How long you stay drunk depends mainly on how much you drank, but the rough math is straightforward: your liver processes about one standard drink per hour. If you had four drinks over two hours, you can expect to feel the effects for roughly two to four more hours after your last sip. The more you drank, the longer the line your liver has to work through.
The One-Drink-Per-Hour Rule
Your liver breaks down alcohol at a remarkably steady pace, roughly one standard drink every hour. That rate barely changes no matter what you do. A “standard drink” means 12 ounces of regular beer, 5 ounces of wine, or 1.5 ounces of liquor. Each of these contains about the same amount of pure alcohol.
Your blood alcohol concentration (BAC) drops by approximately 0.015% per hour. So if you stopped drinking at a BAC of 0.08% (the legal driving limit in most U.S. states), it would take roughly five to six hours to reach zero. At 0.12%, you’re looking at about eight hours. These numbers assume average metabolism in a healthy adult, and individual variation can shift the timeline by an hour or more in either direction.
Why It Lasts Longer for Some People
Sex is one of the biggest factors. Men produce a version of the alcohol-processing enzyme in their stomachs that can reduce alcohol absorption by about 30% before it ever reaches the bloodstream. Women produce almost none of this enzyme in their stomachs, and the version in their livers works less efficiently. The practical result: after the same number of drinks, women typically reach a higher BAC and stay intoxicated longer.
Body size and composition matter too. Alcohol dissolves in water, not fat. A person with more muscle (which holds more water) will dilute the same amount of alcohol across a larger volume, reaching a lower peak BAC. A smaller person or someone with a higher body fat percentage concentrates that alcohol into less water, pushing BAC higher and extending the time it takes to come back down.
Age changes the equation as well. Older adults have a lower total volume of body water and slower elimination rates. After the same number of drinks, an older person will reach a higher BAC than a younger person and take longer to sober up. Reduced reflexes, hearing, and vision with age can also amplify the feeling of impairment even at relatively low levels.
Food Makes a Real Difference
Drinking on an empty stomach lets alcohol rush into your bloodstream quickly, pushing your BAC to its peak faster and higher. Eating before or while you drink slows absorption significantly because food keeps alcohol in your stomach longer, giving your body more time to start processing it before a large dose hits all at once. The total amount of alcohol your liver has to handle stays the same, but spreading out that absorption means a lower peak BAC and a shorter window of noticeable intoxication. A full meal before drinking is one of the few things that genuinely changes how drunk you get and how long it lasts.
What Won’t Sober You Up
Coffee, cold showers, fresh air, and exercise are all popular strategies that do essentially nothing to speed up alcohol metabolism. Caffeine won’t help your liver work faster. A cold shower might jolt you awake, but unless your liver hops out and takes the shower with you, your BAC stays exactly where it was. Exercise does cause you to exhale and sweat out tiny amounts of alcohol, but the effect is negligible.
Time is the only thing that actually works. No supplement, home remedy, or trick meaningfully accelerates your liver’s fixed processing rate.
You Can Feel Impaired After You’re “Sober”
Here’s something most people don’t realize: even after your BAC drops back to zero, your brain hasn’t fully recovered. A study testing cognitive performance during hangovers found significant impairment across nearly every measure, including reaction time, working memory, attention, and recall. Participants also scored lower on alertness and mood. This wasn’t a group of college students either; the results held in a broader adult sample.
This means the morning after heavy drinking, you may test at 0.00% on a breathalyzer but still have slower reflexes and worse judgment than normal. If you drank heavily the night before, the functional effects can linger well into the next day.
How Long Alcohol Shows Up on Tests
Even after you feel completely sober, alcohol can still be detected depending on the type of test. A standard blood test picks up alcohol for about 12 hours after your last drink. Breath tests work on a similar timeline. Urine tests can detect alcohol somewhat longer, and certain specialized urine tests look for alcohol byproducts that persist for up to 72 hours or more.
For anyone concerned about a morning-after reading, the math is simple but unforgiving. If your last drink was at midnight and you were at a BAC of 0.10%, your body won’t finish processing all of it until roughly 10:30 or 11:00 the next morning. A breathalyzer at 7 a.m. would still show alcohol in your system.
When Your Liver Can’t Keep Up
The one-drink-per-hour estimate assumes a healthy liver. Chronic heavy drinking damages the specific pathways your liver uses to break down alcohol. Over time, those pathways become overwhelmed and less efficient. People with fatty liver disease or more advanced liver damage process alcohol noticeably more slowly, meaning the same number of drinks keeps them intoxicated longer than it used to. If you’ve noticed that alcohol seems to hit harder or last longer than it did in the past, reduced liver function is a possible explanation worth taking seriously.
A Quick Reference by Number of Drinks
- 2 drinks: Roughly 2 to 3 hours from your last sip to reach a BAC of zero.
- 4 drinks: Roughly 4 to 6 hours, depending on how fast you drank them.
- 6 drinks: Roughly 6 to 8 hours. If you stop drinking at midnight, you may not be fully clear until morning.
- 8 or more drinks: 8 to 12+ hours. Heavy drinking in the evening can easily mean you’re still processing alcohol when you wake up.
These estimates assume an average-sized adult. Smaller body size, female sex, older age, an empty stomach, or liver issues can push every number higher. The safest approach if you need to drive or perform at full capacity is to give yourself more time than the math suggests, because cognitive impairment lingers even after the alcohol itself is gone.