How Does Hashish Affect Your Sleep
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Sleep is not a luxury. It is the time when the body repairs itself, the brain sorts what it has learned, and the mind rests so it can work again the next day. A good night’s sleep is not one long, blank stretch. It is a pattern, a cycle that repeats several times a night, moving through light sleep, deep sleep and dreaming sleep. Deep sleep is when the body does most of its repair. Dreaming sleep, which scientists call REM sleep, is when the brain processes memories and emotions. Both matter, and both are easily disturbed.
Hashish is often used because people believe it helps them sleep. A person who feels tense or restless in the evening may find that hashish makes them feel drowsy, and they fall asleep more quickly. That first impression is real, and it is also misleading. Falling asleep faster is not the same as sleeping well. Over weeks and months of regular use, hashish changes the pattern of sleep itself. It shortens deep sleep, breaks the night into pieces, makes dreams strange and restless, and leaves the person waking up tired, even after a full night in bed. The body clock, the internal rhythm that tells us when to feel sleepy and when to feel awake, also loses its timing. The result is a person who sleeps badly at night and feels drowsy in the day, and who then uses more hashish in the hope of fixing the very problem it is causing.
This article explains, in plain words, how hashish affects sleep: why it seems to help at first, how it disturbs deep sleep and dreaming, why the night breaks apart, how the body clock is thrown off, and what happens to daytime energy and mood. It is general information, not individual medical advice. It does not tell anyone how to use hashish, and it does not offer treatment. If you are worried about your sleep, or about someone else’s, a qualified health professional is the right person to talk to.
Why Hashish Seems to Help Sleep at First
The first reason people reach for hashish in the evening is simple: it makes them feel relaxed and heavy, and that feeling can make falling asleep easier. After a long day, when the mind is racing with worries, a substance that slows everything down can feel like a relief. The muscles loosen, the thoughts slow, and the eyelids grow heavy. For a person who has lain awake for hours, night after night, that can feel like a gift. It is easy to understand why they come back to it the next evening, and the evening after that.
But what is happening in the brain is not the same as natural sleep. Natural sleep is an active, organised process. The brain moves through its cycles in a set order, spending enough time in deep sleep and in dreaming sleep to do its work. Hashish changes that order. It can shorten the time spent in dreaming sleep, and it can change the balance between light and deep sleep. The person is unconscious, but their brain is not doing the same work it does in natural sleep. It is a bit like turning off a machine instead of letting it run its proper programme. The machine is quiet, but it has not done its job.
There is another problem, and it is the one that traps most people. The brain adapts. After days and weeks of regular use, it gets used to the presence of hashish, and the drowsy effect becomes weaker. The person needs the same amount to feel the same drowsiness, and then they need more, or they find that the drowsiness no longer comes at all. At the same time, the brain starts to expect hashish in the evening. Without it, falling asleep feels harder than it did before they ever started. That is not because their sleep was always bad. It is because their brain has learned to rely on the substance to switch off, and it has forgotten how to switch off on its own. This is dependence, and it can build quietly, without the person realising it.
The first weeks, then, are a trap. The sleep feels better, so the habit feels harmless. But the habit is already changing the brain’s own sleep system, and the price is paid later, in broken nights and tired days. A person who judges hashish by the first few nights will think it helps sleep. A person who judges it by the first few months will see a different picture, and it is the longer picture that matters.
Falling Asleep Takes Longer Over Time
One of the clearest changes with regular hashish use is that falling asleep, which seemed easier at first, becomes harder. The person lies in bed, tired, but their mind will not settle. They turn over, they check the time, they feel frustrated, and the frustration itself makes sleep harder. This is not a small annoyance. Lying awake for an hour or more, night after night, wears a person down. It steals time from rest, it builds anxiety about the next night, and it makes the morning feel like a defeat before the day has even started.
