What happens if you take medicine with alcohol

As with cold and flu remedies, combining alcohol with medications used to treat a cough can cause drowsiness, dizziness, and motor impairment. The effects of the mix can be especially serious—if not deadly—when the cough medicine also contains alcohol. One ingredient in some cough suppressants called dextromethorphan DXM can be especially dangerous because it can cause extreme sedation and respiratory depression.

This combination can cause an overdose which may be fatal. You should not drink alcohol if you are taking:. If you have diabetes, drinking alcohol can affect your blood sugar levels. Drinking alcohol with the medications you take to manage your diabetes can have the same effect, and the mix can also cause symptoms like nausea, vomiting, headache, rapid heartbeat, and sudden changes in your blood pressure.

You should not drink alcohol if you take medications to treat diabetes, including:. Using alcohol with medications used to treat heartburn, both prescription and over-the-counter, can cause tachycardia rapid heartbeat and sudden changes in blood pressure. Use caution and consider limiting your alcohol intake if you take medications for heartburn, including:. Combining alcohol with medications used to treat hypertension high blood pressure can cause dizziness, fainting, drowsiness, and arrhythmia irregular heartbeat.

You should avoid drinking alcohol if you take medications to treat high blood pressure, such as:. If you have an injury or medical condition that causes pain or spasms in your muscles, you might be given medications to relax them. Muscle relaxants are commonly used to treat back and neck pain, as well as certain kinds of headaches. Muscle relaxants and alcohol both suppress your central nervous system, which controls the functions of your heart, lungs, and brain.

Combining these medications with alcohol can cause serious side effects, including drowsiness, dizziness, slowed or impaired breathing, abnormal behavior, memory loss, impaired motor control, and seizures. While this is not an exhaustive list, you should not drink alcohol if you take any of the following medications:.

One of the deadliest combinations is alcohol and narcotic pain medications. On their own, opioids can cause drowsiness, dizziness, slowed or impaired breathing, impaired motor control, abnormal behavior, and memory loss. Mixing these medications with alcohol intensifies the side effects and increases the risk of a fatal overdose.

Narcan naloxone hydrochloride is an opioid agonist—a medication that can help counteract the effects of opioid medications such as morphine, oxycodone, and heroin.

Naloxone can rapidly reverse opioid overdose by quickly restoring normal respiration to a person whose breathing has slowed or stopped due to mixing opioid pain medications with alcohol. You should never mix alcohol with narcotics, including:. Having an alcoholic drink while you are taking medications to treat prostate conditions can cause dizziness, lightheadedness, and fainting. Limit or avoid your alcohol consumption if you take any of the following prostate medications:.

The dangers of mixing alcohol with prescription drugs are well known. When you pick your prescription up at the pharmacy, chances are the label or package insert will come with a warning if it is not safe to consume alcohol while you are taking the medication.

However, even medications that don't require a prescription can be unsafe when mixed with alcohol. For example, OTC painkillers including nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs can cause a range of symptoms from gastrointestinal upset to bleeding and ulcers in the stomach to tachycardia racing heart. Taking OTC painkillers like Tylenol acetaminophen in high doses, or taking these medications regularly over a long period, has been associated with liver damage.

Both the short-term and long-term side effects and risks associated with taking OTC painkillers are intensified when you mix these drugs with alcohol. If you are taking an OTC painkiller, be sure to read the label carefully. Some OTC pain relievers do not generally pose a major risk when small amounts are combined with occasional alcohol use.

However, serious interactions can occur between alcohol and other pain relievers—particularly if people have underlying medical conditions that change how their body metabolizes drugs and alcohol. Be especially careful with any drug or multi-symptom remedy containing acetaminophen or ibuprofen. If you had an alcoholic beverage and are not sure if you should take an OTC pain reliever, you can ask your local pharmacist or primary care provider if it is safe to do so.

Medications used to treat insomnia or help you fall and stay asleep should never be mixed with alcohol. The sedating effect of these drugs can be increased by alcohol, leading to slowed or impaired breathing, impaired motor control, abnormal behavior, memory loss, and fainting.

Do not consume alcohol if you are taking any of these medications to help you sleep:. There are hundreds of prescription and over-the-counter medications that are not safe to mix with alcohol. The dangers of mixing alcohol with medications can range from increased side effects to potentially life-threatening symptoms, overdose, and even death.

Always read the label and package insert of any medication you are taking, whether it has been prescribed by your doctor or purchased over-the-counter. If you are not sure if it is safe to drink alcohol while you are taking medication, call your local pharmacy or talk to your doctor about the potential interactions. Learn the best ways to manage stress and negativity in your life. The holidays are nothing if not stressful.

And if you are among the However, if you take a benzodiazepine , like Xanax alprazolam or Ativan lorazepam , to help manage your anxiety, you are going to want to steer clear of alcohol while it is in your system—the combination can lead to a fatal overdose.

Signs of trouble include drowsiness, dizziness, difficulty breathing, and behavioral problems, says Michaelene Kedzierski, R. To keep yourself safe, plan to wait at least 24 hours between taking your medication and having that drink and vice versa. Used to treat clotting disorders such as deep vein thrombosis or thrombophilia and to prevent strokes and heart attacks, blood thinners like warfarin commonly known as Coumadin should never be mixed with alcohol, Dr.

Yacoub says. If you do combine them, you could find yourself in serious trouble because the medication interferes with the clotting process, he says. Alcohol also interferes with clotting so, when you mix the two, the risks increase even more. Scary stuff, and not worth that beer. Prescription or non-prescription, it is essential to avoid alcohol while taking painkillers. With opioids, like oxycodone or hydrocodone, the risks are respiratory depression, excessive drowsiness, impaired motor control and overdose, Kedzierski says.

But even over-the-counter painkillers can spell trouble. Acetaminophen, for example, is metabolized by the liver. So is alcohol, and when the two are mixed, liver damage or even liver failure are very real possibilities.

Aspirin is now less commonly used as a painkiller due to the fact that it is more likely to cause side effects than paracetamol and ibuprofen. People now often take low-dose aspirin for its blood-thinning properties as this can reduce the risk of heart attacks and stroke. Prescription-only painkillers for moderate pain include dihydrocodeine, gabapentin and tramadol. Morphine and pethidine are used for more severe pain. Drinking alcohol with any of these medicines may make you drowsy and increase the risk of other side effects occurring, such as nausea.

Read the answers to more questions about medicines. Page last reviewed: 11 January Next review due: 11 January How do you know what will happen? How do you know? Toggle navigation Toggle search.