Myth 1: You can have one alcoholic drink an hour and still drive home.
You’ve probably heard the theory that our bodies naturally process a drink an hour. But actually, says Warren, it’s more like two hours. “The average rate of alcohol metabolism is 100 milligrams of alcohol per kilogram of bodyweight per hour,” he says. “For a typical 160-pound man, this would translate into 7 grams of alcohol in an hour. The so-called standard serving, a 12-ounce bottle of bear, is 14 grams of alcohol, so it would take two hours to fully metabolize it. For most people, if you drink one drink an hour, you’re going to become more and more impaired each hour.” For that 160-pound person, he says, at the rate of one drink an hour, four hours of drinking is enough to get you to a blood alcohol concentration of .08 — aka legally drunk. Myths About Drinking Alcohol continues..
You’ve probably heard the theory that our bodies naturally process a drink an hour. But actually, says Warren, it’s more like two hours. “The average rate of alcohol metabolism is 100 milligrams of alcohol per kilogram of bodyweight per hour,” he says. “For a typical 160-pound man, this would translate into 7 grams of alcohol in an hour. The so-called standard serving, a 12-ounce bottle of bear, is 14 grams of alcohol, so it would take two hours to fully metabolize it. For most people, if you drink one drink an hour, you’re going to become more and more impaired each hour.” For that 160-pound person, he says, at the rate of one drink an hour, four hours of drinking is enough to get you to a blood alcohol concentration of .08 — aka legally drunk. Myths About Drinking Alcohol continues..
Myth 2: You can sober up quickly if you have to.
Nothing speeds up the process, not a hot cup of coffee nor a cold shower. Caffeine can actually do more harm than good, says Warren. “Caffeine is a stimulant, and because of that, a person’s going to be more awake but just as much impaired,” he says. “It can give an individual a false degree of confidence that they are not impaired,” he says, which could lead to riskier behavior and dangerous decisions.
