Alcohol is typically processed by your body at a rate of about one standard drink per hour. A standard drink in the United States contains 0.6 ounces (14 grams) of pure alcohol, which equals roughly one 12-ounce beer, one 5-ounce glass of wine, or one 1.5-ounce shot of liquor. But “how long it stays” depends on what you mean: whether you’re asking about when you’ll feel sober, when a blood test can detect it, or when more advanced screening methods can still pick it up.
How Your Body Breaks Down Alcohol
Your liver does nearly all the work. It uses two enzymes in sequence. The first converts alcohol into a toxic byproduct called acetaldehyde, which is a known carcinogen. The second enzyme quickly breaks acetaldehyde down into acetate, a much less harmful substance that your body eventually converts into water and carbon dioxide for easy elimination.
This process is fixed. Your liver works through alcohol at a steady pace, and nothing speeds it up. Not coffee, not food, not water, not a cold shower. Once alcohol is in your bloodstream, you simply have to wait for your liver to do its job.
Detection Windows by Test Type
Different tests can detect alcohol for different lengths of time after your last drink:
- Blood: Up to about 12 hours.
- Breath: Roughly the same window as blood, since breathalyzers measure alcohol that passes from your blood into your lungs.
- Standard urine tests: Slightly longer than blood, generally up to 12 to 24 hours depending on the amount consumed.
- EtG urine tests: These detect a byproduct of alcohol metabolism rather than alcohol itself. After a few drinks, EtG can show up in urine for up to 48 hours. After heavier drinking, it can be detected for 72 hours or longer.
- Hair follicle tests: These can reveal a pattern of alcohol use over a much longer period, potentially months.
The EtG test is the one that catches people off guard. Because it tracks a metabolic byproduct rather than ethanol directly, it has a much wider detection window. It’s commonly used in court-ordered monitoring, workplace programs, and treatment settings.
What Affects How Quickly You Process Alcohol
The “one drink per hour” rule is an average. Several factors shift your personal rate in either direction.
Body Composition and Biological Sex
Your body’s ratio of water, fat, and muscle matters because alcohol dissolves in water. People with more body water dilute alcohol more effectively, resulting in a lower blood alcohol concentration from the same number of drinks. Men on average have larger body sizes, more muscle mass, and less body fat than women. This means women generally absorb more alcohol and take longer to process it, reaching higher blood alcohol levels after drinking the same amount.
Whether You’ve Eaten
On an empty stomach, alcohol reaches your bloodstream in about five minutes. Food in your stomach slows absorption significantly, which means your blood alcohol level rises more gradually and peaks lower. This doesn’t change the total amount of alcohol your liver has to process, but it spreads the workload out and reduces the intensity of its effects.
Age
As you get older, your liver becomes less efficient at processing alcohol. The enzymes responsible for breaking down ethanol are produced in smaller quantities and don’t work as effectively. Years of filtering everything your body encounters takes a cumulative toll on liver function. This means the same number of drinks at 60 will keep your blood alcohol level elevated longer than it did at 30.
Liver Health
Interestingly, even significant liver disease doesn’t always slow alcohol metabolism. Research published in Gastroenterology found that patients with advanced alcoholic cirrhosis who did not have jaundice still metabolized alcohol at a normal rate, despite clear clinical evidence of serious liver damage. Only those with the most advanced disease, indicated by visible jaundice, showed a meaningfully reduced rate. So liver damage has to be quite severe before it noticeably changes how long alcohol lingers in your system.
A Practical Timeline
If you have three drinks over the course of an evening, your liver needs roughly three hours from your last drink to fully clear the alcohol, though the actual time varies based on everything described above. Many people underestimate this. A night of heavier drinking, say six or seven drinks, could mean alcohol is still measurable in your blood well into the next morning.
The effects you feel, like impaired coordination and slowed reaction time, track closely with your blood alcohol level. But even after you stop “feeling drunk,” your BAC may still be above zero. This is why people sometimes fail a breathalyzer the morning after drinking, hours after they felt fine. Your subjective sense of sobriety returns faster than your body actually finishes clearing alcohol from your system.
For anyone facing a drug or alcohol screening, the type of test matters enormously. A standard blood or breath test gives a relatively short window. An EtG urine test extends that to two or three days. And hair testing can look back months. Knowing which test you’re taking changes the practical answer to “how long does alcohol stay in your body” from hours to potentially weeks.