What are the Possible Risks or Complications of Taking Muscle Relaxers?

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The two main possible complications of taking muscle relaxers are the potential for overdose and dangerous interactions with alcohol.

Alcohol and muscle relaxers

If you’re taking a prescription muscle relaxer, you shouldn’t consume alcohol. Alcohol and muscle relaxers are both depressants, which means they slow down your central nervous system. If you take them together, the side effects are much more intense, which can be dangerous.

It can cause symptoms like:

  • Extreme dizziness.
  • Extreme drowsiness.
  • Blurred vision.
  • Low blood pressure.
  • Fainting.
  • Memory problems.
  • Liver damage.
  • Increased risk of overdose

Muscle relaxer overdose

Muscle relaxers have a potential for misuse and addiction, especially carisoprodol and diazepam. Prolonged use can lead to increased tolerance and physical dependence.

As most muscle relaxers act as sedatives, some people take muscle relaxers alone or in combination with other drugs for nonmedical reasons to produce or enhance feelings of euphoria and dissociation.

Muscle relaxer misuse can lead to an increased risk of overdose, which can result in:

  • Changes in consciousness.
  • Hallucinations.
  • Seizures.
  • Respiratory depression.
  • Cardiac arrest.
  • Coma.
  • Death.

Seek immediate medical attention if you or a loved one are experiencing symptoms of an overdose.

What are the types of muscle relaxers?

Healthcare providers in the United States can currently prescribe the following antispasmodic skeletal muscle relaxants:

Antispastic skeletal muscle relaxants that providers can currently prescribe in the U.S. include:

  • Baclofen (Lioresal®).
  • Dantrolene (Dantrium®).

Two skeletal muscle relaxants have both antispastic and antispasmodic effects. They include:

What do Muscle Relaxers Help Treat?

Although antispastics and antispasmodics are both types of skeletal muscle relaxants, they have specific and different uses. In addition, some of these medications treat conditions not related to muscle function. For example, providers sometimes prescribe diazepam to treat anxiety and seizures.

Antispastic medication uses

Healthcare providers mainly prescribe antispastic muscle relaxers to treat spasticity.

Spasticity is a disruption in muscle movement patterns that causes certain muscles to contract all at once when you try to move or even at rest. It’s usually caused by damage to nerve pathways within your brain or spinal cord that control movement and stretch reflexes.

Spasticity may occur due to several conditions, some of which include:

  • Cerebral palsy.
  • Multiple sclerosis (MS).
  • Spinal cord injury.
  • Stroke.
  • Brain or head injury.
  • Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.

Baclofen is considered the first-line treatment for spasticity, especially for adults who have spinal cord injuries.

Antispasmodic medication uses

Providers mainly prescribe antispasmodic skeletal muscle relaxants for musculoskeletal and myofascial pain, especially lower back pain, and muscle spasms.

However, these medications aren’t the first-line therapy for the treatment of pain or spasms. They’re alternative therapy after first- or second-line therapies haven’t worked. This is due to the adverse side effects of antispasmodics, including addiction potential for some types of the medication.

How common are muscle relaxants?

Muscle relaxants are a somewhat common prescription due to the frequency of acute and chronic back pain. Low back pain is a very common issue — it remains among the top five reasons people see a primary healthcare provider. Most cases of low back pain resolve without medical intervention. If other treatments don’t work to alleviate the pain, providers may recommend a muscle relaxant.

But providers usually only prescribe them for brief periods due to the addiction potential of certain types.

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