Today was my sisters 21st birthday and we and some of her friends went to a mexican resturant to celebrate (they have thing where they give you a free shot of taquilla on you 21st birthday). I lucked out and they didn’t ask for my ID so I got to indulge in maragaritas. Perhaps overindulge is the better term. I had about 3 of them…they were quite large too, I’d say about a pint (I don’t drink that often so don’t laugh if this is puny, plus, I knew I would have to walk back to the bus stop and I didn’t want to be arrested for public drunkeness [is that a Napoleonic Law?])
Anywho, its now 2:30am, and as usual I can’t sleep without the aid of sleeping pills. I’ve been putting off taking them for the past few hours in fear of the interaction with the alchohol. I’m nowhere near drunk anymore. My stomach doesn’t even feel as queasy as it usually does after drinking. So I just took four tylenol PM. The warning on the bottle doesn’t outright forbid taking them while having had consumed alchohol, it says to contact my doctor if I consume more than three drinks a day. Think I’ll be okay?
Usually I wouldn’t be so paranoid but its that I had drank awful lot of margaritas only 6 hours ago. Is that enough time for alchohol to leave the system?
The general rule I hear is two drinks an hour, so you should have easily metabolized all of the alcohol you drank.
[soapbox]
My question is, why are you taking Tylenol PM for insomnia? The active ingredients in Tylenol PM (Extra Strength) are:
Acetomenophen - 500 mg: pain reliever
Diphenhydramine HCL - 25 mg: an antihistamine which also functions as a sleeping pill. This is the main ingredient in Benadryl.
Obviously the dyphenhydramine is what you want. If you don’t have a headache, you shouldn’t be taking the tylenol at all. Even if you do, you shouldn’t need that much. It sounds like you may be taking more and more medicine and in the process, getting more and more tylenol you don’t need. According to the article LateComer referenced:
which means that if you are taking extra strength PM formula, you are halfway to the maximum safe dosage of tylenol for a day in one dose. What happens if you have a headache the next day?
Rather than taking Tylenol PM, read some labels and get a separate bottle of sleep medication and acetominophen. Not only will this allow you better control over the medicine you are taking, but frankly, combo drugs like Tylenol PM are marketing ploys and are usually more expensive than individual drugs - not to mention the cost savings that you can get by buying generic medicine.
Another thing you should consider is trying to wean yourself off of sleeping pills as much as possible. Any medication has side effects. I gave some advice for insomnia here. I used to have really bad insomnia and have used all of these recommendations to good effect. One thing I didn’t mention there is to stop drinking caffeine as early in the evening as possible. If these don’t work and you are taking sleeping pills every night, you really need to see a doctor.
[soapbox]
Others have pointed about the potential dangers of mixing acetomenophen and alcohol. Let me add that mixing sleeping medications with alcohol is usually a pretty bad idea as well. Not only are you adding the effects of one depressant to another, some combinations will multiply the depressive effects so that fairly small amounts can cause serious problems.
Zyada - the general rule I’ve heard for metabolizing alcohol is one drink per hour (one shot or one pint beer or one glass wine.)
According to this, rather technical, web site, the human body metabolizes from 0.010% - 0.024% blood alcohol level (Averaging at .017%.) Doing the calculations for one 1.25 fluid ounce shot of 80 proof alcohol yields a blood alcohol concentration of .02517%.for a 150 lb person, which means depending on your body, you can metabolize from half to a full serving of alcohol each hour.
For a 200 lb person, the BAC of the above is .0189, confirming the “one drink per hour” maxim.