Depression has baffled medical science for centuries. Without modern medicine, ancient doctors, scientists, and philosophers tried to puzzle how to treat it. Still a complex mental illness to treat, it causes great suffering for Americans who need access to medication that can help. Doctors know that trazodone can increase a chemical in your brain that improves your mood. It may provide relief from depression. However, it can pose problems when mixed with alcohol.
Table of Contents
- Facing a Problem Shared by Others
- Experiencing the Effect of Alcohol on Sleep
- Understanding the Dangers of Combining Trazodone and Alcohol
- Knowing What Effects to Expect
- Trying to Stop Using Alcohol
- Choosing Detox Treatment
- Finding a Drug that Can Help or Hinder
- Wondering If You Need Help
- Taking a New Approach
Studies show that millions of people around the world suffer from depression. A condition that affects many Americans, depression ranks as a serious medical illness. While it occurs often, it has no simple cure or one treatment that works for everyone. In addition, one person’s approach to treatment may have no effect on someone else. Instead, doctors and patients work together to find an approach to fighting the disease one case at a time. For many people, trazodone can relieve depression. However, problems can occur when anyone combines Trazodone and Alcohol.
Experiencing the Effect of Alcohol on Sleep
Normal sleep allows the body to cycle through different levels of slumber. Sleep experts say the levels include light sleep, deep sleep and the rapid eye movement phase. Each one has a vital role in rest, but the light sleep level seems less important in restoring physical and mental health.
Alcohol disrupts the cycle with its sedative effect. It lets you enter the deep sleep phase early in your rest. However, it puts you at the light sleep level when it starts to wear off. Light sleep may allow nightmares to occur, and it does not provide the quality of rest you need.
Someone who drinks alcohol excessively may not feel the sedative effect it can produce on sleep. However, most people sleep more deeply than usual for the first hours of rest. Unfortunately, the rest of the night becomes difficult with disruptions that prevent sleep.
The inability to get enough rest with a good night’s sleep may lead some people to use trazodone. However, fixing one problem by making it harder to fix another can lead to severe health issues. Eventually, alcohol can make you get less sleep.
Understanding the Dangers of Combining Trazodone and Alcohol
While Trazodone has Food and Drug Administration approval as an antidepressant to relieve depression, using it requires a careful decision. Some people find that it improves sleep. The danger with the drug comes when someone fails to use it correctly. It does not create a high when used according to directions. However, when anyone takes Trazodone and Alcohol, serious problems can result. The possibility of overdose presents real potential for a dangerous outcome.
Knowing What Effects to Expect
Mayo Clinic points out that combining antidepressants with alcohol may make your depression worse and increase the danger. Alcohol reduces the effect of antidepressants and makes depression harder to treat. While alcohol may improve your mood, it can make you feel more anxious and depressed.
In addition, combining Trazodone and Alcohol with sleep, prescription pain or anti-anxiety medications can worsen side effects such as creating a spike in your blood pressure. When you have reduced awareness of your physical condition, it puts you at risk. Further, you can expect to think less clearly or alertly when combining the drug substances. As you may know, your reaction time slows down when you combine antidepressants. Driving under sedation or feeling drowsy creates an increased risk of accidents.
Trazodone and Alcohol can increase your intoxication and make you subject to an overdose. In a state of mind that prevents you from understanding your level of intoxication, you have limited awareness. Unfortunately, you can die from the drugs in your system. In addition, long-term effects can make you dependent. Withdrawal presents unpleasant experiences that you can prevent by not combining drugs.
Trying to Stop Using Alcohol
When alcohol seems like a good friend when you start drinking it, you may not think about how your relationship may end. While you enjoy the experience, it cannot last. Relationships often get better or worse with time, but they usually do not remain the same. When you let alcohol become your friend, you face a rocky road that does not end well. Sadly, trazodone and alcohol death becomes a genuine possibility.
Until you learn what harm can occur from alcohol, you may think it presents no problem. You may drink because it seems enjoyable and relaxes you. But unfortunately, drinking alcohol can make you want more, and dependency can result. Thus, you can see that combining Trazodone and Alcohol can significantly increase your depression. Interestingly, trazodone alone has no adverse effects. Even more, it does not become a habit that you cannot break.
Seeing What Happens When You Stop Using Alcohol
A major health problem occurs when you need to withdraw. Withdrawal from alcohol alone can make you hallucinate, vomit and feel nauseous. Breaking away from alcohol dependency requires detox, and it can bring problems in falling asleep and staying asleep. The problems become more complicated with combining Trazodone and Alcohol.
You may experience sleep problems and anxiety in withdrawing from them.
Withdrawing from trazodone alone can cause some minor symptoms of anxiety and insomnia. However, you may have acute withdrawal symptoms from alcohol. Profuse sweating and rapid pulse can alert you to the extreme danger you face. The combination of two or more drugs can put you at risk for your life.
Choosing Detox Treatment
Attempts to detox on your own and without supervision can cause lasting damage to your health. Fatal consequences can result from alcohol use, and the risk of disaster increases with combining Trazodone and Alcohol. Detox offers the preferred approach as a first step in breaking away from alcohol. Unfortunately, patients can have sleep disturbances during the process. Nevertheless, scientific studies show that trazodone can help treat alcohol withdrawal symptoms.
Finding a Drug that Can Help or Hinder
Mental health professionals know that anyone with alcohol dependence may try to enhance its effect with an antidepressant. A conflict can occur with the difference that combining Trazodone and Alcohol creates. One acts as a depressant (alcohol), and the other produces an antidepressant effect (trazodone). Some people risk the potential damage to the body to receive relief from physical and mental stress.
However, using trazodone to enhance the effect of alcohol may make it less useful if you need it during detox. Any amount of alcohol can produce unexpected results if you drink while you take trazodone. The chemical composition of the drug makes it unlikely to create dependency. However, the combination of Trazodone and Alcohol creates health risks.
Wondering If You Need Help
Depression can make it difficult to think clearly. When you want to decide about getting treatment, you need a basis for your choice. One approach that can clear things up for you lets you take a self-quiz. You can take the quiz in the privacy of your home without anyone knowing about it. When you think of the potential risks to your health from the substances you use, it may concern you. As you go through the questions, complete honesty can give you the best answers.
Taking a New Approach
You can have confidence in the approach we take to rehabilitation. We offer outpatient services that let you continue your lifestyle while getting treatment. We know your home and work duties do not go away, and we respect their demands on your time. However, we encourage you to put your health at the top of your list of essential items.
Our experienced health care professionals can help you work through any mental health issues that face you. We know how to treat addiction, and our rehabilitation counselors provide the compassionate care that helps you defeat it. So let us show you a plan that can relieve your burden of addiction. Call us today to let us get you started on living the life you deserve.