In 2020, 8.4% of American adults took sleep medication for a period of 30 days, either every day or most days, to help them fall or stay asleep. As sleep deprivation is correlated with negative physical and mental health outcomes such as obesity, depression, and heart disease, the prevalence of sleeping pills will keep rising. Overdosing on sleeping pills can lead to many different outcomes, depending on the type of medication and dose. For example, while benzodiazepine overdose is rarely fatal on its own, it can be deadly if the benzodiazepine is mixed with other substances like opioids. If you’re concerned that concurrent use of alcohol and sleeping pills is impacting your health or that of someone close to you, substance abuse treatment programs can help. American Addiction Centers (AAC), parent company of Alcohol.org, is a nationwide provider of addiction treatment facilities.

• Dr. Hoffman is the Co-Founder and Chief Medical Officer of AddictionHelp.com and ensures the website’s medical content and messaging quality.
• When someone overdoses on a drug, alcohol, or a combination of both, emergency services personnel will examine the individual and check the person’s pulse, airway, and breathing.
• If you want to or must stop taking the sleeping pills, speak with your doctor about how to do it.
• Numerous resources are available for individuals and families dealing with substance misuse and addiction.
• Their pills may be sorted into small containers and labeled clearly to show when they should be taken.

More on Sleep Disorders

Seth brings many years of professional experience working the front lines of addiction in both the government and privatized sectors. Make your tax-deductible gift and be a part of the cutting-edge research and care that’s changing medicine. You’ll soon start receiving https://ecosoberhouse.com/ the latest Mayo Clinic health information you requested in your inbox. Or you can still take the drug nightly, but gradually reduce the dosage, Sateia says.

Sleep medications and the elderly

Your health provider can help you work through stress, anxiety, or other emotions that may be affecting your sleep. They can also teach you sleep hygiene habits that can lead to long-lasting benefits for sleep. That said, for some people, a short-term course of pharmaceutical sleep aids may help in developing these healthy behaviors and learning to manage insomnia. Prescription sleeping pills (and even some nonprescription sleeping aids), as well as certain antidepressants, may not be safe if you are pregnant, breastfeeding or an older adult. Sleeping pill use may increase the risk of nighttime falls and injury in older adults.

Which Sleeping Pill Is Most Dangerous?

This impairment makes seemingly simple activities like swimming, driving or crossing the road potentially deadly. The side effects of mixing alcohol and sleeping pills are due to each substance increasing the effects of the other. In a Stanford University study, people with type 2 diabetes who took opioids post-surgery were 56% more likely to keep using them 3 months later than post-op patients without diabetes. Ask your doctor about the risks and benefits of opioids versus other options. “It is a balance,” said study author Tina Hernandez-Boussard, PhD, a professor at Stanford Medicine.

What are the risk factors for an alcohol overdose?

Feeling this way can make it dangerous to drive to work or operate machinery, because your reaction time may be too slow. It can also make it hard for any other task that needs your full attention. Also, these drugs have been developed and tested on adults only, so doctors don’t know the right dosages to give to children. Medications typically are safe and effective when used appropriately. Your pharmacist or other health care provider can help you determine which medications interact harmfully with alcohol.

Mixing Alcohol With Medicines

If you struggle with feeling sleepy, groggy, or dizzy during the day, ask your doctor if you need to change your dosage or taper off a sleep drug. Prescription sleeping pills can cause side effects, including dizziness, prolonged drowsiness, headache, bloating, nausea, abdominal pain, constipation, and rarely, severe allergic reactions or facial swelling. If you enjoy having some grapefruit or grapefruit juice, you should know that they can have a negative effect on some medications, including some types of sleeping pills, like Halcion. The enzymes in the grapefruit slow down how your body metabolizes (breaks down) the medication, making the drug stronger and last longer in your body.

Medicines may have many ingredients

In the past, doctors frequently prescribed an older class of alcohol and pills drugs called benzodiazepines, including Dalmane, Halcion, and Restoril. But benzodiazepines carry serious risks of physical addiction and overdose. A sleeping pill overdose can occur if you take more than the recommended amount of medication or combine sleeping pills with alcohol or other medications.