Alcohol and antidepressants
 

These two things DO NOT MIX. Anyone have any input on this? I have got to get a grip.

I was 6 months sober when I started taking an antidepressant.

My experience is that my medicine started making me feel so much better that I will never go back to the hole I was in trying to self-medicate with alcohol. Sobriety ROCKS. Recovering from depression is AWESOME.

Glad you are here, sending you good vibes!

I found that to be true as well.

One thing that really helped me was getting honest with my doctor. REAL honest. And it wasn't easy.

That was some time back and I can tell you that now I am sober & happy.

I was stuck in this thinking that the drinking wasn't causing my depression. It was my depression that needed to be fixed and then I could drink normally. I was lying to myself. It took me a long time to figure that out.

No, it's a bad combination.

I've taken anti depressants prior to my drinking, during my drinking and after I quit drinking...although at a reduced dosage. They work much better without alcohol:)

My anti D medication did not do a single thing for me until I stopped drinking. Zero. Just like the guy that was prescribed the suppositories who ate them without understanding what they were for. When asked if they worked, he said 'Doc, for all the good they did me I might as well have shoved them right up my ***'.

Hope this helps.

I think alcohol cancels out the effect of the antidepressants & the combination can be really bad for your liver.

When I was a teen in the 80s-90s I was on prozac. It was the new "wonder drug" for depression.

It made me able to drink basically nonstop for great justice. I would then hit the blackout point, but keep going like a freight train loaded with pfetzer ball bearings. I awoke in strange places, including --

a girl's bed in a different part of the city, luckily she had potato chips, which seemed to stabilize me

detox. when the guy in detox greets you with "good morning a$$hole" you know you were bad. a kid there told me he wanted to go to the bathroom but decided to hold it after he went in the restroom in the night and found me pounding my fist into the wall howling like a man-wolf

actually remembered this part but I managed to smash a car into a light pole on one side of the street and then bounce - - - over to the other side to hit the curb on that side

Yeah, do not mix antidepressants with alcohol. They tell you that, and then tell you that again, and the bottle tells you that, and the accompanying paperwork tells you that some more. It is probably better to refuse antidepressants if you realistically can't keep yourself from drinking, because you can do some really f-ed up stuff on the mix.

Totally agree and wow , I have had a mix of them , SSRI's were the worst. Last week saw another state of mania induced by alcohol and probably enhanced by anti D drugs. The drugs won't work at all on the depression if you drink period. The question is , is the depression from alcohol abuse over the years in my case.

I know they won't work if I drink but somehow I delude myself that I can drink normally or just have one and this time that has to end. I am at the blackest hour I have ever been , wife and kids gone , job hanging by a thread .....time to get honest. Luckily I am on good terms with my wife and our kids and I have a boss who I told it all too in mid mania and he is working with me to keep me on.

Shall see what stae my liver is in shortly ....I am worried.

Hahaha!

It was the same for me, too... I drank whilst taking anti-depressants (many different types - thinking I'd find one that worked eventually) and they did nothing except give me side effects. When I stopped drinking my depression lifted almost immediately... probably a combination of the medication working and getting off alcohol.

So, yeah, they don't mix!

I have been on antidepressants for a few years. It wasn't until I quit drinking that the anxiety and depression improved. Now at 3 months sober, I'm actually in the process of coming off them under medical supervision.
I hadn't realised that it was actually the alcohol that had been causing my symptoms!!x

The fact is, alcohol is a depressant.