Claudia was doing well. The Prozac she'd been prescribed was working totreat her depression. She was handling a high-stress job, enjoying life as anewlywed, and making progress in therapy.

Then she went to a birthday party for her boss. She knew alcohol wasoff-limits for people, like herself, on anti-depressants. "Alcohol is adepressant," her psychiatrist had warned. "It could counteract theProzac."

But believing the consequences would be minor, Claudia (not her real name)ordered a margarita. By the time she'd finished a second one, she was drunk.And she was flirting with a woman. "I was a different person --aggressive," she says.

The next day Claudia was too sick to work and had to cancel an appointmentwith her psychiatrist. Shocked and mortified by her own behavior, she sharedthe story with her doctor. That's when Claudia heard for the first time thatProzac, when mixed with alcohol, can make a person hypersexual and manic."I wish I had known that to begin with," she says. "I would havestuck with water."

Misusing Prescription Drugs

Claudia was lucky she was only left with a bruised reputation and a badhangover. Taking prescription drugs in a wrong way can lead to serious problems-- even poisoning. According to a 1995 study published in the Archives ofInternal Medicine, medicine-related illnesses cost $76 billion per year inincreased hospital stays, lost wages, and death.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) estimates that as many as half thepeople taking medications at any given time are doing so incorrectly. Most ofthese people are only delaying their own recovery. But experts say that asmedications like Prozac become increasingly sophisticated and more commonlyprescribed, both doctors and patients need to be better educated on theirproper use.

The FDA Targets Women

Women especially need to hear this message, says Audrey Sheppard of theFDA's Office of Women's Health. The agency is targeting women with a new publicawareness campaign called "Take Time to Care." Statistics show thatwomen make more trips to the doctor than men, use more medications, and areoften the ones who administer medications to the children and the elderly intheir families.

"There are a lot of ways that well-meaning people, even well-educatedpeople, can goof," says Sheppard. "It's pretty common to not haveenough time with your doctor. He or she may not take the time to go over how totake your medications," she says. Simple mistakes happen, such as nottaking the time to read a label before popping a pill. "It's a lot easierto take your medicines wrong than right."

More Common, More Risky

When it comes to improper use, are some medications more culpable thanothers? Yes, says Amy Law, M.D., an Oncologist at Tufts New England MedicalCenter. "Patients and their caregivers make the most mistakes withmedications with which they feel the most comfortable," she says. Law saysshe can be fairly certain that her cancer patients will take their chemotherapymedications exactly as prescribed. "But," she says, "if I were toprescribe an antibiotic to a non-cancer patient, I can't be sure that they willtake all 14 days of it."