Mixing Alcohol and Buprenorphine
- Alcohol also called
- booze, beer, wine, liquor, ethanol, etoh
- Buprenorphine also called
- subutex, suboxone, bupe, bup, buprenorphine/naloxone
Unsafe
Buprenorphine's partial agonism puts a ceiling on its own respiratory depression, and alcohol goes around that ceiling through a different receptor entirely. Deaths on buprenorphine overwhelmingly involve alcohol or a benzodiazepine rather than buprenorphine alone — which is the whole argument for not treating the ceiling as protection.
The risk here is to the body — breathing, heart, temperature or organs. Set limits before you start, because this kind of harm does not announce itself in time to react.
Can you mix Alcohol and Buprenorphine?
Risk of serious physical or psychological harm. Not recommended under any circumstances.
- Buprenorphine
- Partial agonist — displaces other opioids off the receptor
- Buprenorphine precipitated opioid withdrawal: Prevention and management in the ED setting. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0735675722003126
- Buprenorphine-Precipitated Withdrawal Among Hospitalized Patients Using Fentanyl. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11437388/
- Practice-Based Guidelines: Buprenorphine in the Age of Fentanyl. SAEM. https://www.saem.org/education/substance-use/practice-based-guidelines-buprenorphine-in-the-age-of-fentanyl
Checking more than two?
Combinations of three or more carry risks that no pair-by-pair chart can show. The checker rates every pair at once and flags the whole-mix ones on top.
Open this in the checkerRelated combinations
All combinations →Rated unsafe. Educational information only, not medical advice. Absence of a documented interaction is not evidence of safety.