“Caution: Do Not drink Alcohol while taking Benadryl.“
The subject tonight was a 15 year old who had been out with friends. His Mom was contacted by those friends to come get him because he was acting goofy. When she arrived, he was laying in the parking lot and unable to get up without assistance. He was laughing and his speech was slurred. He stated that he had been taking sequentially larger doses of his sleeping medicine at his doctors instruction and had done so tonight. Despite being out with friends. At midnight.
Later he told the nurse that he had also drank 1/2 of a bottle of Benadryl Elixir. The stuff you’d give a young child for a poison ivy rash or chicken pox.
Well, the last bit of information sparked discussion about whether or not Benadryl contained ethyl alcohol, and if so,how much? Ethyl alcohol as opposed to other alcohols that are poison to the human body, is the devils elixir. Google it.
Google to the rescue. Yes Benadryl Elixir has alcohol in it, 14%. The rest of the Benadryl family of products have 5% alcohol.
Wines have 8-12 % alcohol. A 160 lb person would require 3 glasses (about 24 oz.) of wine to get to the (il)legal level of alcohol.
This patient’s alcohol level was over the legal limit (80mg/dl) at 96mg/dl.
Most of the websites about Benadryl tell you, “Warning, do not drink alcohol while taking Benadryl!”
But they put a whopping dose of alcohol in Benadryl.
No wonder parents give their children a dose of Benadryl when making a long car trip.
From your retired but not yet dead grumpy Uncle Dave.