I have a mental health problem-hard to manage

[lonelyoldman]

Hey

I have a mental health problem for which.i take anti depressants and antipsychotic.

I'm trying to get off the pills as they wreck my figure and make me feel awful.

Right now I can't face sobriety often as I just feel awful.

Which is worse out of alcohol and codeine in terms of appearance and health?

Every 3 months I get a break from alcohol as I can use online pharmacies for codeine syrup. I suppose I could switch over to codeine more by Doug cwe on 8/500 cocodamols but I imagine it'd be a risky game if I developed a tolerance.

Is it good practice to give myself an alcohol break of a few weeks every 3 months using codeine?

 

[FnX]

It's a tough question to answer. In the simplest possible sense, heavy alcohol use is worse for your health than heavy codeine use according to a lot of the research I've read. You aren't consuming pure codeine though, I'm sure that the syrup has other possibly harmful ingredients like guaifenesin or acetaminophen/paracetamol so they would have to be accounted for too. It's easy to move forward from codeine to more potent opioids too once you become tolerant, because of the ceiling effect/disproportionate side-effects compared to desired effects at very high doses. I'm not saying this will happen for sure, but I would say it's more convenient to go from codeine to other opioids than it is from alcohol.

As for appearance, I'm not sure what exactly you mean. Everybody knows a drunk, in a way it's more accepted socially than say a codeine addict. Someone under the influence of codeine is less likely to be judged at work than someone under the influence of alcohol, but I'm sure this varies from workplace to another and the doses taken.

 

[polymath]

Alcohol contains a lot of calories, and daily drinking of few beers or more can have a significant effect on body weight. I'm on antipsychotics, too, and I had some problems with weight gain at one point, but I quickly lost weight after I quit drinking.

Stopping the use of antipsychotics suddenly can be dangerous, and may cause the psychotic symptoms to return quickly.

Trying to replace the use of one drug with another can easily lead to a situation where you just become dependent on both drugs. Also, if it is the case that you have a real physical alcohol dependence, you shouldn't try to use codeine as an alcohol detox aid. Codeine does not prevent alcohol WD seizures, you need to take benzos for that.

 

[amzam]

Alcohol through dehydration, excess calories, nutritional depletion, endocrine disruption, and lots of other stuff, is the bigger robber of beauty over all. But individual use in both quantity and frequency are bigger considerations. Moderate users of most all drug's of choice tend to fair pretty well. People inclined to use to excess over and over tend not to do well.