Being drunk typically lasts anywhere from 2 to 6 hours, depending on how much you drank, your body size, and whether you ate beforehand. Your liver clears alcohol at a roughly fixed rate of about 0.02% BAC per hour, which works out to about one standard drink per hour. So if you had four drinks in two hours, you’re looking at roughly 3 to 4 hours from your last drink before you’re back to zero.
Why the Timeline Varies So Much
The range people report online (everything from “I was fine in two hours” to “I felt drunk for six hours”) isn’t exaggeration. It reflects real biological differences. Your liver breaks down alcohol using enzymes, and the activity of those enzymes varies up to threefold between individuals. Genetics play a major role: certain gene variants common in East Asian populations cause a buildup of a toxic intermediate molecule during alcohol processing, which is why some people flush red and feel sick quickly. Other variants found across different ethnic backgrounds speed up elimination noticeably.
Beyond genetics, the biggest controllable factors are body weight, biological sex, food intake, and how fast you drank. Women generally reach higher blood alcohol levels than men at the same dose because of differences in body water content and enzyme levels. A 130-pound person drinking three beers will be significantly more intoxicated, and for longer, than a 200-pound person drinking the same amount.
How Food Changes the Timeline
Eating before you drink is the most commonly repeated advice on Reddit threads about this topic, and the science backs it up, though not quite the way most people think. In a controlled study where subjects drank the same amount of alcohol on a full stomach versus after a six-hour fast, the peak breath alcohol level was significantly lower after a meal. But here’s the surprising part: the total time to reach zero was nearly identical in both groups, around five hours. Food doesn’t help you sober up faster. It lowers the peak, so you feel less intensely drunk, but the alcohol still takes roughly the same time to leave your system.
What Type of Drink Matters
Spirits hit faster than beer or wine. In a study where participants consumed the same amount of alcohol as vodka-tonic, wine, or beer, peak blood alcohol arrived at about 36 minutes for vodka, 54 minutes for wine, and 62 minutes for beer. This means liquor gets you to “most drunk” faster, which can make the experience feel shorter and more intense. Beer and wine produce a slower, more gradual curve. The total duration of intoxication is similar if the alcohol content is the same, but the shape of the experience differs.
A Rough Hour-by-Hour Breakdown
Here’s a practical way to think about it. Say you have four standard drinks over two hours on a moderately full stomach:
- Hour 0 to 1: You’re still absorbing alcohol from your last drink. BAC is climbing. This is when you feel the strongest effects.
- Hour 1 to 2: BAC peaks and begins a slow decline. You still feel clearly intoxicated but may notice the “rising” sensation has leveled off.
- Hour 2 to 4: Gradual sobering. Coordination and judgment are still impaired even if you feel more clearheaded. This is the stage where people commonly overestimate how sober they are.
- Hour 4 to 6: Most people feel functionally normal, though BAC may not be at zero yet. Residual effects like mild fogginess or fatigue are common.
A single standard drink (one 12-ounce beer, one 5-ounce glass of wine, or one 1.5-ounce shot) contains about 14 grams of pure alcohol. Each one adds roughly an hour to your timeline.
Why You Still Feel Bad After Sobering Up
A common frustration in Reddit threads is feeling terrible long after the drunk feeling fades. That’s the hangover, which is a separate process from intoxication itself. Once your liver finishes processing the alcohol, you’re left dealing with dehydration from increased urination, an inflammatory immune response (your body reacts to alcohol like a mild toxin), and irritation of your stomach lining. Hangovers can last up to 24 hours and often feel worse than the actual intoxication, especially after heavy drinking.
Drinking on an empty stomach, mixing alcohol with nicotine, or drinking dark liquors (which contain higher levels of congeners, byproducts of fermentation) all tend to make hangovers worse and longer-lasting.
Things That Don’t Actually Speed It Up
Coffee, cold showers, and “sweating it out” don’t change your liver’s processing speed. Nothing you do after drinking will meaningfully accelerate alcohol elimination. Your liver works at its own fixed pace. Coffee might make you feel more alert, but your BAC and impairment stay the same. The only thing that sobers you up is time.
Drinking water between alcoholic drinks won’t speed elimination either, but it does reduce dehydration, which means you’ll likely feel better the next morning. It’s one of the few interventions that actually helps with the aftermath, even though it doesn’t shorten the drunk itself.