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Misc Drinking alcohol with TCAs?

Zon

Zon

Bluelighter
Joined
Jul 13, 2012
Messages
150
I just got a prescription for 10mg Imipramine per day to deal with having too much stress and a bit of social anxiety. I've never taken any antidepressant before so am just wondering what peoples personal experience with it is? Especially I want to ask about mixing it with alcohol? As far as I have read it is ok to drink with but may affect tolerance, obviously this means I should drink slower and more carefully which shouldn't be a problem but should I also take less TCA on the days I plan to drink? I also have my birthday party coming up soon, would it be ok to stop taking the TCA for a few days so that I can enjoy the party?

Any advice or experiences are much appreciated :)
 
Just take your usual antidepressant dose and drink slower and you'll be fine.
 
Thanks, yeah that is my plan, ease in slowly and see how much it affects me. How about taking breaks from the tca though? For example if I wanted to take something stronger than alcohol, or just for a night of hard boozing on my bday? Is it ok to take a few days off or would I have some kind of withdrawal symptoms when I first stop? And how long should I stop taking before something like mdma?
 
When taking a serotonergic antidepressant (be it an SSRI, SNRI or Tricyclic) you'll start experiencing discontinuation symptoms after about 48 hours or so in my experience. Basically you start getting a unique kind of dizziness where your brain feels like it's mounted in a gyroscope and moving independently of your skull, brain zaps (mild electric-shock-style sensations in your head), and general irritability... and of course the more effective the drug was for you, the shittier you're going to feel when your depressive symptoms start coming back.

Most antidepressants do not necessarily preclude you from taking MDMA - while MAOIs + MDMA can easily be a death sentence, reuptake inhibitors (which includes TCAs) actually *diminish* the effects of MDMA.

Look at it this way: Millions of people take TCAs/SSRIs/SNRIs. The overwhelming majority of these are not tee-totalers. Some of them are even hardcore alcoholics and drug users. The fact that our morgues aren't stacked to the ceiling with victims of serotonin syndrome speaks to the relatively safety of these drugs.
That said, you DON'T want to abuse Tramadol while on antidepressants, as Tramadol is not just an opioid, but also an SNRI itself (it is chemically related to Effexor, after all), so a high dose may well be a ticket to seizuresville.
 
In your experience would my low dose of 10mg a day for a month then stopping cause a bad withdrawal? And how long do the withdrawal symptoms usually last for this low level of use?

Thanks for your opinions, I know everyone is different but it helps to have a general idea :)
 
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