There are several reasons this happens. The first is tolerance, which is the brain getting used to the substance. What once made a person drowsy no longer does, and the evening amount that used to work now leaves them awake. The second is the rebound effect. When the effect of hashish wears off during the night, the brain can become more alert, not less, and that alertness can make it hard to fall back asleep after waking. The third is habit. The brain links the bed, the evening and the substance together, and without the substance, the bed itself becomes a place of restlessness rather than rest. The person has trained their brain to need a crutch, and the crutch is no longer working as well as it did.
Anxiety plays a part too, and it grows in a circle. A person who sleeps badly worries about sleeping badly, and the worry keeps them awake. They start to dread the evening, they watch the clock, and they count the hours until morning. That dread is a powerful enemy of sleep, because sleep needs relaxation, and dread is the opposite of relaxation. Hashish was supposed to break that circle, but over time it feeds it. The person uses hashish because they cannot sleep, and they cannot sleep because they have come to rely on hashish, and because the substance itself has disturbed the natural pattern of their sleep.
It is worth saying plainly that trouble falling asleep is not a sign of weakness. It is a sign that the sleep system is out of balance, and that the balance has been disturbed by a substance that changes how the brain works. The way back is not to use more of the same substance. The way back is to give the brain time to relearn its own rhythm, which takes weeks, and which is hard, and which is best done with support from a qualified health professional, who can help with the anxiety and the habits that have built up around sleep.
Sleep That Breaks Apart Through the Night
Even when a person does fall asleep, the sleep is often broken. They wake up in the middle of the night, sometimes several times, and they find it hard to get back to sleep. The waking may be brief, a moment of restlessness, or it may last for an hour, with the mind racing and the body tense. They may wake to use the toilet, or because they are too hot, or because a small noise disturbs them, and then they cannot settle again. In the morning, they remember the night as a series of fragments, not as a single stretch of rest.
Broken sleep is tiring in a way that is hard to describe to someone who sleeps well. The body never gets a long, unbroken run of deep sleep, which is when most repair happens. Instead, it gets short bursts, interrupted again and again, and the repair is never finished. The person wakes up feeling as though they have not slept at all, even though they were in bed for eight hours. Their eyes feel heavy, their head feels foggy, and their body feels as though it has not recovered from the day before. That is because, in an important sense, it has not.
Hashish contributes to this in more than one way. It can suppress dreaming sleep early in the night, and then, as its effect wears off, dreaming sleep can return in a stronger, more restless form, which wakes the person up. It can also make the body more sensitive to small disturbances, so that a noise or a change in temperature that would normally pass unnoticed now wakes the sleeper fully. And it can affect breathing during sleep, making the airway more likely to narrow and the sleeper more likely to wake with a gasp or a cough. Each waking, however small, breaks the cycle, and the cycle has to start again from the beginning, which means less deep sleep overall.
The effect on the next day is direct. A person whose sleep was broken is slower to think, slower to react, and more likely to make mistakes. They are more irritable, less patient, and more likely to argue with the people around them. They find it harder to concentrate at work or in class, and they find it harder to remember what they have learned. None of this is a character flaw. It is the predictable result of a brain that has not had the unbroken sleep it needs to work properly. And when the same broken pattern repeats night after night, the tiredness does not just add up. It compounds, until the person is living in a permanent state of being half-rested.
Less Deep Sleep and Waking Up Still Tired
Deep sleep is the most restorative part of the night. It is the stage when the heart rate slows, the breathing steadies, the muscles relax fully, and the body releases the hormones that repair tissue and build strength. It is also the stage when the brain clears away some of the waste products that build up during the day. A person who gets enough deep sleep wakes up feeling refreshed, with a clear head and energy for the day. A person who does not get enough deep sleep wakes up feeling heavy, slow and unrefreshed, no matter how long they were in bed.
Research on cannabis, including hashish, has found that regular use is linked with less deep sleep, and with sleep that feels less refreshing. The person may not know why they feel tired. They may blame their work, their age, or the weather. But the pattern is consistent: they go to bed tired, they sleep for a normal length of time, and they wake up tired again. The sleep has not done its job, because the deep part of it was shortened or disturbed. This is sometimes called non-restorative sleep, which is a good name for it, because it describes exactly what it feels like: sleep that does not restore you.
