When You Combine Alcohol With Some Drugs, the Results Can Be
The effects of illegal drugs will e'er exist unpredictable. Generally, when y'all mix them with booze they're exaggerated in some way, which can event in anything from nausea to heart failure. Best advice is to completely steer clear of illegal drugs, especially with alcohol.
What happens in the body?
Alcohol is a depressant. Combine it with a stimulant, such as cocaine, and the 2 drugs compete with each other. The depressant drug tries to boring the brain/central nervous organisation downward, while the stimulant tries to speed it up – putting your encephalon/cardinal nervous system nether great pressure.
Combine booze with some other depressant drug, heroin for case, and the effect they each accept of slowing your central nervous system volition exist multiplied, and you adventure your torso shutting down altogether.1
With no quality control in the world of illegal drugs, y'all can never exist 100% certain of exactly what'south in the substance you're taking. It could be cut with other cheaper drugs such as tranquilisers or even toxic substances such equally drain cleaner. Add alcohol into the mix and you've got a potentially lethal cocktail.
If y'all're under the influence of drugs, you're less probable to make considered decisions nigh how much alcohol you beverage. So yous also put yourself at risk of alcohol poisoning and longer-term health effects of alcohol such as middle disease and cancer.
Here are some facts nigh private drugs and what can happen when you lot mix them with alcohol.
Alcohol and marijuana (cannabis)
If you use cannabis and alcohol together, the results – both physical and psychological – can exist unpredictable. Having alcohol in your blood can potentially crusade your trunk to absorb the agile ingredient tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) faster. This can atomic number 82 to the cannabis having a much stronger outcome than it would unremarkably have.2
Physically, y'all can experience dizziness, nausea and airsickness. Psychological effects include panic, anxiety or paranoia. Skunk, a term for stronger types of cannabis, tin pose fifty-fifty greater risks, because it may comprise three times equally much THC.three
In that location'due south a serious long-term risk to your health too. Cannabis is usually smoked with tobacco, which can crusade cancer. Tobacco and booze work together to harm the cells of the torso, multiplying the impairment.
Alcohol makes information technology easier for the oral fissure and pharynx to absorb the cancer-causing chemicals in tobaccoiv.
Alcohol and cocaine
Taking alcohol and cocaine together increase the take chances of heart attacks and fits and even sudden expiry. The two drugs interact to produce a highly toxic substance in your liver called cocaethylene. Information technology can increase the depressive effects of alcohol, making your reaction to the cocaine stronger. You're also more probable to exist aggressive with cocaethylene in your system.
Cocaethylene takes longer to leave of your organisation than either the alcohol or the cocaine, subjecting your heart and liver to a longer menstruum of stress. Mixing alcohol and cocaine can exist fatal upwards to 12 hours afterwards you've taken it.five,6
How to stop drinking completely
Booze and ecstasy (MDMA)
Information technology's possible that alcohol volition deaden the 'high' you feel from ecstasy while the drugs are in your arrangement7. But the adjacent day, when you 'come down', you'll feel much worse if you've been drinking booze. A severe hangover is 1 of the milder side-effects of combining these drugs though, together they can be deadly.
Ecstasy dehydrates you. Then does booze. You lot risk overheating and becoming dangerously dehydrated when y'all combine the 2. Alcohol is involved in most ecstasy related deaths, many of which are from heatstroke after people accept danced for long periods of time in hot clubs without replacing the fluids they've lost by drinking h2o.
As booze is a diuretic, which ways information technology makes you go to the loo a lot and sweat more, it'southward even harder to keep plenty fluid in your body when yous drink it while on ecstasy8. There's too a greater strain on your liver and kidneys when you combine the two drugs. And, as with many other combinations, you're likely to feel nausea and airsickness.
Booze and amphetamines
The effects of amphetamines, frequently chosen 'speed', are very much like an adrenalin rush. When yous take it, your breathing, blood pressure and heart rate speed up. Like ecstasy, speed can besides increase your torso temperature and cause dehydration – which is heightened when you add booze. Equally speed already puts pressure on your middle, if you add together alcohol, that pressure can be fatal.
Alcohol can intensify your emotions and make you lose your inhibitions. And so tin speed. Combine the two and y'all may end up behaving in a way you seriously regret.
Under the influence of speed y'all may feel more confident or energised, just you can easily become broken-hearted, paranoid or aggressive, particularly when you put alcohol in the mix.ix You don't feel the full effects of booze until the speed has worn off. Mixing the two means you can drinkable dangerous amounts without realising.
How to spot your triggers
Alcohol and heroin
Booze with heroin is one of the most dangerous combinations of drugs. 'Downers' like heroin slow down your heart charge per unit and animate. When combined with some other 'downer' such as alcohol you're basically doubling upward and putting yourself at risk of overdosing.
Even small-scale amounts of alcohol seem to lower the amount of heroin needed to fatally overdose.
Around iii quarters of people who die from heroin overdoses have drunk alcohol10.
Booze and 'legal highs'
Previously known as 'legal highs', drugs such every bit meow meow actually became illegal in 2010 when they were classified as form B drugs. A powerful stimulant, these drugs can over stimulate circulation, dissentious the heart, speed upward the nervous system and crusade fits. They can as well make you anxious and paranoid. As with any drug that gives a 'high', combine them with alcohol and y'all're at risk of everything from nausea and vomiting to blackout and death.xi,12
More information
For more than information on drugs, contact the National Drugs Helpline – Talk to Frank - 0300 1236600.
Booze support services
If you lot are concerned that you or someone y'all care about has a trouble with alcohol there is a lot of help bachelor. Here y'all can find useful links and phone numbers to become the support you need.
Back up services
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Last Reviewed: 23rd Apr 2020
Next Review due: 8th May 2020
Source: https://www.drinkaware.co.uk/facts/health-effects-of-alcohol/effects-on-the-body/alcohol-and-illegal-drugs
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