There are techniques to handle that. I haven't have too much experience in it but from what I heard in limited encounters with them, unless you have some physiological problem, you can learn to relax and get the circus under control pretty efficiently. Takes some work, of course, as any good thing does :) Drugs are an easier shortcut, that is true.

Yeah, alcohol interacts with sleep in complex ways. Insomnia is one of the more common and long-lasting, but less recognized, symptoms of moderate alcohol withdrawal, versus something like delirium tremens, which is more recognizable (and more dangerous), but rarer and tends to happen only when withdrawing from very high alcohol consumption.