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- Sleeping pills with alcohol
- What happens if you take sleeping pills without a prescription?
- What motivates a person to take alcohol with sleeping pills?
- Consequences of poisoning
Often, during times of stress or severe anxiety, people take alcohol with sleeping pills in order to save themselves from suffering and from serious problems. Relatives of people suffering from chronic alcoholism and subject to severe manifestations of withdrawal give patients sleeping pills with alcohol in order to stay in silence for several hours and save themselves from the threat of inappropriate actions of the addict.
But the simultaneous use of alcohol-containing drinks and sleeping pills causes a mutual enhancement of the effects of these psychoactive substances, but not everyone knows about it. Concomitant use may cause unpredictable effects.
Drinking alcohol with alcohol or drinking alcohol in small quantities after taking pills can cause death.
What happens if you mix tablets with alcohol?
Taking sleeping pills after alcohol in any quantity and in any order is strictly prohibited!
The simplest antipyretics, such as acetylsalicylic acid, which is taken to eliminate the effects of a hangover, can cause dangerous stomach bleeding. But in this state a person is completely sane and fully aware of the danger of what is happening. The vast majority of people are not able to realize the threat of taking alcohol and sleeping pills together, but it does not disappear anywhere and is very serious.
Attention
Most people who want to commit suicide prefer to take a mixture such as alcohol and sleeping pills. The consequences are always the same. After a person falls asleep, he can no longer influence the situation and take measures to save himself, or call an ambulance.
Taking alcohol with sedatives or tranquilizers causes the body to react to medications differently than originally intended:
- the medicine enhances the effect of alcohol,
- alcohol enhances the effect of sleeping pills,
If a person manages to wake up, he will be faced with a terrible headache, many times more severe than a normal hangover.
Table 1 Types of damage to the body that occur when using alcohol and pills together.
| Alcohol | Caffeine, theophedrine, ephedrine, coldrex, coldact | Provokes exacerbation of hypertension |
| Diuretic | Severe drop in blood pressure | |
| Eferalgan or Panadol | Toxic damage to hepatocytes | |
| Insulin or other glucose-lowering drugs | Comatose state caused by hypoglycemic shock | |
| Anti-inflammatory, antipsychotics and painkillers | General poisoning | |
| Sleeping pills and tranquilizers | General poisoning, coma | |
| Sulfa drugs or antibiotics | Suppression of drug effects on the body |
But manufacturers or creators of medicines realized the possibility of such an outcome. They supply the tablets with detailed instructions, warning people about the dangers of parallel use.
If the patient needs surgery, but is in a state of severe intoxication, then he should not be given anesthesia. It won't work. And then the doctor is faced with a choice - to operate or wait until the effect of alcohol wears off. If a person who is intoxicated receives an increased dose of anesthetic, then he is likely to experience cardiac arrest. But it is also impossible to perform an operation while drunk, since the tissues remain sensitive.
Characteristic differences that occur if you take sleeping pills without prescriptions
Drowsiness is caused by drugs that affect the central nervous system. They affect the peripheral nervous system. The severity of the impact depends on gender and age characteristics, as well as:
- from the general condition of the body,
- individual reaction of the body,
- from the presence of an allergic reaction to the components of certain drugs.
Attention
It is necessary to carefully read those paragraphs of the instructions for medications that talk about side effects. Today there are a huge number of tablets and capsules for the treatment of various diseases, which have a hypotensive effect on humans. When thinking about whether sleeping pills can be taken with alcohol, it is necessary to remember that with this use, the sleeping pill effect can increase multiple times.
Sleeping pills have two main mechanisms of action on the body.
- CNS depression. Such sleep is an alternation of different phases, deep and superficial. Neurons in the brain may perceive the effects of drugs differently—some parts of the brain may become active while others remain quiet.
- After taking a sedative, the rhythm of sleep is disrupted - the duration of the phases is disrupted, their alternation changes, which does not allow people in a normal state to rest well after they have taken a sleeping pill.
Not only drugs created specifically for this purpose have a hypnotic effect. Some remedies help relax the body, which helps you fall asleep faster. These include:
- antihistamines,
- tranquilizers,
- antidepressants.
For example, imidazopyridines are used to normalize sleep. They eliminate situational problems, such as frequent awakenings or difficulty falling asleep. These medications are sold by prescription only.
Barbiturates contribute to depression of the nervous system. A dose of the drug can cause conditions ranging from mild sedation to deep sleep or coma. There have been many reported side effects and deaths caused by barbiturates. They are addictive.
The latest generation of antiallergy drugs do not cause drowsiness. But, despite the loud advertising, among the side effects, drowsiness is in the leading place.
