Heather McMahan Quit This Late-Night Habit and Finally Started Sleeping Better
Comedian Heather McMahan reveals how she beats overstimulation and her “cortisol hysteria” with a realistic 5-step nighttime routine.
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It started, as many things do, with a conspiracy theory about Antarctica.
Heather McMahan, the comedian and self-described queen of overstimulation, had a problem. After performing stand-up shows until 11 p.m., returning to hotel rooms after midnight, and eating dinner at 1 a.m., she was doing the logical thing: doomscrolling until 2 a.m. before catching a 6 a.m. flight to the next city on tour. Her friends staged an intervention. Not for anything dramatic, just for the 45 conspiracy theory videos she was sending them in the middle of the night. “You’d end up on one video and the next thing you know, you’re like, is Antarctica real?’ It can spiral very quickly.”
There’s a clinical name for what she was experiencing. Dr. Romie Mushtaq, a triple-board-certified neurologist, calls it attention residue. “The endless flow of information and notifications keeps your brain on high alert,” she says. “It makes it hard to focus deeply or think creatively.” The mechanism is more specific than most people realize. “The stimulation, especially from blue light, throws off your body’s sleep clock,” Dr. Mushtaq explains. “It causes your cortisol levels to rise and the hormones serotonin and melatonin to drop. When you have low serotonin and melatonin levels in the evening, it leads to irritability, anxiety and insomnia.”
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McMahan talks a lot about this on her podcast ‘Absolutely Not’. The cortisol hysteria, the supplement industrial complex, and the research gaps in women’s health that keep doctors shrugging. “Nobody actually really knows what cortisol is,” she says. “And then you go to the doctor and they’re like, ‘We haven’t done enough research on women’s health.’ We just figured out what endometriosis was 10 minutes ago. So yeah, you should maybe catch up.” McMahan has had enough late-night spirals and post-tour crashes to take the personal cost seriously. “I want to be proactive instead of reactive,” she says. “I turn 40 next year, and I want to make sure that I’m set up for success and I don’t feel like shit.”
5 things Heather McMahan does every night to actually wind down
STEP 1: Put the phone away before the spiral starts
McMahan now curates what she’s feeding the algorithm at night. “What you consume before you go to bed is so important,” she says. “I’m now just trying to actively type positive things into my algorithm.” That means no more political content, no more conspiracy rabbit holes, and a lot more French bulldogs putting on a backpack and going to school.
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STEP 2: Take the world’s hottest shower
The first physical reset happens in the bathroom. “My routine is me coming home after a show and having an insanely hot shower,” McMahan says. “Why is it that women, we love just a boiling hot lava shower?” Hot water raises core body temperature, and the drop that follows mimics the natural cool-down that cues your brain for sleep. For anyone coming off a long day, or a stage, it draws a hard line between being on and being done.
STEP 3: Skip the red wine
McMahan used to end her nights the way a lot of people do. “Before, I would doomsday scroll and drink a bottle of red wine,” she says. She stopped when she noticed a pattern: “Why is it that now if I have two glasses of red wine, I’m completely wired and why am I awake at 3:00 a.m.? It sends me into another orbit of anxiety.” The explanation is the adenosine rebound: alcohol suppresses the neurotransmitter responsible for sleep pressure while it’s in your system, then surges back as your body metabolizes it, waking you in the early hours when sleep is lightest. REM disruption and blood sugar spikes do the rest.
Smarter sleep starts here
STEP 4: Take a magnesium and ashwagandha supplement
McMahan is, by her own admission, the easiest person to sell a wellness product to. “As a comic, I’m the easiest person to sell to,” she says. “I’m the queen of buying a tincture off TikTok.” What she’s landed on is less dramatic than the TikTok detours. “The amount I sweat on stage, I’m already low on magnesium,” she says. “One thing I learned was that basically everybody is low on magnesium.” Studies show many U.S. adults don’t meet the recommended daily intake for magnesium, and deficiency is associated with poor sleep, muscle tension, and anxiety.
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McMahan, who partnered with Unisom, says she takes ashwagandha and magnesium in Unisom’s new sleep support gummies. “The ashwagandha is a total game changer,” McMahan says. “You need something to help you relax and unwind, but this gummy in particular doesn’t knock you out.”
STEP 5: Give yourself permission to do nothing useful
The hardest part of McMahan’s routine isn’t the shower or the supplements. It’s this. After years of saying yes to everything on the road, she has arrived at what Dr. Mushtaq frames as a biological necessity: “This nonstop pace keeps cortisol, your stress hormone, elevated. If you’re not getting 7 to 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep, your body can’t make what you need for the next day.” For McMahan, that landed personally. “I get to the end of a tour and I’m a shell of a human,” she says. “I’m not even nice to the people around me because I’m so exhausted.” The fix isn’t a protocol. “Sometimes that is watching the ‘Real Housewives’ and eating chicken tenders in bed,” she says. “That’s fine. It’s just taking that edge off in a way that is not going to make me feel like s**t the next day.” Rest, she has decided, doesn’t have to be earned. “It’s finding those right moments to be selfish and take care of yourself.”
Smarter sleep starts here
