COMBINATION DRUG EFFECTS

Drugs taken in various combinations and dosages can alter and perhaps intensify effects.

A synergistic drug effect is a dangerous consequence of taking different drugs in the same general category at the same time.  The combination exaggerates each individual drug’s effects.  For example, the combined use of alcohol and tranquilizers produces a synergistic effect greater than the total effect of each of the two drugs taken separately.  In this instance a much-amplified, perhaps fatal sedation will occur.  In a simplistic sense, “one plus one equals four or five.”

When taken at or near the same time, drug combination produce a variety of effects.  When two or more drugs are taken and the result is merely a combined total effect of each drug, the result is an additive effect.  The sum of the effects is not exaggerated.  In a sense, “one plus one plus one equals three.”

When one drug intensifies the action of a second drug, the first drug is said to have a potentiated effect on the second drug.  One popular drug-taking practice during the 1970s was the consumption of Quaaludes and beer.  Quaaludes potentiated the inhibition-releasing, sedative effects of alcohol.  This particular drug combination produced an expensive but potentially fatal drunklike euphoria in the user.

An antagonistic effect is an opposite effect one drug has on another drug.  One drug may be able to reduce another drug’s influence on the body.  Knowledge of this principle has been uwseful in the medical treatment of certain drug overdoses, as in the use of tranquillizers to relieve the effects of LSD or other hallucinogenic drugs.