Benzodiazepine drugs are no longer available. The sleep they cause is fragile, full of nightmares. After it, a person experiences a loss of strength.
Melaxen is able to speed up falling asleep and reduce the number of sudden awakenings. Its advantage is that you feel great in the morning. Melaxen is used to avoid jet lag.
Medicines from the cyclopyrollone group help induce sleep that is close to natural. But they act all day, causing a person to become lethargic.
Most people take alcohol pills more than once. This causes conditions comparable to addiction. The habit of relaxing like this very soon forms tolerance. This forces you to increase the dose of both alcohol and medications. An overdose or drug change often results in death. None of these were suicide options.
What pushes a person to take alcohol with sleeping pills?
Even those people who have problems with insomnia or falling asleep are unlikely to take sleeping pills with alcohol. Even those who do not understand anything about the mechanism of action of these substances on the body have thoughts that such experiments can pose a danger to life. If a person is mentally healthy, he can take alcohol with pills in the following cases.
- In the absence of normal sleep. Often the cause of its absence is a neurological disorder. For example, suspicious people may have difficulty falling asleep and often wake up in fear. They can lie awake until the morning, indulging in dark thoughts. This makes a person want to do anything just to get some sleep. Therefore, on the advice of friends or on their own initiative, such people can take pills with alcohol.
- Another reason is severe withdrawal symptoms. To get rid of a serious condition and eliminate: nausea, headaches, tremors, hyper- or hypothermia, a person is ready to do anything. Alcoholism often causes insomnia, which can only be eliminated with medication after visiting a doctor. But alcoholics are in no hurry to see doctors, preferring to take sleeping pills with alcohol.
Attention
Taking pills with alcohol leads to the accumulation of toxic substances in the cells of the body. This causes poisoning and death.
It is extremely dangerous to add drugs to alcohol to put a drunk person to sleep. The effect of this is as follows:
- the person will become aggressive,
- the myocardium will not withstand the overload and the heart will stop.
At home, it is prohibited to calm a drunk person in this way. In a hospital, a combination of drugs is used only when an alcoholic develops delirium tremens or psychosis.
results
Baseline assessments of insomnia severity, subjective sleep quality, and daytime sleepiness levels did not differ significantly between groups (Table 2).
Table 2. Initial assessments in groups on the ITI, PSHS and ESDS scales
According to the physician-researcher, in group P, 17 out of 30 (56.7%) patients achieved full clinical effectiveness in the treatment of acute insomnia, fully or partially associated with taking the drug, 12 (40%) achieved partial clinical effectiveness, 1 ( In 3.3%) cases, a lack of clinical effectiveness was observed. In group D, 18 out of 30 (60%) patients showed complete clinical effectiveness, fully or partially associated with taking the drug, 8 (26.7%) had partial clinical effectiveness, 2 (6.7%) had no clinical effectiveness , in 2 (6.7%) - worsening of acute insomnia. The differences between the groups turned out to be statistically insignificant.
After treatment in group P, the ITI index decreased to 8.5±0.89 points ( t
=9.55;
p
<0.001), PSHKS - up to 8.4±0.41 points (
t
=6.81;
p
<0.001), ESDS - up to 4.2±0.50 points (
t
=4.24;
p
<0.001) .
In group D, the ITI index decreased to 9.1 ± 0.97 points ( t
= 7.61;
p
< 0.001), PSHKS - to 8.8 ± 0.62 points (
t
= 5.27;
p
< 0.001), ESDS - up to 4.6±0.67 points (
t
=3.45;
p
<0.01). There were no statistically significant differences in post-treatment results between groups.
In group P, side effects were observed in 3 (10%) patients, including 2 - drowsiness in the morning after waking up, 1 - headache. In all cases, side effects were insignificant and did not cause discontinuation of the drug. In group D, side effects appeared in 7 (23.3%) patients: 2 - tremor, 1 - drowsiness in the morning after waking up, 1 - headache, 1 - mild dizziness, 1 - lack of appetite after waking up. In general (in 5 cases), side effects were insignificant and did not cause discontinuation of the drug. In 2 cases (tremor) the drug was discontinued. There were no significant differences in the frequency of side effects between the groups.
Consequences of poisoning
The combination of alcohol and sleeping pills causes serious neurological disease. The strength of its manifestation depends on food intake, the general situation in the body and the amount of alcohol in the body. Most often in case of poisoning the following is observed:
- disruption of the gastrointestinal tract, vomiting and diarrhea,
- decreased reflexes,
- loss of coordination of movements, dizziness,
- emotional instability, apathy,
- bradycardia, drop in blood pressure.
