A raucous night out drinking with your friends can make for some hilarious memories, allowing you to put adulting on hold for a few hours while you blow off a little steam. Unfortunately, it is not all fun and games. 
Overindulging can also have a decidedly negative impact on your body and mind the next day. At the Hangover Hospital, we offer the best hangover cure in Key West to help you deal with the after-effects of an alcohol binge. However, a throbbing headache and a queasy stomach may seem like the least of your problems if one of the side effects you suffer from when drinking is wetting the bed.
Waking up in the middle of the night in a puddle of your own urine is not anyone’s idea of a good time and it can be particularly uncomfortable (and downright humiliating) if you did not go home alone the night before. As your hangover experts, we want to help you overcome this issue. Check out the following to find out why bedwetting when drunk happens and, more importantly, what you can do to prevent it.
How Common Is It to Wet the Bed While Drunk?
How common is wetting the bed while drunk? Hysterically, the answer to that question is very common. If you are struggling with this issue, even if it only occurs on an occasional basis, know that you are not alone. According to a study in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), roughly two percent of adults have a problem with bed wetting, which in medical terms is known as nocturnal enuresis. When you consider that this number represents only those who were not too mortified by their lack of bodily control to admit the problem to a random researcher, the actual percentage of people dealing with this dilemma is likely much higher.
Bed wetting is common among little kids who haven’t been properly potty trained, but you are a grown adult, so what exactly is the problem? Unless you suffer from some more serious medical issue which affects your bodily control in this area, the most likely culprit is the quantity and timing of the alcohol you were drinking the night before.
Why Grown Ass Adults End Up Wetting the Bed when Drunk
If you are having problems with bedwetting when you are not drunk, you need to overcome your embarrassment and discuss the issue with your doctor. There could be any number of medical conditions that could be causing you to pee in your sleep, such as sleep apnea, an overactive bladder, or chronic constipation. It can also be a side effect of medications you may be taking or a symptom of a more serious disorder, such as
diabetes or an infection. Whatever the cause, uncovering the underlying problem can help to eliminate the issue.
If bedwetting happens only after a night out, it likely has more to do with the effects of alcohol rather than a disease or illness. Obviously, having even a few drinks inhibits your mental and bodily functions – think of some of those poor choices you might have made on a bender or the unexplained bruises that undoubtedly occurred as a result of staggering into furniture or stumbling on your way home from the bar. Unfortunately, these types of effects also impact your ability to control exactly where and when you pee.
The good news is that you are not some kind of defective human being who never outgrew wetting the bed. According to Men’s Health, there are four common factors that can explain bedwetting while drunk:
- Alcohol suppresses anti-diuretic hormones, causing your body to produce more urine. This also explainswhy you get dehydrated and hungover after a night out drinking.
- Alcohol irritates your bladder muscles, resulting in more frequent urges to pee. These do not stop just because you are asleep.
- Alcohol lowers your inhibitions. When you are in bed and get the urge to pee, you are more likely to just let it fly. (This also explains why some people when drunk will pee in closets or on houseplants.)
- Alcohol makes for more vivid dreams. So vivid, in fact, that you may actually think you are up and doing your business in the bathroom, when in reality you never left the bed.
Just because we quoted Men’s Health doesn’t mean that wetting the bed while drunk is a guy problem. Waking up in a puddle of urine can happen just as easily to the opposite sex and the impacts can be just as embarrassing.
How to Stop Wetting the Bed When You Are Drunk
When your head is throbbing after a night of drinking and every muscle hurts, the Hangover Hospital in Key West is here to help. While dealing with these types of unpleasant after effects is often the penalty you face for the fun you had the night before, having to wake up in a puddle of your own pee is an overly harsh punishment.
Unfortunately, the impacts go way beyond your own physical discomfort. In addition to the beating your self-esteem takes, it can spell death to your relationships. You can’t blame someone for not wanting to sleep with you if there is a chance you are going to wet the bed. What can you do to prevent your body from having this type of involuntary reaction to alcohol? LiveStrong recommends taking the following steps:
- Wait three or four hours before going to bed after your last drink.
- Limit caffeine consumption, which irritates the bladder and makes the urge to pee more urgent.
- Set an alarm clock to wake you in the middle of the night, as a reminder to go pee.
- If you are taking any type of supplements or medications, check to make sure they are not increasing your urine output.
Visit the Hangover Hospital
At the Hangover Hospital Key West we provide the help you need to recover after a night out drinking. To find out more about our services, contact us online or call our Key West office and request an appointment today.
Call us now (305) 912-4911