Waking up exhausted has consequences that spread through the whole day. The person reaches for tea or coffee to stay awake, and the caffeine then makes the next night’s sleep worse, which makes the next morning worse again. They skip exercise, because they have no energy, and the lack of exercise makes their sleep worse too. They eat more sugary food, because their tired brain craves quick energy, and that affects their health in other ways. They are less able to cope with stress, because a tired brain has fewer reserves, and so small problems feel larger than they are. The tiredness is not just a feeling. It is a force that shapes every choice the person makes during the day.
Over months, this pattern can change a person’s life in quiet ways. They become the person who is always tired, who always needs a nap, who cannot keep up with friends, who falls asleep in front of the television in the evening and then cannot sleep at night. Their work suffers, their relationships suffer, and their mood suffers. And because the cause is a substance they use to help them sleep, they are slow to see the connection. They think the tiredness is the reason they need hashish, when in fact the hashish is one of the reasons they are tired. Breaking that misunderstanding is the first step toward better sleep, and it is a step that needs honest information, not blame.
Dreams Turn Vivid and Restless
Dreaming sleep is a strange and important part of the night. During dreaming sleep, the eyes move rapidly, the brain becomes very active, and the body is mostly still. This is when we dream, and it is also when the brain processes emotions and memories from the day. A healthy night includes several periods of dreaming sleep, spread through the night, with the longest periods in the early morning. When dreaming sleep is disturbed, the effects are felt in mood, memory and the feeling of rest.
Hashish is known to suppress dreaming sleep while it is active in the body. A person who uses it regularly may dream less, or may not remember their dreams at all. That can feel like a relief at first, especially for someone who has nightmares or who wakes from vivid dreams. But the brain does not give up its need for dreaming sleep. It waits. And when the effect of hashish wears off, either during the night or after a person stops using it, the dreaming sleep can return in a stronger form, with dreams that are unusually vivid, strange, restless or frightening. This is sometimes called a rebound, and it can be very disturbing.
The dreams in this rebound phase are not like ordinary dreams. They can feel more real, more intense, and harder to shake off in the morning. A person may wake up sweating, with their heart racing, and with the feeling of the dream still in their mind. They may dream about being chased, about falling, about losing something important, or about events from their past that they thought they had forgotten. The dreams can repeat night after night, and they can make the person dread going to sleep, because they do not know what the night will bring. That dread, in turn, makes sleep harder, and the cycle continues.
It is important to understand that these vivid dreams are not a sign that something is wrong with the person’s mind in a permanent way. They are a sign that the brain is trying to catch up on the dreaming sleep it missed, and that the balance has been disturbed. The dreams usually settle over weeks, as the brain’s sleep pattern returns to normal. But the weeks in between can be very hard, and they are one of the reasons people return to hashish after trying to stop. They use it to quiet the dreams, and in doing so, they restart the cycle. Knowing that the vivid dreams are temporary, and that they are a sign of recovery rather than a sign of damage, can help a person get through them, especially with support from a health professional who can explain what is happening and help them cope.
The Body Clock Loses Its Rhythm
The body has an internal clock, a rhythm that runs over about twenty-four hours and tells us when to feel sleepy and when to feel awake. This clock is set by light, by regular mealtimes, by activity, and by the time we go to bed and wake up. When the clock is working well, we feel sleepy in the evening, we sleep through the night, and we wake up feeling alert in the morning. When the clock is disturbed, we feel sleepy at the wrong times, wide awake at night, and tired in the day, and no amount of time in bed seems to fix it.
Hashish disturbs this clock in several ways. First, it changes the timing of sleep itself. A person who uses it late in the evening may fall asleep at a different time than they normally would, and they may wake at a different time, which shifts the whole rhythm. Second, it changes the quality of sleep, which affects how the clock resets itself each day. Third, the daytime drowsiness it causes can lead to naps, and naps, especially late in the day, can make it harder to fall asleep at night, which shifts the clock further. The result is a rhythm that drifts, so that the person feels sleepy in the afternoon, awake at midnight, and exhausted in the morning.
