why shouldn’t you mix meds like xanax or opioids with alcohol?
In: 15
Depends on the medicine.
With the example of xanax and alchohol. Your body prioritizes removing alchohol first. This allows the xanax yo stay in your system longer. Both are removed by the liver and this also puts more strain on this part of your body.
This mixture also works on the part of your brain that controls heart rate and breathing and can slow down or stop both of these functions. Also potential for kidney and liver damage.
It’s adding depressants on depressants. Like the above say reduced breathing and heart rate that have the possibility to be deadly.
Alcohol, Benzos and Opioids are all CNS depressants. They slow brain activity and also lower blood pressure and slow breathing.
If you drink a fuck load of alcohol, you’ll die of alcohol poisoning before the CNS depression kills you. But if you mix it with benzos or opioids, you’ll die because your breathing will become incredibly shallow very quickly.
Great answers below!
There can be a supra-additive effect by combining these medications.
This means that if alcohol has a negative 3 effect, and opiates have a negative 4 effect, and a benzodiazepine (Xanax) has a negative 3 effect:
The combined effect would not be negative 10, but closer to negative 16.
All three of those slow your breathing. Combined, they can slow your breathing down so that you stop completely. When you stop breathing, you die.