We all know that you should not mix drugs. Two of the most notable are alcohol and sleeping pills. But what I want to know is why. Does the alcohol magnify the sleeping pills and put you in a coma? Do the two mix to create a poison that is deadly? What actually happens when an average adult male takes sleeping pills and drinks?
Alcohol is a central nervous system depressant, as are most ‘sleeping pills’.
Taken together, you get at least an additive effect, and sometimes the two depressants combine synergistically to give a far greater (and not uncommonly fatal) degree of CNS depression. Respiratory depression occurs in this scenario too.
Add to that the fact that alcohol very often causes nausea when consumed in excess quantities. So one vomits, but is too sedated to wake up to vomit properly, and ends up aspirating the vomitus and expiring from acute respiratory failure.
When you say it can give a not-uncommonly-fatal degree of CNS depression, isn’t the respiratory depression usually what causes the fatal-ness? (Aside from aspiration of vomit and other non-CNS-depression related problems like getting run over because you passed out on a freeway, I mean.)