A drifting body clock affects more than sleep. It affects appetite, so the person feels hungry at strange times and eats late at night, which itself disturbs sleep. It affects mood, so the person feels low in the morning and restless in the evening. It affects the ability to concentrate, because the brain is not alert when it needs to be, and it is alert when it should be resting. It can also affect the body’s hormones, which follow the same daily rhythm, and which play a part in energy, in stress, and in the feeling of being well. The body is a system of rhythms, and when the main rhythm is disturbed, the others follow.
Resetting the clock takes time and regularity. It means going to bed and waking up at the same time every day, getting light in the morning, being active during the day, and avoiding naps late in the day. It also means giving the brain a chance to find its own rhythm again, without a substance that pushes it in one direction in the evening and leaves it to rebound in the morning. That is not easy, and it does not happen in a single night. But it does happen, over weeks, as the brain relearns the pattern it knew before hashish. The first step is to understand that the clock is disturbed, and that the disturbance is not a personal failing, but a predictable effect of a substance that changes how the brain times sleep.
Daytime Tiredness and What Happens After Stopping
The most visible effect of disturbed sleep is daytime tiredness. It is visible because it shows in everything a person does. They yawn through the morning, they struggle to stay awake in the afternoon, they make mistakes at work, they forget things, and they lose patience with the people around them. They may fall asleep at odd times, in front of the television, on a bus, or at their desk, and then they feel guilty about it. The tiredness is not laziness. It is the body’s honest signal that it has not had the sleep it needs.
Daytime drowsiness is also dangerous in some situations. A person who is drowsy is slower to react, and that matters when they are driving, operating machinery, or looking after a small child. A tired driver is a danger to themselves and to others, and a tired worker is more likely to have an accident. These are not abstract risks. They are the direct result of a night’s sleep that did not restore the brain, and they are one of the reasons sleep disturbance from hashish should be taken seriously, not dismissed as a minor side effect.
Stopping hashish does not fix sleep overnight, and it is important to be honest about that. In the first days and weeks after stopping, sleep can get worse before it gets better. Falling asleep may be harder, the night may break apart more often, and the dreams may become more vivid and restless. This is the rebound effect, and it is the brain readjusting to working without the substance. It is uncomfortable, and it is one of the reasons people give up and return to hashish. But it is also temporary. Over two to four weeks, and sometimes longer, the sleep pattern usually begins to settle. Deep sleep returns, the night becomes less broken, the dreams become less intense, and the mornings begin to feel more refreshing.
There are things that help during this recovery, and they are simple, though not always easy. Keeping the same bedtime and waking time every day helps the body clock. Getting light in the morning, and being active during the day, helps the brain know when to be awake and when to sleep. Avoiding naps late in the day helps the night’s sleep to build up properly. Keeping the bedroom dark, quiet and cool helps the body settle. And talking to a qualified health professional helps, because they can explain what is happening, offer support for the anxiety that often comes with poor sleep, and help with the habit of reaching for hashish in the evening. None of these steps is a quick fix, but together, over weeks, they give the brain the best chance to relearn healthy sleep.
If sleep problems are severe, or if they last for many weeks after stopping, it is worth seeking advice rather than suffering in silence. A doctor can check whether there is another cause for the poor sleep, and can help make a plan that fits the person’s situation. There is no shame in asking for that help. Sleep is one of the foundations of health, and when it is broken, everything else is harder. Getting it back is not a luxury. It is one of the most important things a person can do for their body and their mind.
My Take:
I will be honest with you. Sleep is the part of hashish that I think is most misunderstood, because the misunderstanding starts with a real experience. A person uses hashish in the evening, they feel drowsy, they fall asleep, and they think it helped. That experience is real, and I will not pretend it is not. But it is only the first chapter of a longer story, and the later chapters are very different. Over weeks and months, the same substance that made falling asleep easier makes sleep itself worse. It shortens deep sleep, it breaks the night apart, it makes dreams restless, and it leaves the person tired in the day. The help was temporary. The harm is lasting. That is the truth about hashish and sleep, and it is a truth that deserves to be said plainly.
