The addiction-treatment drug acamprosate is also effective in helping alcoholics in recovery get a good night's sleep, Medical News Today reported Aug. 29.

Many alcoholics -- recovering or not -- have a hard time sleeping; in fact, some experts say self-medicating for insomnia might cause some relapses.

"During chronic and excessive use of alcohol, short periods of deep sleep become interrupted by brief periods of restlessness," said Luc Staner, director of the Sleep Laboratory of the Centre Hospitalier de Rouffach in France. "This may also be accompanied by sleep terrors, sleepwalking and exacerbation of loud snoring or sleep apnea. During the day, alcohol intake can exacerbate sleepiness, which disrupts performance and contributes to accidents even when an individual is not significantly intoxicated."

"Persistent post-withdrawal sleep complaints have been shown to predict relapse to alcoholism," added Staner.

Researchers say acamprosate can help induce sleep because it affects glutamatergic transmission, and the neurotransmitter glutamate is deeply involved in sleep regulation. "Acamprosate objectively improves sleep disturbances of alcohol-dependent patients who are trying to stop alcohol intake," Staner said. "On a more mechanistic level, these results appear to implicate glutamate in both sleep disturbances and withdrawal symptoms, and acamprosate appears to be able to decrease the physiological effects of glutamate in the brain."

The study was published in the September 2006 issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research. 

Reference:
Staner, et al. (September 2006). Effects of Acamprosate on Sleep During Alcohol Withdrawal: A Double-Blind Placebo-Controlled Polysomnographic Study in Alcohol-Dependent Subjects. Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research, 30,:1492.