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Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 25, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Does anyone have direct experience mixing alcohol with SSRIs, or medical experience treating people who have?
I'm asking in SSQ rather than WW because it's tangential to a red hot culture war question circa 2015: drink spiking.

The percentage of women taking antidepressants has doubled or tripled in the last decade, but there's been no decrease in drinking to compensate. I think Scott may have briefly tangled with this during the feminism wars of the 10s when Vox and Jezebel revived earlier panics, but afaik nobody's actually looked at the likelihood that a lot of the self-reported symptoms you see on reddit are real, but caused by interactions with other drugs.

Apparently there was a recent hysteria in europe about men injecting women with drugged needles in bars which eventually died down after the claims got too wild. The wikipedia article is very carefully written not to call it a social panic, but the writer obviously wishes he could just say it.

I'm worried we're going to keep getting mass panics like this fueled by social media, activists, and a dysfunctional drinking and drug culture that people are unwilling to own up to. But since I don't have any experience with SSRIs, drinking, or european party culture, I'm probably not the right person to make an argument about it.

Huh, I hadn't even considered interactions. That's entirely plausible to add in. My impression was that pretty much all cases of claimed "drink spiking" are basically just people that drank more than they realized and don't have the tolerance to hang. Even as a (too) experienced drinker, I have had mornings where I woke up and thought, "what the fuck, this hangover is bullshit, I didn't even drink that much", so it's entirely plausible to me that someone at a party having mixed drinks with unknown quantities of alcohol could wind up completely hammered and being genuinely surprised by it.

Even as a (too) experienced drinker, I have had mornings where I woke up and thought, "what the fuck, this hangover is bullshit, I didn't even drink that much"

This is the worst, particularly when you know for a fact that you were never even above the legal limit at any point the previous night.