You can mix vodka with orange juice, but don't mix your medication with alcohol.
Mixing prescription drugs and over-the-counter painkillers like Tylenol, with alcohol or other medications can be dangerous.
About 1.5 million people in the U.S. are harmed by medication errors every year, according to a July 2006 Institute of Medicine report.
"When students get medications from us they are always counseled," said Philip Leavitt, a pharmacist at the ASU Campus Health Service. "We have the knowledge to help them in what is known as drug-to-drug checks."
Leavitt said the most common medications he sees are antibiotics, birth control, eye and ear medications, anti-inflammatory agents, decongestants and inhalers.
The most important thing to avoid with all these common drugs is alcohol, he added.
Over-the-counter drugs are usually OK to take, but students should always check with a pharmacist to be sure, he added.
Painkillers such as Percocet, Vicodin and Somas can be extremely harmful to a person's body if they are abused, said Stefanie Schroeder, chief of staff and interim director for the Campus Health Service.
Percocet and Vicodin are made of synthetic codeine and Tylenol, which both affect pain receptors in the brain, she said.
Soma is a muscle relaxer and it can depress a person's central nervous system, Schroeder said.
"All painkillers can be addictive physically and psychologically," Schroeder said. "A person's body can get used to the medication, therefore allowing your body to handle a higher dosage, which can cause severe damage."
When taking painkillers, students should avoid drinking alcohol and taking sleeping pills because it will decrease awareness and lower blood pressure significantly, Schroeder said.
Taking numerous pills to the point of overdosing can be more harmful than some students may think.
When a person overdoses on painkillers it depresses the central nervous system enough to make a person lose his or her gag reflexes, Schroeder said.
"What can happen is you can vomit and inhale it, causing you to choke and die," she said.
The painkillers can also cause a person to stop breathing while sleeping, she added.
When painkillers are taken excessively, they may become addictive.
"Taking any kind of painkiller for a short amount of time is OK, but when you start taking it long term, that is when you want to start asking what the deep, underlying problem is," Schroeder said.
Women using birth control should also be careful of mixing it with other drugs.
"Some antibiotics can make birth control less effective," Schroeder said.
Some forms of birth control pass through the liver and so do antibiotics. They end up competing with each other and the full dosage of birth control may not be delivered, Schroeder said.
This applies more to certain forms of birth control such as the pill and injection.
The patch has less interaction with the liver so it is less likely that it would be affected, Schroeder added.
Not all students are aware of the harmful effects of mixing drugs.
"I know there are some medications that will conflict with the [birth-control] pill, but I never really thought about it," said undeclared senior Monica Frescas.
Women taking birth control should be aware of seizure medications, diabetes, liver disease, drinking too much alcohol, high blood pressure and smoking, Schroeder said.
But, she said that drinking in moderation should not conflict with birth control.
Reach the reporter at Heather.Cutler@asu.edu.
