With the advent of
antibiotics to treat sexually transmitted diseases came a word of
advice: don’t drink while taking the pills. The reason given for
this was (and still is) that it will stop the medication working.
This is not true. Most antibiotics are not hindered in any way by
the consumption of alcohol, though it may cause a stomach upset
depending on the type. In fact, only five of the more than one
hundred types of antibiotics really do have adverse effects when
taken with alcohol.
The real reason for telling people not to drink is that people
suffering from STDs would most likely be the type to have casual sex
when drunk. Stopping them drinking for a short period of time would
often help to prevent them from spreading their illness before
others caught it.
Because of high costs and low profitability, very little research is
done these days in the field of antibiotics. It has been nine years
since a new form of antibiotic has been developed.