way relationship may put you at risk of developing conditions like dementia later in life, too.

It stands to reason that tackling either may improve the other - and getting better sleep is easier than “fixing” depression.

How Psychedelics Affect Sleep

Psychedelics have tremendous potential in treating certain mental health ailments. There’s more research on sleep and psychedelics than you might think, but the findings are far from conclusive. Here’s what we know about the acute and chronic effects of psychedelics on sleep habits & hygiene.

Immediately After Use

Psychedelics like psilocybin, ayahuasca, or DMT, target specific receptors in the brain. Stimulating these 5-HT1A and 5-HT2A receptors helps create the dreamy, out-of-body experiences associated with psychedelics, but they also play a role in regulating the body’s sleep-wake cycle.

A woman in a soft blue sweater speaks with her therapist in a sunlit office during a psychedelic-assisted session.

Psilocybin appears to have mild antidepressant properties relating to sleep, but more research is needed. In this paper, the authors note that psilocybin taken in the morning delays the onset of REM (rapid eye movement), the deepest and most restorative phase of the sleep cycle.

Ayahuasca presents some similar effects on sleep; inhibiting REM sleep and altering slow-wave sleep, which is believed to be responsible for orchestrating memory organization and bodily tissue repair. However, subjects in this paper did not report acute sleep quality disruptions.

MDMA may be the most potent psychedelic sleep disruptor due to its ability to create significant psychological arousal. Some studies show that acute MDMA disrupts sleep, but without leading to subsequent sleepiness the next day.

Ketamine appears to work in the other direction, however. Systematic reviews call for more robust research, but do indicate that ketamine can reduce the severity of insomnia in depression sufferers.

What Research Says About Psychedelics and Long-Term Sleep

Here’s where things get more complicated: research generally indicates that many psychedelics acutely disrupt sleep patterns on a neurological level. However, many users in these studies report no changes in their subjective sleep quality. Some even report slightly better sleep overall.

One person lies awake beneath a glowing aura while another sleeps soundly beneath gentle slow-wave dream lines.

There’s a disconnect between what’s happening in the brains of sleeping psychedelic users and how they feel the next day. That may support the idea that psychedelics improve sleep indirectly and may bolster their case as a long-term or behavioral intervention.

Can Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy Help People Sleep Better?

Psychedelic-assisted therapy (PAT) describes combining psychedelic drugs with traditional psychotherapy interventions like counseling, meditation, or journaling. Some studies have revealed “significant improvements” in depressive and anxiety symptoms.

Unfortunately, there is limited long-term research on PAT for sleep. Some studies have thrown support behind the idea of psychedelics (psilocybin in particular) facilitate an interaction between depression relief and sleep quality: “Addressing sleep disturbances could enhance therapeutic outcomes in psilocybin-assisted therapy…”

A researcher in a white lab coat reviews sleep study data as a participant sleeps behind a frosted glass partition.

Whether psychedelics themselves are helping or harming long-term outcomes in depression sufferers with insomnia remains unclear. At this point, it’s premature to compare psychedelics to standard sleep aids like over-the-counter medication or prescriptions.

Sleeping pills are triage, not treatment: you take them as needed to induce sleep, but they don’t address the root causes of sleep disruption. Psychedelics may work the other way around - some drugs can acutely disrupt sleep, but may confer broader behavioral changes that end up improving sleep quality long-term.

What We Still Don’t Know

So far, there are no direct studies examining sleep quality as a clinical endpoint for psychedelic administration. How these drugs influence sleep is observed circumstantially. Moreover, many of these studies examine brief periods, such as 24 hours, during which participants sleep only once.

05-indirect-benefits

Sleep hygiene is an ongoing effort that takes diligence and patience to address. A single dose of psilocybin produces meaningful clinical change with respect to certain depressive symptoms, but we can’t yet argue that one trip equates to weeks of restful sleep.

Future research needs to put long-term sleep hygiene with psychedelics under the microscope. It’s possible that regular microdosing may produce better outcomes, but it’s simply too early to tell for sure.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can psilocybin help you sleep?

No, psilocybin cannot help you sleep. At least, there’s no direct evidence at this stage that psilocybin improves sleep on its own. However, some research argues that psychedelics may improve mood and mitigate depression, which can confer better sleep down the line.

Does ketamine improve insomnia?

Ketamine may improve insomnia, but there’s no universal clinical consensus yet. There’s no direct studies on ketamine for sleep which suggest that ketamine treats insomnia in people who aren’t suffering from depression.

Do psychedelics affect REM sleep?

Yes, psychedelics affect REM sleep. Many studies show that psychedelic drugs delay the onset of REM, the deepest and most restorative phase of sleep. However, some users do not report feeling groggy or under-rested the next day despite this latency.

Why can’t some people sleep after taking psychedelics?

Some people cannot sleep after taking psychedelics because psychedelic drugs act on the same receptors and systems responsible for producing mental arousal. This is particularly true for MDMA, and effects are highly subjective.

Can psychedelic therapy improve sleep indirectly?

Psychedelic therapy may indirectly improve sleep. Sleep quality and mental wellness are tightly correlated. Patients who undergo psychedelic-assisted therapies to tackle their mental health ailments, which disrupt their sleep, may find themselves resting better as a consequence, but not necessarily because of the drug itself.

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