The part that troubles me most is the trap. A person sleeps badly, so they use hashish to sleep. The hashish disturbs their sleep, so they sleep badly again. They use more hashish, and the sleep gets worse still. Each step feels like a sensible response to the problem, but each step makes the problem worse. It is a circle, and it is a cruel one, because the person is trying to fix their sleep, and the thing they are using to fix it is the thing that is breaking it. I think many people are caught in that circle without realising it, and I think the first step out of it is simply to see it clearly. Once you see the circle, you can start to break it. Until you see it, you will keep going round.
I also think about the mornings. A morning after a bad night is a specific kind of misery. The alarm goes off, the body feels heavy, the head feels foggy, and the day has not even started. The person drags themselves up, they drink tea to wake up, they go to work or to class, and they spend the whole day counting the hours until they can go back to bed. But bed is not a refuge anymore, because bed is where the broken sleep happens. That is a hard way to live, and it is a hard way to live for months or years. Sleep is supposed to be the time when the body recovers. When it stops doing that, the whole of life becomes harder, and the person has less energy for the things that matter: their work, their family, their health, their joy.
The vivid dreams are the part I find most painful to hear about, because they sound frightening, and because they are one of the reasons people go back to hashish after trying to stop. A person stops, and for a week or two they have dreams that feel too real, too intense, too frightening, and they think something is wrong with them. Nothing is wrong with them in the way they fear. Their brain is catching up on the dreaming sleep it missed, and the dreams are a sign that the brain is healing. But nobody tells them that, and so they go back to the substance that quieted the dreams, and the cycle starts again. If I could tell every person who stops one thing, it would be this: the vivid dreams are temporary, they are a sign of recovery, and they will pass. Knowing that can make the difference between getting through the hard weeks and giving up.
I do not think people who use hashish for sleep are foolish. Many of them are tired, stressed, and desperate for rest, and they have found something that seems to work. I understand that. What I would ask them to do is to look at the whole picture, not just the first night. Look at the mornings. Look at the daytime tiredness. Look at the broken nights, the restless dreams, the clock that no longer knows when to sleep and when to wake. If the whole picture is worse than it was before they started, then the substance is not helping, however much it seemed to help at first. That is a hard thing to admit, especially when you have come to rely on something, but admitting it is the first step toward sleeping properly again.
If someone I loved used hashish to sleep, I would not lecture them. I would ask them how they feel in the morning, and I would listen to the answer. I would tell them that the tiredness they feel is real, and that it is not their fault, and that their brain has not forgotten how to sleep, it has just been disturbed. I would tell them that the recovery takes weeks, and that the first weeks can be hard, with worse sleep and vivid dreams, and that they do not have to go through it alone. I would tell them to speak to a doctor, to keep regular hours, to get light in the morning, and to be patient with their own brain as it relearns its rhythm. And I would tell them that the reward is worth it: a night of real sleep, and a morning when they wake up feeling refreshed, not exhausted.
I think the body clock is an underrated part of this story. We talk about sleep as if it were a switch, on or off, but it is really a rhythm, like a song that plays through the day. Hashish throws that rhythm off, so that the person is sleepy when they should be awake, and awake when they should be asleep. Getting the rhythm back is not about willpower. It is about regularity, about light, about activity, and about time. It is about giving the body the signals it needs to find its own timing again. That takes weeks, and it takes patience, but it does happen, and when it happens, the person feels the difference in their whole body, not just in their sleep.
Money is a smaller part of the story, but it is still worth mentioning. A person who sleeps badly is less able to work well, and less able to earn well. They make mistakes, they miss days, they lose opportunities, and all of that has a cost. A person who sleeps well is sharper, faster, and more reliable, and that shows in their work. The cost of poor sleep is not just tiredness. It is lost income, lost progress, and lost confidence. When I weigh hashish against sleep, I weigh all of that too, and the balance is clear. A substance that promises rest and delivers tiredness is a bad deal, however good the first night felt.
