Accutane - Accutane and alcohol: The liver suffers a two-pronged attack
A combination of Accutane and alcohol might prove deadly to your liver. Here’s why.
Alcohol is bad for liver, which takes its load to transform that to acetaldehyde. That’s making the liver doing more than its fair share of work; on the other hand, Accutane has been reported for causing hepatitis in people if appropriate measures are not taken. Abstaining from alcohol during the tenure of treatment is one such measure.
Accutane, the most popular oral medication for acne treatment is prescribed only when no other option has borne fruits. In very low doses, it is also administered to fight other minor skin problems and this is where the trouble starts. A considerable number of party animals (who took a break just to hide their acne-affected skin) started taking Accutane as an instant-relief medication; little did they know about the accutane-alcohol combined effect and were clueless when their respective livers revolted. However, it is not a very common side effect and not everyone has a liver that might fail easily; thus, the Accutane and alcohol results went greatly unnoticed. Well, till now.
Those who are under an Accutane regime and still partying hard are advised to check their liver functions without any further delay. It is best to cut off alcohol completely while the medication is on; else, the next best policy is bringing it down to a quarter amount of the regular intake. Take it like this: To counter a necessary evil, the best thing is bringing down the levels of other evils if they cannot be eradicated completely. The liver must not get caught in a double-strength frailty.
Another thing is, alcohol is essentially a depressant and accutane has been observed in creating depression and suicidal tendencies in people. Accutane and alcohol, together, has the potential to aggravate this problem largely and since almost everything is psychosomatic by nature, there stays a high chance for developing pancreatitis (inflammation of the pancreas; usually marked by abdominal pain). This is a direct result of Accutane significantly increasing the triglyceride levels in blood; higher it is, greater becomes the vulnerability of the pancreas. Alcohol, being a simple carbohydrate, boosts the triglyceride levels all the more, making things fall into a vicious cycle within no time. Of course, you may break out from alcohol after learning things the hard way, but there is no guarantee that you’ll feel better separating Accutane and alcohol after suffering the double-bite.
