Mixing Alcohol and Methadone
- Alcohol also called
- booze, beer, wine, liquor, ethanol, etoh
- Methadone also called
- dolophine, methadose, done
Dangerous
Methadone's half-life runs anywhere from 8 to 59 hours and it accumulates in tissue, so the dose you took is still substantially present long after it stopped feeling like anything. Drinking in that window is additive respiratory depression against a load you cannot feel. Most methadone deaths happen during the first two weeks of treatment, before tissue levels have stabilised, and alcohol is the most common companion.
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 Methadone?
High risk of death or life-changing injury. Do not combine.
- Methadone
- Long-acting — outlasts its own effects by many hours
- QT prolongation with methadone. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2760917/
- Methadone Safety: A Clinical Practice Guideline From the American Pain Society and College on Problems of Drug Dependence, in Collaboration With the Heart Rhythm Society. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1526590014005227
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 dangerous. Educational information only, not medical advice. Absence of a documented interaction is not evidence of safety.