Facts about drinking alcohol

Drinking and driving has never been a good idea; people are seriously injured or die because of this. We have lost too many lives to drinking and driving.  Here are some facts about drinking.



I hope you read and understand because time is the only thing that will sober you up! 

The average person metabolizes alcohol at the rate of about one drink per hour. Only time will sober a person up. Drinking strong coffee, exercising or taking a cold shower will not help.   (Michigan State University. “Basic Alcohol Information.” East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University, 2003.)

The speed of alcohol absorption affects the rate at which one becomes drunk. Unlike foods, alcohol does not have to be slowly digested. As a person drinks faster than the alcohol can be eliminated, the drug accumulates in the body, resulting in higher and higher levels of alcohol in the blood. (Narcotic Educational Foundation of America. “Alcohol: A Potent Drug.” Santa Clarita, CA: Narcotic Educational Foundation of America, 2002.)

The average person metabolizes alcohol at the rate of about one drink per hour. Only time will sober a person up. Drinking strong coffee, exercising or taking a cold shower will not help.  (Michigan State University. “Basic Alcohol Information.” East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University, 2003.)

Remember:  sobering up takes TIME!!!  Coffee does not work.  If you are a designated driver please do not think you can have a "few" and switch to coffee.  Here are the dangers of thinking coffee can sober you up:

The dangers of this:  It makes you more alert so you will think you are sober and able to drive.  As the Mayo Clinic states:

"Coffee's about as helpful as a cold shower or a brisk walk in sobering you up. That is, it's not helpful at all!"

According to Bill Hendrick (WebMD Health News): Gulping down coffee won’t sober you up if you’re drunk, but it may make you awake enough to be dangerous, new research suggests.

Researchers draw that conclusion from laboratory experiments on mice, in which caffeine made drunken rodents more alert but didn't reverse learning problems caused by alcohol. Their study is published in the journal Behavioral Neuroscience.

“The myth about coffee’s sobering powers is particularly important to debunk because the co-use of caffeine and alcohol could actually lead to poor decisions with disastrous outcomes,” Thomas Gould, PhD, of Temple University and one of the study authors, says in a news release. “People who have consumed only alcohol, who feel tired and intoxicated, may be more likely to acknowledge that they are drunk.”
Gould tells WebMD in an email that "coffee may reduce the sedative effects of alcohol, which could give the false impression that people are not as intoxicated as they really are."

So what does sober you up?  TIME and of course stop drinking.  Remember what we see in the movies isn't real.  Be safe when you are drinking, be safe when you are driving and never combine the two.

Adults drank too much and got behind the wheel about 112 million times in 2010 - that is almost 300,000 incidents of drinking and driving each day.  (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, October 2011)

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