This condition creates a risk of injury from falls or fires or gas explosions.
Attention
Long-term use of alcohol with sleeping pills has a destructive effect on the cerebral cortex - a person loses professional and everyday skills.
Extensive poisoning of the body, which is caused by taking alcohol with pills, requires urgent intervention from doctors. While the ambulance is traveling, you need to:
- perform gastric lavage,
- an unconscious patient must be turned on his side so that he does not choke on vomit,
- give the patient tea and absorbents to drink.
Only a doctor who can prescribe hospitalization, placing the person under devices and conducting a high-quality detox can help the patient qualitatively.
Each case is individual, seek drug treatment help from our narcologists, they will analyze your situation in detail and will definitely help.
Reslip 15 mg, 10 film-coated tablets
Registration Certificate Holder
FP OBOLENSKOE (Russia)
Dosage form
Medicine - Reslip® (Reslip)
Description
Film-coated tablets
white or almost white, biconvex, oblong in shape with rounded ends, with a notch; On a cross section, the inner layer is white or almost white.
1 tab.
doxylamine succinate 15 mg
Excipients
: lactose monohydrate - 50 mg, colloidal silicon dioxide (Aerosil) - 0.5 mg, microcrystalline cellulose - 27.7 mg, croscarmellose sodium - 5 mg, povidone - 0.8 mg, magnesium stearate - 1 mg.
Film shell composition:
hypromellose (hydroxypropyl methylcellulose) - 1.8 mg, macrogol 6000 (polyethylene glycol 6000) - 0.6 mg, titanium dioxide - 0.6 mg.
10 pieces. — cellular contour packages (1) — cardboard packs. 10 pieces. — contour cell packaging (2) — cardboard packs. 10 pieces. — cellular contour packages (3) — cardboard packs. 10 pieces. — contour cell packaging (4) — cardboard packs. 14 pcs. — cellular contour packages (1) — cardboard packs. 14 pcs. — contour cell packaging (2) — cardboard packs. 14 pcs. — cellular contour packages (3) — cardboard packs. 14 pcs. — contour cell packaging (4) — cardboard packs. 28 pcs. — cellular contour packages (1) — cardboard packs. 28 pcs. — contour cell packaging (2) — cardboard packs. 28 pcs. — cellular contour packages (3) — cardboard packs. 28 pcs. — contour cell packaging (4) — cardboard packs. 30 pcs. — cellular contour packages (1) — cardboard packs. 30 pcs. — contour cell packaging (2) — cardboard packs. 30 pcs. — cellular contour packages (3) — cardboard packs. 30 pcs. — contour cell packaging (4) — cardboard packs.
Indications
- transient sleep disturbances.
Contraindications for use
- angle-closure glaucoma or family history of angle-closure glaucoma;
- diseases of the urethra and prostate gland, accompanied by impaired urine outflow;
- lactose intolerance, lactase deficiency, glucose-galactose malabsorption;
- childhood and adolescence up to 15 years;
- hypersensitivity to doxylamine, other components of the drug or to other antihistamines.
Carefully:
patients with a history of apnea (due to the fact that doxylamine can aggravate sleep apnea syndrome); patients over 65 years of age (due to possible dizziness and delayed reactions with the risk of falls (for example, during night awakenings after taking sleeping pills), as well as due to a possible increase in T1/2); patients with renal and liver failure (T1/2 may increase).
pharmachologic effect
Histamine H1 receptor blocker from the ethanolamine group. It has a hypnotic, sedative and m-anticholinergic effect. Reduces the time to fall asleep, increases the duration and quality of sleep, does not change sleep phases.
Duration of action – 6-8 hours.
Drug interactions
With simultaneous use of the drug Reslip® with sedative antidepressants (amitriptyline, doxepin, mianserin, mirtazapine, trimipramine), barbiturates, benzodiazepines, clonidine, morphine derivatives (analgesics, antitussives), neuroleptics, anxiolytics, histamine H1 receptor blockers with a sedative effect, antihypertensive Centrally acting drugs, thalidomide, baclofen, pizotifen, enhance the inhibitory effect on the central nervous system.
When used simultaneously with m-anticholinergic drugs (atropine, imipramine antidepressants, antiparkinsonian drugs, atropine antispasmodics, disopyramide, phenothiazine antipsychotics), the risk of side effects such as urinary retention, constipation, and dry mouth increases.
Because ethanol enhances the sedative effect of most histamine H1 receptor antagonists, incl. drug Reslip®, it is necessary to avoid simultaneous use of this drug with alcoholic beverages and medications containing ethanol.
