Is it okay to mix alcohol and sleeping pills?

is it okay to mix alcohol and sleeping pills

The short and not-so-sweet answer to the question “is it okay to mix alcohol and sleeping pills?” is: no, it is not ok to mix the two; it is quite dangerous and potentially fatal. Alcohol increases the effects of the sleeping pill, causing a series of symptoms that can lead to death.

Death Can Occur When You Mix Alcohol and Sleeping Pills

Mixing alcohol and sleeping pills can be extremely dangerous. The combination increases the sedative effect of sleep medication is a sedative and when you add alcohol to the mix it can be fatal. In fact, sleeping pill labels warn against using alcohol while taking the drug. This is because this is and has been a well-known interaction that leads to tragedy.

What Happens When You Mix Alcohol and Sleeping Pills

Sleeping pills depress the central nervous system and adding alcohol to the mix only serves to increase that effect, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA). So, if you are taking any over-the-counter or prescription medications, speak with your doctor or pharmacist about the risks of drinking alcohol in combination with your medication.

Because alcohol and sleeping pills are depressants, when they are taken together, they cause your body to relax more than it really should. This means that your breathing slows drastically and therefore less oxygen gets to your blood cells and then your blood pressure drops. Your breathing slows down too much or even stops, which can cause you to go into a coma and suffer serious brain damage.

Statistics on When You Mix Alcohol and Sleeping Pills

In 1983, The Archives of Internal Medicine study looked at 50 million death certificates to determine why 92 people died at home from the combination of medications and alcohol. By the last year of the study in 2004, that number had grown to 3,792, an increase of nearly 3,200%.

According to the NIAAA, more than 150 medications do not mix with alcohol. These drug interactions may result in increased risk of illness, injury and death.

The number of Americans who have died in their home after combining prescription and over-the-counter medications with alcohol has risen more than 3,000% over the twenty years, according to a study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

 Why People Mix Alcohol and Sleeping Pills

People are often not aware of the dangers when mixing alcohol with sleeping aids. Just like any physical ailment, not being able to sleep can be upsetting and even painful and so people want to stop that pain. People often resort to alcohol for its calming effect.

Also, over the course of time that you are not getting good, restful sleep, your ability to think straight diminishes and your thought process might not be the clearest. So you won’t take the time to carefully read medication labels and, if you do, you may not process the information properly. The same goes for when you are given instructions by your doctor, if it is a prescribed sleep aid. Information just does get processed clearly when you haven’t slept and can’t think straight. You are more likely to make poor decisions, like mix alcohol and sleeping pills when you haven’t been getting enough sleep.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sources:

http://www.ask.com/

http://www.webmd.com/

http://ww2.dcmilitary.com/

If you need help with your addiction give us a call now at 1-800-984-4003.

Xanax and Alcohol: A Deadly Combination

Xanax and Alcohol: A Deadly Combination


In recent years, as the use of prescription medication has proliferated in the United States, so too have the abuse of and overdose from many of these substances.

Prescription-drug abuse is the fastest-growing drug problem in the U.S., says a report issued last month by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The same report states that in 2007, there were roughly 27,000 unintentional deaths from drug overdoses—or one death every 19 minutes.

But of all the things that people ingest, there are few combinations more life-threatening than alcohol and Xanax, a benzodiazepine in the class of sedatives such as Valium and Klonopin.

What Makes Xanax and Alcohol a Deadly Combination?

When taken together, Xanax and alcohol have what’s known as an additive effect, which means that in the presence of Xanax, alcohol is made more potent than it would be alone.

Both Xanax and alcohol work by depressing the central nervous system of the body, reducing the activity of several mental functions, such as thought, memory, coordination, and respiration.

Alcohol alone doesn’t have that limit, because often times people will pass out before they drink enough alcohol for it to be lethal. When you take the two together and you have a totally different picture – Xanax and Alcohol: a deadly combination.

Prescription drugs and alcohol can be a dangerous combination. Alcohol interacts with anti-anxiety drugs such as Xanax, intensifying the drugs’ sedative effects, causing drowsiness and dizziness, and making falls and accidents more likely. A 2010 study published in the Canadian Journal of Public Health reported that automobile drivers were much more likely to weave and speed if they were under the influence of drugs like Xanax in addition to alcohol than if they had consumed alcohol alone.