Finally, I would say this to anyone who has never used hashish and is thinking of trying it for sleep. Do not. There are better ways to sleep, and they are not complicated, though they do take time. Regular hours, light in the morning, activity during the day, a dark and quiet bedroom, and no screens late at night will do more for your sleep, over months, than any substance that changes how your brain works. Your brain already knows how to sleep. It has been doing it since you were born. Give it the conditions it needs, and it will do its job. Do not give it a substance that disturbs its rhythm and then leaves you tired in the day. Your sleep is too important for that, and your mornings are too important to waste on exhaustion that could have been avoided.
I also want to say something about patience, because it is the quality that recovery demands most. A person who stops using hashish wants their sleep to be fixed at once, and when it is not, they feel they have failed. They have not failed. The brain takes time to readjust, and that time is measured in weeks, not days. The first week may be worse. The second week may be a little better. The third week may be better still. The progress is not a straight line. There are good nights and bad nights, and a bad night does not mean the recovery has stopped. It means the brain is still learning. Patience is hard when you are tired, but it is the only way through, and it is worth practising, because the reward at the end is real sleep, and real sleep is one of the best things in life.
One more thing I think about is the people around a poor sleeper. A person who sleeps badly is often irritable, impatient, and hard to live with, not because they are a bad person, but because they are tired. Their partner, their children, their parents all feel it. A child who lives with a tired, irritable parent learns to be careful, to be quiet, to not ask for too much. That is a sad thing, and it is a cost that is rarely counted when we talk about sleep. When a person’s sleep improves, their relationships improve too, because they have more patience, more energy, and more joy to share. That is another reason to take sleep seriously, and to give the brain the time it needs to heal. It is not just for you. It is for the people who love you, and who want you rested, not exhausted.
Another thing I keep thinking about is how sleep affects memory and learning, because that is where poor sleep does quiet damage that people rarely connect with hashish. During deep sleep and dreaming sleep, the brain sorts the day’s experiences, strengthens the memories that matter, and lets go of the ones that do not. A person whose sleep is broken does not get that sorting done properly. They study, they work, they try to learn something new, and the next day much of it is gone, not because they are slow, but because their brain never had the unbroken sleep it needed to store it. I think about a student who works hard in class and then cannot remember the lesson, or a worker who is trained in the morning and forgets the steps by the afternoon, and I think about how unfair it is to blame them for a memory problem that is really a sleep problem, and a sleep problem that is really a hashish problem. Good sleep is not a luxury for the brain. It is how the brain does its work, and when that work is disturbed night after night, learning suffers in a way that is easy to miss and hard to repair.
I also think about mood, because sleep and mood are tied together more tightly than most people realise. A person who sleeps badly is more likely to feel low, anxious and irritable, and a person who feels low and anxious is more likely to sleep badly. It is another circle, and hashish sits in the middle of it, promising calm in the evening and delivering tiredness in the morning. I have heard people describe feeling flat, empty and hopeless after months of broken sleep, and they think the problem is their mood, when the problem is partly that their brain has not rested. When sleep improves, mood often improves with it, not because the person’s problems have gone away, but because a rested brain can cope with problems in a way a tired brain cannot. That is a practical, hopeful point, and it is one of the reasons I think fixing sleep is worth the hard weeks of recovery. The reward is not just energy. It is a clearer, calmer mind.
There is also a point about safety that I do not want to leave out, because it is too important. A drowsy person is a danger on the road and at work. Reaction times slow, attention wanders, and mistakes happen that a rested person would not make. I think about a driver who has slept badly for weeks, who yawns at the wheel, whose eyes close for a second too long, and I think about how quickly a second can change a life. I think about a worker on a building site, or in a factory, whose tiredness makes them miss a warning sign. These are not distant risks. They are the direct result of nights that did not restore the brain, and they are a reason to take sleep disturbance seriously, even when it feels like a private problem. Sleep is not private in its effects. It touches everyone who shares the road, the workplace and the home with a tired person.
