Binge drinking is defined as a pattern of alcohol intake that causes the blood alcohol concentration (BAC) to be 0.08% (0.08 g/dL) or higher. This typically occurs if women have 4 or more drinks and men have 5 or more drinks within about a 2-hour period. Others have seizures when they try to quit drinking after long periods. These can be life-threatening episodes, so it’s critical to know what they look like and how they’re treated. Your risk of developing seizures seems to increase with an increasing amount of alcohol. Seizures often seem to develop in the hours after you stop consuming alcohol.
Heavy, long-term alcohol use and withdrawal from alcohol can lead to seizures. Alcohol can also trigger seizures if you have epilepsy and often interacts poorly with anti-seizure medications. You could develop status epilepticus, which is multiple seizures, or prolonged seizures, and can lead to permanent brain damage or death. Alcohol withdrawal seizures typically develop 6-48 hours after you stop drinking, but they can occur 2-7 days after your last drink. The seizures can develop abruptly without warning, and multiple seizures can occur within a 6- to 8-hour period.
That means you (or your loved one) won’t have to worry about covering the cost of treatment. Instead, all of your energy and focus can be spent where it’s really needed, which is on overcoming addiction. Medications such as clonazepam and lorazepam are benzodiazepines that can cause a life threatening interaction when mixed with alcohol. According to the Epilepsy Foundation, seizures by themselves typically are not fatal.
Alcohol withdrawal can trigger seizures and people with epilepsy are at a higher risk of experiencing alcohol seizures. Such individuals are at a particularly high risk of seizures after consuming large amounts of alcohol in a short period of time (for example, 2-3 drinks over 2-3 hours). In people with epilepsy, binge drinking can even trigger status epilepticus, a potentially life-threatening prolonged seizure that lasts more than 5 minutes.
How Alcohol Affects the Brain
- Seizures often seem to develop in the hours after you stop consuming alcohol.
- Your risk of developing seizures seems to increase with an increasing amount of alcohol.
- We have an experienced team of healthcare providers who can manage alcohol-related seizures during the withdrawal phase and keep you safe and comfortable.
- Seizure medicine requires a prescription, and doctors do not typically prescribe them to people who think they may have seizures from drinking.
A person can consume a fatal dose of alcohol before passing out. Alcohol misuse can lead to neurological damage that can affect multiple areas of a person’s health and well-being. The best way to avoid the issue is to limit alcoholic consumption to 2 or fewer drinks per day for males and 1 or fewer for females. Focal seizures result from electrical activity in one area of the brain. This type of seizure can happen with or without passing out, called losing consciousness.
Alcohol and Seizures: Can Drinking Cause Seizures?
According to a 2017 review, muscle myopathy is common in alcohol use disorder. In addition, about 40 to 60 percent of people who experience chronic alcohol misuse also experience alcohol-related myopathy. As discussed Psychedelic and Dissociative Drugs above, some studies have found links between chronic alcohol use and the risk of developing epilepsy.
Alcohol and Antiepileptic Drugs
Alcohol seizures can range in severity from mild to severe and can even be life-threatening in severe cases. That’s why it’s important to seek professional help and undergo a medically supervised alcohol detoxification. Most of these medications lower your alcohol tolerance, causing you to become intoxicated or feel the effects of alcohol more quickly or severely.
The alcohol will continue to circulate in the bloodstream and eventually affect other organs. Fetal alcohol syndrome can occur when a person is exposed to alcohol before birth. But according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), drinking less or not at all may help you avoid neurological harm. Consuming too much, especially over months or years, can result in severe symptoms. Every effort is made to ensure that all our information is correct and up to date. However, Epilepsy Society is unable to provide a medical opinion on specific cases.