If you’re newly sober and lying awake at 2 a.m. with your mind running laps, you are not alone, and you are not doing recovery wrong.
Sleep is one of the hardest parts of the early months. A 2016 review in Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research reports that sleep problems show up in about 65% of people in the first two to eight weeks after detox. A study in the American Journal on Addictions found insomnia hung on for some people even after six months of abstinence. Your brain is recalibrating. That takes time.
So when I came across a New York Times piece called “A Simple Technique to Help You Fall Asleep,” I wanted to pass it along. The technique is called cognitive shuffling, and it costs nothing, needs no app, and you can do it with your eyes closed.
Where cognitive shuffling comes from
Cognitive shuffling was developed by Luc P. Beaudoin, a cognitive scientist at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia. He calls the core method serial diverse imagining. The idea is simple. You picture a string of random, unrelated things, one at a time, for a few seconds each.
Why would that help? Beaudoin’s theory is that the drifting, jumbled thoughts we have just before sleep aren’t only a side effect of dozing off. They may actually help us get there. Worry works the opposite way. It is orderly. It solves problems, replays conversations, and rehearses tomorrow, and that kind of thinking tells the brain to stay alert. Shuffling gives your mind something mildly engaging and meaningless to do, so there’s less room left for the worry loop.
What the research shows so far
In a study presented at SLEEP 2016, Beaudoin and colleagues at MacEwan University randomly assigned 154 university students who struggled with a busy mind at bedtime to one of three groups. One used serial diverse imagining, one used structured problem solving earlier in the evening, and one did both. All three groups improved on pre-sleep arousal, sleep effort, and sleep quality, and the shuffling technique worked about as well as problem solving. Its big advantage is that you can do it right there in bed.
I want to be honest about the limits. That was a student sample, presented as a conference poster, and nobody has tested shuffling specifically with people in addiction recovery. So think of it as a low-risk tool worth trying, not a cure.
How to do it tonight
- Get into bed, turn off the light, and settle into a comfortable position.
- Pick a simple, neutral word with no repeated letters, such as “bread” or “plant.” Skip anything emotional.
- Take the first letter. For “bread,” that’s B. Think of a word that starts with B, like “banana.”
- Picture it for a few seconds. Really see it: the color, the shape, the little brown spots.
- Come up with another B word, like “bicycle,” and picture that. Keep the images unrelated to each other.
- When you run out of B words, move to R, then E, and so on.
- If your mind wanders back to a worry, no problem. Gently pick up the next word. With a little practice, you may drift off before you finish the word.
That gentle return is a skill a lot of us already practice in recovery. We notice the thought, we don’t argue with it, and we come back.
Pair it with the basics
Shuffling works best as one piece of a bigger plan. Keep a regular wake time, even on weekends. Cut caffeine after lunch. Put the phone across the room. If you’ve been awake for a long while and you’re getting frustrated, get up, do something quiet in dim light, and go back to bed when you feel sleepy.
And please talk to your doctor if insomnia lasts more than a few weeks, if you’re snoring loudly or waking up gasping, or if you’re tempted to reach for anything to knock yourself out. Persistent insomnia is treatable. The first-line treatment is cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I), and a good clinician will know how to help someone in recovery without risking the sobriety you’ve worked so hard for.
Rest is part of recovery
After more than 40 years in human services, I’ve watched people treat sleepless nights as proof that something is wrong with them. It isn’t. Your body and brain are healing, and sleep usually comes back. In the meantime, a quiet game of mental shuffling beats lying there arguing with tomorrow.
Tonight, try it with one simple word. Bread. Banana. Bicycle. Balloon. See how far you get.
Go, Go, Go… Dan 🙂
Sources
- Beaudoin, L. P., Digdon, N., O’Neill, K., and Rachor, G. (2016). Serial diverse imagining task: A new remedy for bedtime complaints of worrying and other sleep-disruptive mental activity. Poster, SLEEP 2016. Simon Fraser University Summit.
- Beaudoin, L. P. (2014). A design-based approach to sleep-onset and insomnia: super-somnolent mentation, the cognitive shuffle and serial diverse imagining. Simon Fraser University Summit.
- Chakravorty, S., Chaudhary, N. S., and Brower, K. J. (2016). Alcohol dependence and its relationship with insomnia and other sleep disorders. Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.
- Persistent insomnia, abstinence, and moderate drinking in alcohol-dependent individuals. American Journal on Addictions (DOI 10.1111/j.1521-0391.2011.00152.x).
- The New York Times (March 20, 2025). A Simple Technique to Help You Fall Asleep.
- Sleep Foundation. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I).
— AI transparency: I used AI to condense this from the cited reporting and research and reviewed it before posting. Facts and quotes belong to the original sources. Image created with AI assistance.