If you’ve had too much to drink, the most important things you can do right now are stop drinking alcohol, start sipping water, eat something if you can keep it down, and give your body time. There’s no way to speed up how fast your liver processes alcohol. Your body clears roughly 0.015 to 0.020 blood alcohol concentration per hour, which means if you’re at the legal limit of 0.08, it takes four to five hours to reach zero. Everything else is damage control while you wait.
If Someone Is Passed Out or Unresponsive
Before anything else, rule out a medical emergency. Alcohol poisoning kills, and the line between “very drunk” and “dangerously overdosed” isn’t always obvious. Call 911 immediately if you see any of these signs: mental confusion or stupor, inability to wake the person up, seizures, slow breathing (fewer than 8 breaths per minute), long gaps between breaths (10 seconds or more), vomiting while unconscious, clammy skin, bluish or pale skin color, or extremely low body temperature.
While waiting for help, you can reduce the risk of choking by placing the person on their side. Raise the arm closest to you above their head, then gently roll them toward you while protecting their head from hitting the floor. Tilt their head up slightly to keep the airway open, and tuck their nearest hand under their cheek to hold that position. This keeps vomit from blocking their airway. Check on them frequently. Never leave someone alone “to sleep it off” if they’ve lost consciousness.
What Actually Helps Right Now
Alcohol suppresses the hormone that tells your kidneys to hold onto water, so you lose fluids and minerals faster than normal. Magnesium and phosphorus are particularly depleted. That fluid loss is a major driver of the headache, nausea, and fatigue you’ll feel later. Drinking water or an electrolyte beverage between now and bedtime won’t prevent a hangover entirely, but it reduces the severity. Alternate sips of water with whatever else you’re doing. Sports drinks or coconut water can help replace lost minerals.
Eating is also worth the effort. Food slows the absorption of any alcohol still in your stomach and gives your body fuel to work with. Bland, easy foods like toast, crackers, or bananas are good starting points if your stomach feels shaky. A more substantial meal with some protein and fat is even better if you can handle it.
Things That Won’t Sober You Up
Coffee, cold showers, and exercise are persistent myths. None of them reduce your blood alcohol level. One animal study found that a low dose of caffeine slightly increased alcohol elimination rates in rats, but the effect was highly dose-specific and hasn’t translated into any practical recommendation for humans. In reality, caffeine just masks drowsiness while leaving your coordination and judgment equally impaired. That combination can actually make things worse by convincing you that you’re more capable than you are.
The only thing that sobers you up is time. Your liver processes alcohol at a fixed rate regardless of what you eat, drink, or do.
Choosing the Right Painkiller
If your head is already pounding, your choice of painkiller matters. Acetaminophen (Tylenol) and alcohol are both processed by the liver, and combining them increases the production of a toxic byproduct that can cause liver damage. This risk is especially high for heavy or frequent drinkers, but it applies to anyone with alcohol still in their system.
Ibuprofen (Advil, Motrin) and other anti-inflammatory painkillers carry a different risk. They irritate the stomach lining, and alcohol does the same thing. Even one drink per day increases the risk of gastrointestinal bleeding from these drugs by about 37%. If you’ve been drinking heavily, that risk is higher.
Neither option is perfectly safe while alcohol is in your system. If you need something for a headache, ibuprofen is generally considered the lesser risk for occasional drinkers, but taking it on an empty, alcohol-soaked stomach isn’t ideal. Eating first and drinking water may reduce your headache enough to skip the pill entirely.
Preparing for Tomorrow
What you do before bed shapes how you feel in the morning. Drink a full glass of water before you lie down, and keep another one on the nightstand. Eat something if you haven’t already. Set an alarm so you don’t sleep through obligations, but give yourself as much rest as possible. Sleep quality after heavy drinking is poor, so you’ll need more hours than usual to feel functional.
When you wake up, the hangover is driven by a combination of dehydration, inflammation, and the toxic byproducts your body created while breaking down alcohol. Some of those byproducts, called congeners, vary by drink type. Dark liquors like bourbon, brandy, cognac, and dark whiskey contain high levels of congeners, as do red wine and tequila. Clear drinks like vodka, gin, light rum, and white wine contain far less. If you drank mostly dark spirits, your hangover is likely to be worse than if you’d consumed the same amount of a clear spirit.
There’s no instant cure the next morning either. Rehydrate steadily, eat when you can, and rest. Most hangovers resolve within 24 hours, though severe ones after very heavy drinking can linger into a second day.
Recognizing a Pattern
If you’re searching this topic because it keeps happening, that’s worth sitting with honestly. Regularly drinking past your limit is one of the earliest signs that your relationship with alcohol is shifting. Tolerance builds quietly: needing more drinks to feel the same effect, feeling fine during the night but wrecked the next day, or repeatedly drinking more than you planned are all signals your body is adapting to a level of consumption it shouldn’t have to.
Tracking your drinks over a few weeks, even in a simple notes app, can reveal patterns that are hard to see in the moment. The NIAAA defines low-risk drinking as no more than 4 drinks on any single day for men and 3 for women, with weekly limits of 14 and 7 respectively. If you’re regularly exceeding those numbers, cutting back now is significantly easier than cutting back later.