Why Alcohol Makes You More Tired As You Get Older

You probably don’t need an expert to tell you that alcohol messes with your body, especially when you’re well past your 20s. Alcohol can make you more anxious as you age, for example (hello, “hangxiety”) and just generally make you feel worse – including more tired.

If a night out is starting to lead to a night in much quicker than usual, or drinking isn’t fun anymore because you feel sleepy instead of silly, you’re not alone – and there’s a scientific reason.

Ahead, addiction experts share why drinking alcohol is more likely to make you feel tired when you’re older, other effects you might notice and when they typically show up.

We’re looking at one main answer here.

“Alcohol is a central nervous system depressant, and the brain becomes more sensitive to its sedating effects with age,” said Dr. Urvi Natha, a licensed clinical psychologist with Oro Recovery and the founder of Shanti Recovery and Wellness.

That’s because of changes in body composition. “As we age, lean body mass and total body water decrease, leaving less volume in which alcohol can distribute,” said Dr. Amy Swift, a psychiatrist and the deputy medical officer at Silver Hill Hospital.

This starts earlier than you might guess, too.

“Starting around age 30, we lose about 3% to 8% of our lean muscle mass each decade,” said Dr. James Sherer, an addiction psychiatrist and network medical director at Hackensack Meridian Health Addiction Service. “Fat tissue then replaces the lost muscle mass.”

If you think the tiredness may make it easier for you to fall asleep, not so fast. To make matters worse, even though you’re sleepy, you probably won’t sleep well. Talk about a double-whammy.

“While alcohol might make you pass out, it destroys sleep quality by blocking REM (rapid eye movement) and deep restorative sleep,” Sherer explained. “Because natural sleep architecture already becomes lighter and more fragmented as we age, adding alcohol guarantees you will wake up exhausted, irritable and physically fatigued.” (Side note: “Junk sleep” or fragmented sleep is also linked to 172 diseases.)

There’s also the fact that older individuals may be more likely to have additional health issues or take more medications.

“Medications, sleep apnea and other medical conditions can compound the problem,” said Dr. Lucas Trautman, an addiction psychiatrist with American Addiction Center.

He recalled patients reporting they slept a full seven or eight hours after drinking, but still waking up exhausted.

“Alcohol may facilitate unconsciousness, but unconsciousness and healthy sleep are not physiologically equivalent,” he said.

Feeling extra tired isn’t the only complication you’ll notice. As mentioned earlier, anxiety is a major one. Doctors also listed the following:

• Alcohol can worsen high blood sugar.

• Taking more medications means more possible interactions with the alcohol. This could contribute to increased drowsiness, dizziness or the medicine being less effective, to name a few examples.

• You may continue to lose sight of the severity of your drinking.

• You’re more likely to notice cognitive effects, particularly with balance and memory. The former contributes to a higher risk of falls and fractures.

• The aftereffects can be more pronounced and disruptive the following day.

• Alcohol can affect multiple parts of the body in multiple ways, such as contributing to dehydration, worsening GERD and triggering atrial fibrillation. It’s also a carcinogen.

There’s no particular age when you’ll notice those shifts, experts say. Plus, other factors are still at play, like body composition, health profile, gender and what you ate that day.

However, Swift has noticed that people in their 40s typically find that alcohol “goes to their head” more quickly, and she noted that physiology backs that up. Sherer has heard of people experiencing this as early as their mid-30s.

Natha added that different life stages can bring different effects from alcohol. Generally speaking – and unfortunately – you’ll notice the tiredness worsen. She said that young adults can recover from that most quickly, then middle-agers, then older adults.

Even for young adults, these side effects can be problematic, though.

“A younger adult may tolerate dehydration and a disrupted night of sleep and still function reasonably well the following day, [but] that does not mean the alcohol had no biological effect,” Trautman clarified.

Sherer spoke more about the effects that middle-aged people often experience. “People in this age bracket often report that drinking makes them immediately sleepy, and the lingering fatigue from disrupted sleep lasts well into the workweek,” he said. “This is when the infamous ‘two-day hangover’ appears.”

Trautman added that those individuals are more likely to notice impaired concentration, irritability, fatigue and reduced exercise performance.

By the time you reach your 60s and 70s, Sherer said, alcohol “functions heavily as a sedative,” and your aging body “simply cannot process” as much alcohol safely. Trautman noted “a more consequential effect” on balance, reaction time, blood pressure, cognition and medical safety.

These age-related changes show up when people are getting sober from alcohol, too.

“In addiction treatment, this contrast can be striking,” Swift said. “A 20-year-old drinking 10 beers daily may show little evidence of withdrawal, while a 60-year-old drinking a bottle of wine each day may require medically supervised withdrawal management.”

So, while it may be annoying, it’s true: alcohol has worsening effects on the body as we get older. It’s just not worth it.

“While our drinking habits may stay the same, as we age, their impact on our bodies grows more profound,” Natha concluded.

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking you’re “too young” for it, however.

“I have seen severe consequences of alcohol use disorder in people who are remarkably young,” Trautman said. “I have treated patients in their mid-30s who already had liver failure and other advanced medical complications related to alcohol. That clinical reality challenges the idea that serious alcohol-related disease develops only in old age or only after many decades of drinking.”