This Is What Happens To Your Body When You Drink On Antibiotics

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What makes happy hour not so happy? Being the person at the bar who’s on antibiotics. All of those doctor and prescription label warnings leave you empty handed, socially self-conscious and paranoid about what would happen if alcohol touched your lips while the medication is in your system. But what risks do you actually run when drinking on antibiotics?

The short answer: it depends on the antibiotic you’re taking. But before we even dive into that, you should understand how they work in your body if you’re thinking about boozing at all. Most antibiotics are used to treat bacterial infections, and they are metabolized by enzymes in the liver. Guess what else makes solid use of your liver? That’s right, alcohol.

Most antibiotics and alcohol combinations won’t lead to a severe reaction, but drinking can affect the rate at which your body digests the antibiotic, meaning you could end up with too little or too much of the medication circulating through your body at a given time, rendering it either ineffective or toxic. Neither situation is ideal because you’re obviously trying to heal from a preexisting condition and not create a new one.

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Side effects of most antibiotics can include nausea, diarrhea, dizziness and drowsiness, and these symptoms can worsen when you decide to mix a drink or two with your prescription. So be ready to deal with that.

Now, there is the clear no-no list of antibiotics that you should never mix with alcohol. It includes trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole, metronidazole and tinidazole, so if you see these hard-to-pronounce names on the little bottles from your pharmacy, just leave the wine alone until you’re done dealing with whatever resulted in your need for antibiotics in the first place. Because if these babies combine, you can expect to experience flushed skin, heart palpitations, a racing heart, vomiting, diarrhea and/or a headache. And if you’re really unlucky, you could cause hepatitis, which is basically the inflammation of the liver. Isoniazid and flucloxacillin are the two antibiotics that most commonly cause this reaction.

A good general rule of thumb is if you have to question the choice seriously and stress over the potential outcome, just don’t do it. Take a week off, let your body rest and heal, and rejoin the crew at boozy brunch when your body tells you it’s time. We promise FOMO isn’t nearly as bad as some of these consequences can be.