I will end with something simple. Sleep is not a problem to be solved with a substance. It is a rhythm to be protected. Protect it with regular hours, with light, with activity, and with a quiet bedroom, and it will protect you in return, with energy, with clear thinking, and with mornings that feel like a beginning, not a burden. That is my honest view, and I stand by it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can Hashish really cause trouble falling asleep?
Yes. Although hashish may make a person feel drowsy at first, regular use changes the brain’s sleep system. Tolerance builds, so the same amount no longer brings drowsiness, and the brain starts to rely on the substance to switch off. When the effect wears off during the night, the brain can become more alert, making it harder to fall asleep and harder to fall back asleep after waking. Over time, falling asleep takes longer, and the person lies awake worrying, which makes sleep harder still. Stopping gives the brain time to relearn its own rhythm, though the first weeks can be difficult.
Is an off-balance body clock from Hashish dangerous?
It can be serious, and it should not be ignored. The body clock controls when we feel sleepy and awake, and it also affects appetite, mood, energy and the ability to concentrate. When it is thrown off, a person feels sleepy in the day and wide awake at night, eats at strange times, and struggles to think clearly. Over months, this pattern raises the risk of accidents, because a drowsy person reacts more slowly, and it harms work, study and relationships. If the clock stays disturbed for many weeks, or if daytime drowsiness is severe, it is worth speaking to a qualified health professional.
Does growing sleep dependence from Hashish go away after stopping?
It usually eases, but it takes time. Dependence means the brain has learned to expect hashish in the evening, and it has forgotten how to switch off on its own. After stopping, the brain has to relearn that skill, and the first two to four weeks can be hard, with trouble falling asleep, broken nights and vivid dreams. These are signs of recovery, not of permanent damage, and they usually settle over weeks as the sleep pattern returns to normal. Regular hours, morning light and daytime activity help, and support from a health professional can make the process easier.
How soon can less deep sleep appear after using Hashish?
Less deep sleep can appear within weeks of regular use, because hashish changes the balance of the sleep cycles, shortening deep sleep and disturbing dreaming sleep. The person may not notice the change at first, because they are still falling asleep and spending a normal length of time in bed. What they notice is the result: waking up tired, feeling unrefreshed, and struggling to stay alert in the day. The longer the use continues, the more the pattern becomes fixed, and the harder it is to shake off. Anyone who wakes up exhausted most mornings should take that seriously and seek advice.
Who is most at risk of trouble falling asleep from Hashish?
People who use hashish often, in larger amounts, or late in the evening face the highest risk, as do people who have used it for many months or years. Teenagers are more vulnerable because their brains and sleep systems are still developing. People who already have anxiety, or who already sleep badly, are also at higher risk, because hashish can make both worse over time. People who mix hashish with other substances, or who use it to cope with stress, face extra risk too. Anyone in these groups who notices lasting sleep trouble should speak to a qualified health professional.
What should I do if Hashish is causing broken sleep through the night?
The safest step is to stop using hashish and to speak to a doctor or a local health service. Broken sleep that lasts for weeks needs to be checked, because it can mean the sleep pattern is seriously disturbed, and a doctor can help make a plan for recovery. Keeping the same bedtime and waking time, getting light in the morning, being active during the day, and keeping the bedroom dark and quiet can all help. Support services can also help with stopping, and with the cravings and habits that make stopping hard. Do not suffer in silence; help is available.
Sources
- National Institute on Drug Abuse — https://nida.nih.gov/research-topics/cannabis
- U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration — https://www.dea.gov/drug-information
- Mayo Clinic, Drug addiction — https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/drug-addiction/symptoms-causes/syc-20365112
- World Health Organization, Substance abuse — https://www.who.int/health-topics/substance-abuse
- NHS, Drug addiction: getting help — https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/addiction-support/drug-addiction-getting-help/
This article is general information only. It is not medical advice. If you are worried about your health or about someone else, speak to a qualified health professional.
