Is it safe

Can you take melatonin with alcohol?

By GyroscopeUpdated November 14, 20263 sources

It won’t undo the drink. In a 2007 lab study, a moderate dose of vodka finished an hour before bed cut young adults’ own melatonin by 15 to 19 percent over the next few hours. Both make you drowsy, so on drinking nights we’d skip the tablet.

A glass of wine and a melatonin gummy sounds like a double dose of winding down. The drink makes you sleepy fast, so it feels like it’s helping. But alcohol pushes down the melatonin your own brain makes that evening, and a tablet on top just stacks two things that make you drowsy and slower.

We’d skip melatonin on any night you drink, and leave those nights out when you’re testing whether melatonin works for you. If you drink most nights, that’s the first thing to change, before any supplement.

Taking melatonin to fix a drinking night is like mopping while the tap’s still running.

The study

Researchers in Providence, Rhode Island, put 29 adults aged 21 to 25 on a fixed sleep schedule at home for 10 days, then brought them into the lab. On one night they drank vodka (0.54 g per kg of body weight for men and 0.49 for women) over 30 minutes, finishing an hour before bed. On another night they drank a placebo. At 140 minutes after the drink their melatonin was 15 percent lower than on the placebo night, and at 190 minutes 19 percent lower.

That was one moderate dose, in young adults, measured in saliva. More drinks weren’t tested.

Why the combination is a bad idea

Both slow you down. In a 1994 study at MIT, every melatonin dose from 0.1 to 10 mg made people sleepier and slower on a listening task. Alcohol does the same on its own. Daytime sleepiness is already melatonin’s most common side effect in the trials, in 1.66 percent of people.

Drinks change the rest of your night too, and a ring or watch will often show it. Does alcohol lower HRV? on hrv.guide has the numbers from large groups of wearable users.

It ruins the test

If you’re checking whether melatonin works for you, drinking nights blur the answer. Your own melatonin is lower that night whether you took a tablet or not. The two-week test below lets you flag drinks nights and drops them from the math.

Never drive after drinking or after a dose. If you drink heavily every day, talk to a doctor before you stop suddenly, because withdrawal can be dangerous.