How it Works

Your usual three drinks is actually like drinking six. And because of the additive effect of combining the two substances, it becomes impossible to know just how your body will absorb the alcohol you’ve ingested. Throw in other factors—sleep deprivation, an empty stomach, a cold—and the mixture is made all the more unpredictable and deadly.

Xanax and alcohol is the most deadly combination because it can cause amnesia. So not only is it does this combination affect respiratory function, the amnesic effect it causes is just as deadly. People die accidentally in the truest sense of the word: they don’t remember how many drinks they had, or how many pills they took.

 Why Xanax, in particular

In fact, it is this same rapid action that makes Xanax the most addictive of the benzodiazepines, many neuroscientists believe, providing the sensation of a high more so than other drugs of its class.

Other people start taking prescription drugs just to get high, perhaps in part because they have the false notion that prescription drugs are safer to experiment with than are illicit drugs.

Any benzodiazepine is highly dangerous in combination with alcohol, but Xanax is perhaps the most dangerous, because it is more fast-acting than the others. Because Xanax and alcohol both work on the brain at a rapid-fire pace, their mutually enhancing effect is bolstered compared to slower-acting benzodiazepines, which peaks in the brain more slowly, after the effect of the alcohol may have already begun to decline.

 

 

 

Sources:

http://www.thedailybeast.com

http://www.cdc.gov/

http://www.scientificamerican.com

 

If you need help with your addiction give us a call now at 1-800-984-4003.

How to Pass a Drug Test (Urine)

How to Pass a Drug Test

If you are trying to pass a drug test chances are that you have been having a little too much fun in the recent days or weeks; maybe even months and years. Whether you need to pass a drug test given by your parents, job, school, probation officer etc. there are some methods you can try to test negative for everything.

There are many types of drug tests, but the most common is the urine drug test. There are four main methods to pass a urine drug test: detox, masking, dliution and substitution; none of these are guaranteed methods. Except the first one; detox.

Detox: Detox is by far the best way to pass a urine drug test. Detox is simply just stopping the use of drugs. If you have some time before your drug test, detox is the safest and most effective way to make sure you pass. If you don’t have a lot of time before your drug test than detox may be a bit risky but regardless of how much time you have beforehand or what method to pass a drug test you use; you should always stop using the drugs as a part of it. Quitting the drugs you were using is absolutely necessary to having any chance of passing a drug test.

Masking: Masking prevents the release of toxins in your body. This means that you are going to try and cover up whatever substances are in your body so they don’t show up in the drug test. There are many beverages sold in smoke shops that guarantee they can do this so you can pass your drug test; but they are far from guaranteed. Trying to use commercial, over-the-counter chemicals and drugs to mask your drug use, could work but now many drug testing labs test for them to see if you are trying to mask and this will result in you having a failed drug test.

Dilution: Dilution is the process of reducing the concentration of drug or drug metabolites in your urine so you can pass the drug test. This is accomplished either by drinking copious amounts of water or by adding something to the sample to dilute it. This could possibly work but be careful because diluting a sample will lower the specific gravity and creatine levels in your urine. Drug testing labs will routinely test samples for creatine levels to try and detect dilution. If you decide you want to dilute your sample be careful and use warm water. Also know that drinking tons of water to internally dilute your system can be detected. Also drinking a lot of water can be dangerous and result in water intoxication.

Substitution: Substitution is a method that involves substituting your own urine with another person’s urine or a synthetic sample. There are many products on the market today to pass a drug test through using synthetic urine. For example, by drug users alike, The Whizzinator is highly recommended. There is also synthetic urine that comes in capsules. The problem with substitution is that some drug testing labs can now test for synthetic urine especially the liquid kind. If you get caught using synthetic urine you may be asked to give a sample again while under supervision too. If you really want to be authentic you could get someone else’s urine to pass a drug test but you have to keep it sealed and refrigerated. Not only that but you have to use it within 48 hours or the urine will darken and bacteria will begin to grow. When that happens the pH of the urine will change and the labs will know something is up.

If your drug test isn’t being sent off to a lab you have much higher chances of passing a drug test because home drug test kits can be inaccurate and most of the time the people giving them are not keeping as close an eye on what you are doing or what the sample should look like. Just remember if you are trying to pass a drug test your best bet is to stop doing drugs!

 

If you need help with your addiction give us a call now at 1-800-984-4003.