Мне стало легче не столько после капель, сколько после тёплого чая и отдыха.

Мне is in the dative because Russian often uses the dative to show the person experiencing a state or feeling.

In this sentence, the structure is basically:

• мне стало легче = it became easier / I felt better

Russian does not literally say I became better here. Instead, it uses an impersonal construction:

• мне = to me / for me
• стало легче = it became easier / lighter

This is very common with words for physical or emotional states:

• Мне холодно. = I’m cold.
• Мне плохо. = I feel bad.
• Мне стало лучше. = I started to feel better.

So мне marks the experiencer, not the grammatical subject.

Стало comes from стать and means became. It shows a change of state.

So:

• Мне стало легче = I began to feel better / It became easier for me
• Мне было легче = I felt better / It was easier for me

The difference is:

• было describes a state in the past
• стало emphasizes that the state changed

Why not я стал?

Because this sentence uses an impersonal pattern, not a personal one. Russian often prefers this with feelings and physical condition:

• Я стал спокойнее = I became calmer
• Мне стало спокойнее = I felt calmer

Both are possible in some contexts, but мне стало легче is the most natural way to talk about feeling physically or emotionally better.

Легче is the comparative form of легко or related to лёгкий, depending on how you think about it. In this kind of sentence, it means something like:

• easier
• lighter
• better in the sense of relief

In health-related contexts, мне стало легче usually means:

• I felt better
• I got some relief

So even though легче literally looks like lighter/easier, the natural meaning here is about an improvement in how the person feels.

Compare:

• Мне стало легче дышать. = It became easier for me to breathe.
• После лекарства мне стало легче. = I felt better after the medicine.

Не столько ..., сколько ... is a fixed comparison pattern meaning:

• not so much ..., as ...
• not столько X, сколько Y

It does not mean that the first thing had no effect at all. It means the second thing was more important or more responsible.

So here:

• не столько после капель, сколько после тёплого чая и отдыха

means:

• not so much after the drops as after the warm tea and rest

In other words, the speaker is saying:

• the drops may have helped,
• but the tea and rest helped more.

Other examples:

• Он устал не столько от работы, сколько от людей.
  He was tired not so much from the work as from the people.

• Это было не столько страшно, сколько странно.
  It was not so much scary as strange.

It is repeated because each part of the comparison has its own prepositional phrase:

• после капель
• после тёплого чая и отдыха

Repeating после makes the structure clear and balanced, especially with не столько ..., сколько ....

In some contexts, Russian can omit repeated prepositions if the meaning is obvious, but here repeating it is natural and stylistically neat.

So this pairing sounds good:

• не столько после X, сколько после Y

That repetition helps the sentence feel complete and symmetrical.

After после, Russian uses the genitive case.

The dictionary form is:

• капли = drops

Here, капель is the genitive plural form.

So:

• после капель = after the drops

Why plural? Because капли often refers to drops/medicine drops as a plural noun in Russian, especially for eye drops, nose drops, heart drops, etc.

Examples:

• глазные капли = eye drops
• капли от насморка = nose drops
• после капель = after the drops / after using the drops

The form капель is one of those genitive plural forms that learners often just need to memorize.

For the same reason: после requires the genitive case.

So:

• после тёплого чая
• после отдыха

Both nouns are governed by после.

Breakdown:

• тёплый чай → после тёплого чая
• отдых → после отдыха

Because both nouns depend on the same preposition, they stay in the same case.

Because the adjective has to agree with the noun in case, number, and gender.

The base phrase is:

• тёплый чай = warm tea

After после, the noun goes into the genitive:

• чай → чая

The adjective must match:

• тёплый → тёплого

So:

• после тёплого чая = after warm tea

This is normal adjective-noun agreement in Russian.

Here it most likely means medicinal drops, not just random physical drops of liquid.

In Russian, капли is commonly used for liquid medicine given as drops, for example:

• eye drops
• nose drops
• heart drops
• sedative drops

Without extra context, a Russian speaker will usually understand после капель as after taking/using some drops.

Russian often expresses this idea indirectly through a change of state instead of a verb like helped.

Instead of saying:

• The tea and rest helped me more than the drops

Russian says something closer to:

• I felt better not so much after the drops as after warm tea and rest

This is very natural in Russian. The focus is on the result in the person’s condition, not explicitly on the action of helping.

That is why the sentence uses:

• мне стало легче
  rather than something like
• чай и отдых помогли мне больше

Both are possible in Russian, but the given sentence sounds more about subjective relief.

Yes. И simply joins two things that both belong after после:

• после тёплого чая
• после отдыха

Together:

• после тёплого чая и отдыха

The sentence presents both of them as the more important reason the speaker felt better. It does not necessarily say they contributed in exactly the same amount, but grammatically they are just two coordinated nouns in the same phrase.

Yes, Russian word order is flexible, but different orders change emphasis.

The original:

• Мне стало легче не столько после капель, сколько после тёплого чая и отдыха.

This sounds natural and balanced. It starts with the person’s experience and then gives the comparison.

You could also hear variations such as:

• Не столько после капель, сколько после тёплого чая и отдыха мне стало легче.

This puts stronger emphasis on the contrast between the two causes.

But the original order is probably the most neutral and natural for everyday speech.

Here it is closer to better, but with a nuance of relief.

Russian often uses легче when someone feels:

• less pain,
• less pressure,
• less discomfort,
• less emotional heaviness.

So depending on context, it may suggest:

• breathing became easier,
• pain lessened,
• the person generally felt better.

That is why English often translates мне стало легче as I felt better, even though the literal image is more like it became lighter/easier for me.