Meds in general and meds with alcohol.

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I started taking Sertraline for anxiety a couple of weeks ago, on a low starting dosage of 50MG every day. I can't really say whether it's helping much seeming as I've actually had a couple of good weeks in terms of low amounts of stressful events, but it certainly doesn't seem to be presenting any crippling problems or side effects.

Last night I went out for the first time in a while, I wasn't conciously avoiding it, I just always had something to do in the morning or was always just too tired to bother. With the bank holiday, I was able to go drinking with friends. It was a good night, pretty wild, the whole event ended up lasting twelve hours, 5PM to 5AM, so goes without saying, my boozing went a little further than it usually would.

This afternoon, on the tail end of my hangover, I've started to get ridiculously anxious, properly going out of my mind paranoid about just about everything. I'd been warned that anti-depressants (which sertraline counts as) can massively backfire. It even said in the booklet, though it was real vague about it, that alcohol on sertraline wasn't "recommended". I'll see how things go next week, try to take it a lot easier on the booze. At any rate, most weeks it should be a little better, when I do go out it's usually a friday night, meaning most weeks I'd have saturday to get over the hangover then sunday as a nice buffer before the next week.

I guess what I'm asking is if there's anything else I should look out for, or any tricks for preventing this in future besides the obvious "Don't drink that much you cider-drenched moron".

Drink all you want, but stop putting Big Pharma Frankenstein-Lab Neurotoxin Side-Effect Bombs in your brain.

I doubt the side effects are caused by the combination of your meds and alcohol. Could be just meds alone that started showing its effects, or just something that came from you. You will have to see if it repeats itself or not to know if it comes from the meds.

Most of the time (i don't know about Sertaline), meds aren't recommended to drink with alcohol not because of possible side effects, but because most meds are metabolized by the liver, same as alcohol. Taking both together greatly increases the chances of liver damage/failure and hepatitis. And you know, liver failure is usually deadly unless you get a transplant or if the damage is really really low.

if it is says don't drink alcohol with the medicine, don't drink alcohol while taking the medication! Problem solved.

my experience as someone who abused alcohol on a regular basis while taking the medicine you are on is that alcohol interfered with the effective of the medicine and the medicine made my tolerance for alcohol go way down, making me get dangerously drunk unless I skipped taking the medication. Zoloft and alcohol don't mix. follow the instructions on the label.

I once took risperidone and just had one beer and felt like I had to go to the hospital.
I never drank again whole taking risperidone. A friend of mind also takes risperidone and she has no problems with drinking while taking risperidone.
So it seems, it depends.

I react very sensitive to medication in general.

Oh wait, I didn't say it right in the OP. I had been warned that sertraline can massively backfire when you drink. Generally, it's been fine. I think that's what one of my friends described it as, like the effect of the meds suddenly disappears, usually during the hangover, not whilst your drinking.

Anyways, I'll try to tone it down a little next time, and if not, well, it ain't like I have to go out every week, and I can deal with being down for a few hours the following day.