Dosage regimen
The drug is taken orally, 15-30 minutes before bedtime. Take the tablets with a small amount of liquid.
The recommended dose is 1/2-1 tablet/day. If treatment is ineffective, on the recommendation of a doctor, the dose can be increased to 2 tablets.
Duration of treatment - from 2 to 5 days; if insomnia persists, the patient should consult a doctor.
Due to data on increased plasma concentrations and decreased plasma clearance of doxylamine,
in patients with renal and hepatic insufficiency
.
Histamine H1 receptor blockers should be prescribed with caution to patients over 65 years of age
due to possible dizziness and slow reactions with the risk of falls (for example, during night awakenings after taking sleeping pills). In view of data on increased plasma concentrations, decreased plasma clearance and increased T1/2 of doxylamine, a dose reduction is recommended.
Overdose
Symptoms:
daytime drowsiness, agitation, mydriasis, accommodation disturbances, dry mouth, flushing of the skin of the face and neck, hyperthermia, sinus tachycardia, disorder of consciousness, hallucinations, decreased mood, anxiety, impaired coordination of movements, tremor, athetosis, convulsions (epileptic syndrome), coma .
Involuntary movements are sometimes a precursor to seizures, which may indicate severe poisoning. Even in the absence of seizures, severe doxylamine poisoning can cause rhabdomyolysis, which is often accompanied by acute renal failure. In such cases, standard therapy with constant monitoring of CPK activity is indicated.
If symptoms of poisoning appear, the patient should immediately consult a doctor.
Treatment:
symptomatic (m-cholinomimetics and other drugs), activated carbon is indicated as a first aid remedy (50 g for adults and 1 g/kg body weight for children).
Side effect
From the digestive system:
constipation, dry mouth.
From the cardiovascular system:
feeling of heartbeat.
From the side of the organ of vision:
visual impairment and accommodation, blurred vision.
From the nervous system:
drowsiness during the day (in this case, the dose of the drug should be reduced), confusion, hallucinations.
From the urinary system:
urinary retention.
From the laboratory parameters:
increase in CPK activity.
From the musculoskeletal system:
rhabdomyolysis.
If any of the adverse reactions indicated in the instructions worsen or any other adverse events not specified in the instructions are noted, the patient should inform the doctor.
special instructions
It should be taken into account that insomnia can be caused by a number of reasons for which there is no need to prescribe this drug.
The drug Reslip® has a sedative effect, suppresses cognitive abilities and slows down psychomotor reactions. The first generation of histamine H1 receptor blockers can have m-anticholinergic, anti-alpha-adrenergic and antiserotonin effects, which can cause dry mouth, constipation, urinary retention, disturbances of accommodation and vision.
Like all sleeping pills or sedatives, doxylamine may worsen sleep apnea by increasing the number and duration of sleep apnea episodes.
One tablet of the drug contains 50 mg of lactose monohydrate, which should be taken into account in patients with rare congenital galactose intolerance, lapp lactase deficiency or glucose-galactose malabsorption.
Impact on the ability to drive vehicles and operate machinery
Due to possible drowsiness during the daytime, you should avoid driving vehicles, working with machinery and other activities that require increased concentration and speed of psychomotor reactions.
Storage conditions
The drug should be stored out of the reach of children at a temperature not exceeding 25°C.
Best before date
Shelf life: 3 years. Do not use after the expiration date stated on the package.
Use during pregnancy and breastfeeding
Restrictions during pregnancy - No restrictions. Restrictions when breastfeeding - Contraindicated.
Based on adequate and well-controlled studies, doxylamine can be used in pregnant women throughout pregnancy.
If the drug is prescribed in late pregnancy, the atropine-like and sedative properties of doxylamine should be taken into account when monitoring the condition of the newborn.
It is not known whether doxylamine passes into breast milk. Due to the possibility of developing a sedative and stimulating effect in a child, breastfeeding should not be done while using the drug.
Use for renal impairment
Restrictions for impaired renal function - With caution.
The drug should be prescribed with caution to patients with renal failure.
Use for liver dysfunction
Restrictions for liver dysfunction - With caution.
The drug should be prescribed with caution to patients with liver failure.
Use in elderly patients
Restrictions for elderly patients - Use with caution.
The drug should be prescribed with caution to patients over 65 years of age.
Use in children
Restrictions for children - With caution.
The use of the drug is contraindicated in children and adolescents under 15 years of age.
Terms of sale
The drug is available with a prescription.
Contacts for inquiries
ALIUM JSC (Russia)
142279 Moscow region, Serpukhov working village Obolensk territory “Quarter A”, building 2 Tel./fax E-mail
