Quit21Day 5 after quitting smokingNights
By Yevhenii, who smoked for 26 years · Updated 30 Oct 2026 · 2 min readWhat's happening in your body
Nicotine is a stimulant, and yet taking it away disturbs sleep before it improves it. Sleep laboratory studies of people in their first week without tobacco show more awakenings, lighter sleep and less time asleep overall. Dreams often become long and vivid. The disturbance is part of the withdrawal syndrome and fades with it over the next couple of weeks. In the brain it looks like this.
Nicotine binds to acetylcholine receptors and through them drives the systems that keep you alert. Attention is easier to hold, and sleep is harder to reach. For years those receptors got a dose every hour, including the last one before bed, and the arousal system learned to work with a constant push from outside. The push is gone and the settings are not, so sleep breaks up exactly when tiredness is greatest.
The same review describes one more thing. In most of the studies it pooled, nicotine suppressed dreaming sleep. When the nicotine goes, so does that suppression, which fits the long, vivid dreams many people report this week.
What to expect
Waking at three or four in the morning, fully alert, sometimes with a craving attached. Feeling underslept by lunchtime, which makes the whole week seem worse than it is. Vivid dreams, including dreams about smoking, are common and harmless. Broken sleep is one of the recognised withdrawal symptoms, and for most people it settles over the next couple of weeks along with the rest. If you drink coffee, day four applies here too, because extra caffeine and broken sleep feed each other.
Try this
Get up at your usual time however the night went. A fixed morning is what resets the clock.
What else you could do
No caffeine after noon. If you have been awake for more than twenty minutes, get up and read in another room until you feel sleepy; lying there bargaining with a craving is the worst of the options. Keep the bedroom dark and cool and the phone out of reach. If sleep is still badly broken after a few weeks, mention it to a doctor.
Sources. Jaehne A, Loessl B, Bárkai Z, Riemann D, Hornyak M. Effects of nicotine on sleep during consumption, withdrawal and replacement therapy. Sleep Med Rev, 2009. Hughes, 2007.