Benadryl is one of the antihistamine drugs that included an active ingredient called diphenhydramine. This antiallergic drug helps you to rid allergic symptoms such as the runny nose, sneezing, irritated throat, rashes, coughs, that occurring after your contact with an allergen. Despite these positive effects, the combination of Benadryl and alcohol may be the source of important problems.
Benadryl is a very common drug. Also, it is in the class of over-the-counter medicines that you can get easily from pharmacies. This drug is especially good for seasonal allergies.
People often feel anxious about there are potential side effects or adverse outcomes that can stem from the mixture of alcohol and diphenhydramine.
How Does Benadryl Work?
Benadryl can not completely eliminate your allergy. It only helps to reduce symptoms in your body by blocking histamine which is just a nitrogenous compound.
Histamine creates an immune response to allergens in your body. So this compound is the cause of reactions such as a stuffy nose, itchy skin. When you come in contact with something you’re allergic to, an antihistamine blocks your body’s response to these allergens. In this way, you can overcome your uncomfortable conditions.
Don’t Use Benadryl and Alcohol Together
Benadryl is sold without a prescription in the pharmacies. This situation may cause that you are careless while taking this medicine. But it is vital to know the interactions and side effects of everything you get into your body. Benadryl is beneficial for treating allergy symptoms, but it can cause problems when mixed with alcohol.
Benadryl and alcohol are both caused your central nervous system to slow down. This impact is doubled, when you take them at the same time. It can also cause drowsiness and sedation and you have trouble to perform physical and mental tasks that require alertness. If you can’t concentrate, it is very possible that you may face dangerous conditions.
Besides, alcohol and Benadryl can affect a person’s cardiac functions.
A specific question often heard is “Can Benadryl and alcohol mixture be lethal?”
If you overdose on alcohol and diphenhydramine the answer is yes. Although it seems innocent, taking excessive Benadryl and alcohol mixture causes to lose consciousness, this condition is one of the deadly risks.
Problems Caused by Alcohol and Benadryl Mixture
The central nervous system controls most functions of the mind and body such as physical coordination and sensory experiences. Therefore, the depressing of CNS may create problems in performing your biological functions.
1. Drowsiness
Drowsiness is one of the common side effects that occur when using Benadryl.
Combining Benadryl and alcohol increases this side effect. This can affect your response time and muscular coordination. So any task that needs attention can become dangerous for you. Unfortunately, an instant mistake can sometimes result in death.
2. Loss of Consciousness
The side effects of Benadryl are not the same in every person. While it is not seen in some people, in others it may have an intense effect that will cause loss of consciousness.
Loss of unconsciousness may end up like a situation that can cause your head to hit the ground. Also, you may have any other accident.
3. Temporal Learning Disability and Memory Impairment
Benadryl blocks the action of a neurotransmitter called acetylcholine. Acetylcholine is necessary for learning and memory, so blocking its action may temporarily impair these processes.
Alcohol is also known to inhibit learning and memory temporarily. So, combining alcohol and Benadryl may again have a more noticeable effect on learning and memory.
4. Dementia
According to some medical studies, it has been concluded that using anticholinergic medicine for a long time significantly increases the risk of dementia.
Benadryl is one of the drugs included in this class. In addition, if we consider that excessive alcohol consumption triggers early dementia, taking this drug together with alcohol may be a factor that increases this risk.
5. Dehydration
Benadryl and alcohol mixture is one of the intensive dehydration reasons. Both lead to decreased water in the body. This can have a very negative effect on daily biological activities and essential body functions. It also triggers the prolongation of the side effects that alcohol causes on you.
Other Risk Factors of Alcohol and Benadryl Mixture
1. Drug Interactions
Benadryl may interact with other medications. These interactions have the potential to trigger unexpected side effects. When alcohol is added to this scenario, the risk is maximum.
For preventing negative side effects, You should definitely consult your healthcare provider before you start using new medicine.
In addition, we strongly recommend that you read the prospectus of all the medicines you use.
These behaviors are of great importance to your health.
Examples of medications that may interact with Benadryl include:
- Antidepressants
- Stomach ulcer medicine
- Cough and cold medicine
- Other antihistamines
- Diazepam (Valium)
- Sedatives
2. Misuse
Like other antiallergic medications, Benadryl can be considered a sleep aid because of its sedative effects.
Although it seems safe, using any medicine unnecessarily will cause undesirable side effects and damage. So If it is really necessary, you should only consider using Benadryl for the treatment of your allergy.
In addition, using this drug with alcohol (as a sleeping aid) or overdose without any reason may cause a high risk.
3. Driving
You already know how dangerous it is to drive a vehicle when you are drunk. Alcohol makes it harder to get your attention while driving and it may even make you sleep.
Also there are warnings about driving and using heavy machines on the prospectus of drugs that directly affect the central nervous system, such as Benadryl.
It is beneficial that you should consider the level of risk that will occur when these two sedative products are mixed.
4. Gender
Females are more sensitive about alcohol-related damage. Dehydration reactions occur more in women’s bodies. Because of this, they do not have enough water to use reliving the adverse effects of alcohol on their bodies.
Mixing Benadryl with alcohol may be particularly dangerous for females, as consuming smaller amounts of alcohol could trigger adverse interaction effects.
Complications in Seniors
In the previous sections, we talked about the negative effects of the Benadryl and alcohol mixture.
These side effects are more critical for older adults. Because there are other issues and diseases brought about by aging.
Also, when it comes to elders, the ability of removing alcohol from the body is more limited. This condition increases the time older people will be at risk of a harmful interaction between Benadryl and alcohol.
Different Sources of Alcohol
Some medicines contain considerable amounts of alcohol. For instance, cough syrup and laxatives are drugs that contain alcohol.
When you use these medicines together with Benadryl, you can unwittingly be triggered the interaction of Benadryl and alcohol.
If you’re using more than one OTC or prescription drug or supplement, talk to your doctor or pharmacist. They can explain to you if your other medications contain alcohol and if it’s safe to take them with Benadryl.