Sertraline and alcohol

[incidentalcontinental]

Sorry to ask a question to which the answer is probably pretty clear, but has anybody had bad effects from drinking alcohol whilst on sertraline? I'm on 100mg, have been for around 6 weeks. I really was starting to feel an improvement last week - my appetite was better, I wasn't crying every day, I was smoking a bit less and could do little things like clean the bathroom which I had been putting off.

I went out on Saturday night, had maybe 3 of those wee bottles of wine you get in bars and 3 pear ciders. I felt fine on the Sunday, but on the Monday my mood went right downhill. I got really anxious and teary again and have been feeling low since. The last time I slipped down like this was a couple of days after having quite a lot of wine at a wedding, so I reckon it's the alcohol.

The thing that's confusing me is the delayed reaction - why I'm fine the day after, but start to feel awful a couple of days later. I'm not a regular drinker, but I know I can have too much on a (rare) night out. Has anyone experienced similar issues on Sertraline, or other ADs? I know the guidelines for ADs say avoid alcohol, but I didn't have this problem on Citalopram.

My tolerance for alcohol was greatly reduced on citalopram. I'm now on sertraline and not drinking. I haven't had a drink since March 11 as I've been pregnant and breast feeding and now on sertraline.

If it makes you feel so bad, just stop drinking?

I take 150mg sertraline daily and am fine with alcohol, although it's rare for me to drink more than a couple of small glasses of wine these days. All it does is make me extremely tired and I tend to wimp out early on nights out, and it takes me two or three days to feel more perky, but it's tiredness rather than low mood that's the problem for me.

Alcohol is a depressant, so it could be that it's just the alcohol rather than the alcohol/sertraline interaction that's the problem.

If I were you I'd either knock it on the head or accept that it's going to make you feel crappy for a while. You do realise that three of those small bottles of wine is equivalent to an entire normal sized bottle? That plus three ciders as well would have me on the floor

I'm on 200mg sertraline and I can't drink at all; it really crushes my mental health.

Thanks for your advice, everyone. Stopping drinking is not a problem for me - I rarely do it anyway, but I was interested in knowing whether or not I was almost imagining the fact that the blips I'd been having were alcohol-related or not. Sounds like it's a much better idea to cut it out!