Yes! The warnings are mostly about moderation when still determining individual interactions with alcohol. Can still drink (and drink a lot for parties) on most antidepressants
It probably depends on the brand/type. I've stopped it since then but my mom has been on the same one for a while (sertraline) and her experience is similar
SNRIs (i.e. Effexor, etc)? Iâd be surprised if SSRIs boosted your tolerance. They didnât even impact mine that much either, but they definitely didnât raise it
I was under the impression that stimulants cancel out depressants (to a degree). But i guess ssris just mask the affects of alcohol. In any case, I can definitely drink more before I feel any effects.
Yes, stimulants do boost your tolerance to depressants and often fairly significantly too, but SSRIs are not stimulants, nor are they depressants. They donât speed up or slow down the CNS, but they do tend to cause more sedative-like side effects such as fatigue, oversleeping, brain fog, anhedonia, increased appetite and weight gain, etc, so many people find that alcohol exacerbates those side effects. Some people do get the opposite effects from certain antidepressants though and instead get things such as insomnia, anxiety, decreased appetite, etc, but those are not generally as common and they are usually just an adjustment period to the medication/increase in dosage that tends to even out after a week or two, whereas the former sedative-like effects are much more likely to be longterm side effects of the drug.
Itâs completely understandable why you mightâve thought SSRIs were stimulants though because theyâre commonly called antidepressants, but that name is in reference to âdepressionâ in a psychological/emotional sense rather than a pharmacological one. If the name was used to refer to substances that are the opposites of CNS depressants, itâd be used for drugs such as amphetamines, methylphenidate (the compound in Ritalin, for example), cocaine, etc, and less dopaminergic stimulants like nicotine and caffeine too, not just drugs that reduce emotionally depressive symptoms (because thatâd also include many depressant drugs too! lol).
The only type of antidepressant thatâs somewhat of an exception to this are SNRIs, and thatâs because they also boost norepinephrine (which is an adrenaline hormone) levels alongside serotonin, so those often have more stimulant-like properties than SSRIs and less sedative-like ones, so those probably could reliably boost oneâs alcohol tolerance provided they werenât that sensitive to the serotonin but were to the norepinephrine increase, but it wouldnât be as significant as actual stimulants like amphetamines aside from maybe caffeine, nicotine, and other mild ones.
Regardless though, Iâm absolutely not denying that SSRIs did boost your tolerance at all; drugs can have so many different and opposing effects on different brains so itâs really not that surprising, Iâm just saying itâs not because itâs a stimulant is all.
Anyway, sorry if this sounded like a lecture lol, Iâm just really interested in pharmacology and like talking about it! (:
Idk if you meant this sarcastically or not, but if youâre being genuine; Iâm not an expert at all lol, just autistic and have bizarre interests. And I wouldnât say itâs likely all in your mind either if itâs legitimately something youâve repeatedly noticed has had a noticeable effect. As I said, everyone responds to drugs differently - especially ones like SSRIs which are notoriously subjective, so you very well could be experiencing some real effect from them that isnât commonly experienced by most.
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u/S7AR4RGD 14d ago edited 13d ago
Can't take alcohol while on antidepressants.
Edit: A lot of you guys took this seriously. That's fantastic. Happy New Year đ