Mixing Alcohol and Methadone
Dangerous
Methadone stays in your body long after you stop feeling it, so drinking adds to a load you cannot feel. Do not combine, especially in the first two weeks of treatment.
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.
Headspace vs physical riskWhat to do
- Say what was taken and how much.Responders need it, and in most US states Good Samaritan laws protect both of you from drug possession charges when you call for an overdose.
- Unresponsive: put them on their side, tilt the head back, and stay until help arrives.Never leave someone alone to “sleep it off”.
- Give naloxone (Narcan) if you have it.It is sold over the counter in every US state and does no harm if opioids turn out not to be involved.
- Never Use Alone 1-800-484-3731Stays on the line and sends help if you stop responding.
- Full steps: what to do if it is already happeningOverdose signs, the recovery position, what to say on the call, and whether you can be charged for making it.
- Poison Control 1-800-222-1222Free and 24/7, for “is this bad?” before it becomes an emergency.
Can you mix Alcohol and Methadone?
MixSafe rates mixing Alcohol and Methadone as "Dangerous" — high risk of death or life-changing injury. Do not combine. Source: MixSafe research. Educational information, not medical advice.
- Methadone
- Long-acting — outlasts its own effects by many hours
- Alcohol also called
- alc, booze, beer, wine, liquor, ethanol
- Methadone also called
- dolophine, methadose, done
- 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
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Checking more than two?
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All combinations →Rated dangerous. Educational information only, not medical advice. Absence of a documented interaction is not evidence of safety.