Drinking increases your blood alcohol concentration (BAC), of course, and it will then go back down in town. The exact impact of one drink depends on a few different factors, such as a person’s height, weight, and gender. Typically speaking, one drink will raise someone’s BAC a bit more if they are smaller in size, if they haven’t eaten recently or if they are a woman.
However, that BAC will generally decline at the same amount for everyone – though slightly faster for women than men. It really just depends on your metabolism. But for the vast majority of individuals, alcohol is metabolized at a rate of 0.015% per hour. A single drink could increase someone’s BAC more than this, but that doesn’t mean they can decrease it any faster.
Aren’t there ways to speed up your sobriety?
In some cases, people will be looking to reduce their BAC a bit faster, perhaps because they want to drive a vehicle. They may decide to drink a cup of hot coffee, drink a cup of water, eat a meal or take a cold shower.
These tactics don’t work, though, because the alcohol is already in your system. It can’t be diluted once your BAC has already increased. The only thing that causes that number to drop is time, so taking the time to drink coffee or eat a meal might be beneficial, but only because of the time it takes.
Have you been arrested on drunk driving charges, and are you worried about what it is going mean for your future? You have legal options, and you need to know exactly what steps to take moving forward.