Alcohol consumption negatively impacts REM sleep, which can exacerbate anxiety by impairing the mechanism needed for emotional regulation.

“there is this self-fulfilling prophecy where if you're down scaling the amount of rem sleep that you get at night with alcohol you may not be getting the necessary emotional benefit that you need to de-risk the emotional experiences and the anxiety that's building up so then the next day the anxiety is not dealt with it's overlaid and then added to by the following day and so you're feeling even more anxious the following night and then you find yourself reaching for another glass of wine which then takes away the rem sleep once again and so goes the spiral of escalation”

“that coupled with what i remember of our first discussion which is alcohol disproportionately impacts negatively rem creates kind of an ironic situation which is i'm probably numbing a little bit of my anxiety with alcohol which is impairing my ability to have rem sleep which is paradoxically exactly the medicine i need”