Can You Take Benadryl With Soma?

Benadryl With Soma - Interaction Details

There is a drug interaction between Benadryl (diphenhydramine) and Soma (carisoprodol). Both drugs are CNS (central nervous system) depressants and combining them can cause additive effects, such as pronounced sedation, dizziness, and drowsiness.

There is a blanket interaction warning between any two drugs that are classified as CNS depressants. The prescribing information for Soma states this specifically:

Patients should be advised to avoid alcoholic beverages while taking SOMA and to check with their doctor before taking other CNS depressants such as benzodiazepines, opioids, tricyclic antidepressants, sedating antihistamines, or other sedatives.

Benadryl is a sedating antihistamine, and thus, included in this warning.

How To Manage This Interaction

As both these drugs can cause similar side effects (e.g., sedation, drowsiness), their combined use should generally be avoided, especially if you are doing activities that require you to be mentally alert, like driving.

Having said this, it's not uncommon that your doctor may recommend that you use two or more drugs that have the potential to depress CNS function if clinically appropriate. It is just important to recognize that the risk of side effects may increase when these types of drugs are combined

Now, since you mentioned taking Benadryl only at night to help you sleep, this interaction may not affect you as much, but you still want to be cautious, and it would be prudent to start at a low dose of either drug and separate their dosing.

If fact, if you want to avoid their additive effects as much as you can, it would be prudent to separate their dosing.

Soma lasts around 4 to 8 hours per dose, while Benadryl lasts about 4 to 6 hours per dose so you should separate them by an appropriate amount of time (4 to 8 hours).

Drug Details

If you are looking for more information on either Benadryl or Soma, you can check out our drug detail pages:

• Benadryl (diphenhydramine) Information
• Soma (carisoprodol) Information

You can also reach out to us directly and a pharmacist would be more than happy to answer your question!

Final Words

Thanks for contacting us and I hope this helped!