United States: It’s important to know how your medications interact with things like alcohol, weed, or even skipping doses, especially if you’re in college. Many students ask if it’s safe to drink alcohol or use weed while on antidepressants, or what happens if they skip a dose to party. College life can be stressful, with late nights, substance use, and germs all around, so it’s good to understand how your medicine reacts to your habits and health.
I’m glad it’s been noted that many students experiencing some level of anxiety or depression are seeking assistance: The Health Minds Study of college students in the 2023-204 academic year reveals more than one-third of students have moderate to severe anxiety and depressive symptoms.
As reported by CNN Health, the proportion of college students who said that they had taken prescription antidepressants in the past year is 22 percent and about 36 percent of the students said they had been professionally counsel.
On the same note, students are studying through the night, changing sleeping times to allow for different classes, going to party on the weekend and more. These parties often include alcohol and social and even binge drinking is something which is prevalent in colleges. Ongoing tailgates also raise the likelihood of overindulgence during the event irrespective of the specific plan to drink responsibly.
As any trusted doctor will tell you, the best advice you can get when on prescription antidepressants is to stay away from alcohol and drugs. Presumably, students on those medications should also attend counseling, achieve a regular schedule of sleep, and have a healthy diet and exercise daily for enhancement of mental health.
But these are not easy to be completed at the college frequently it is hard to find time to do such tasks. Here is what you should know about interacting your legal antidepressant prescription with other compounds.
The question of course that I often find many patients ask me is, what is the difference between anti-anxiety and antidepressant medications?
Old school anxiety medications were the sedatives (benzodiazepines), which while indeed diazepam-purposefully-calming-anxiety-quickly do decrease current anxiety but the risk of the physical dependency is high. Today there are a lot of different kinds of medicine doctors can prescribe which have very little likelihood of being addictive at all.
Most kinds of anxiety disorders are treated through either a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, or SSRI, or a serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor, or SNRI. Most of these medicines need to be taken on a daily basis for them to have the desired impacts.
One type of anti-hypertensive class of drugs includes beta-blockers like propranolol; if taken in small doses they help decrease your heart rate thereby tending to directly address the direct manifestation of stress in physical form while at the same time indirectly having a soothing effect on the mind.