am i still drunk?

Only time lowers blood alcohol

How to sober up: what works and what is myth

The honest version first: nothing sobers you up fast. Your blood alcohol concentration (BAC) falls at roughly one drink per hour, a pace nothing changes.2 Below is what the folk remedies actually do, and the timeline for the only method that works.

The nightHow much, and what it costs you

About how many US standard drinks?

Roughly 84 g of alcohol. Not sure what you drank counts as?

Time until BAC likely zero

7 to 20 hours

Measured from your last drink, for a 75 kg adult. The spread is the published range of body-water ratios and elimination rates, which is as narrow as honest gets.

Nearer your own weight:

  • 60 kg / 130 lb9 to 24 h
  • 75 kg / 165 lb7 to 20 h
  • 90 kg / 200 lb6 to 16 h
Now try to speed it upTap one

Nothing applied yet. Tap one you have heard works and see what it actually does, and what it buys you.

Only time lowers blood alcohol. The best thing you can do with those hours is sleep and rehydrate properly, neither of which speeds up the clock but both of which change how the morning goes.

Only a breathalyzer or blood test can measure your actual BAC. This is an illustration for a stated reference body, not an estimate for yours. Put your own night in for that, and see the math and its limits.

Never drive after drinking. If you are wondering whether you are sober enough to drive, the answer is no.

That is a typical adult, not you. The sober-up estimator takes what you actually drank, when you stopped, and your own weight, and gives a window with the uncertainty left in.

How to sober up fast

There is no fast. Alcohol leaves your body through enzymes, mainly alcohol dehydrogenase in the liver, which saturate early in a night of drinking and then run at maximum speed until the queue is done.3 That maximum is about 0.015 percentage points of BAC per hour: close to one US standard drink. It is the same while you sleep, jog, shower, or drink espresso. Anyone selling a shortcut is selling a feeling.

What you can control is the aftermath: how hydrated, fed, and rested you are when the alcohol finally clears. That is worth doing well, and it is a different project from lowering BAC.

The myths, one by one

MethodVerdictWhat it actually does
Coffee or an energy drinkDoes not lower BACCaffeine blocks the sleepy feeling, not the alcohol. The result is a wide-awake drunk person, which studies suggest is more dangerous, because you feel more capable than you are.
A cold showerDoes not lower BACStartling, briefly refreshing, and metabolically irrelevant. Your liver does not check the thermostat.
Eating after you stoppedDoes not lower BACFood matters before and during drinking, when it slows absorption. Once alcohol is in your blood, a kebab is comfort, not chemistry.
Sweating it out with exerciseDoes not lower BACOnly 2 to 5 percent of alcohol leaves through sweat, breath, and urine combined. A workout while impaired mostly adds injury risk to a hangover.
Drinking lots of waterDoes not lower BACExcellent for the hangover, irrelevant to the number. Alcohol is not diluted out of blood by drinking water; it is metabolized by enzymes running at a fixed pace.
Making yourself vomitDoes not lower BACOnly removes alcohol still in the stomach, which 30 to 90 minutes after drinking is not much. It does nothing about what is already in your blood.
TimeThe only thing that worksRoughly one US standard drink cleared per hour, every hour, regardless of everything above. This is the entire secret.

The caffeine row deserves its asterisk: alert-but-drunk people take more risks than sleepy-but-drunk ones, which has been measured.4

What to do with the waiting hours

  • Rehydrate properly. Alcohol is a diuretic, and most of a hangover is fluid and electrolyte debt. Water works; water with electrolytes works better. Our sister site has a free homemade electrolyte drink calculator for exactly this morning.
  • Eat when your stomach agrees. It will not lower your BAC, but it steadies blood sugar, which is part of why you feel wretched. Every hangover remedy, graded by evidence, covers the rest of the morning.
  • Sleep, ideally more of it. Alcohol fragments sleep and suppresses the deep stages, so you wake under-slept even after a long night in bed. SleepTools covers the repair job.
  • Do not drive. Not because a page told you, but because no estimate on this site can clear you and neither can how you feel.

Never drive after drinking. If you are wondering whether you are sober enough to drive, the answer is no.

When it is not a hangover: alcohol poisoning

Confusion, vomiting while drowsy, slow or irregular breathing, blue-tinged or clammy skin, seizures, or someone who cannot be woken are signs of alcohol overdose, and BAC can keep rising after a person passes out.1 That is an emergency call, not a sleep-it-off situation. In the US dial 911; in the Netherlands and the EU, 112.

Frequently asked questions

How do you sober up fast?

You cannot. Alcohol is cleared by liver enzymes that run at a fixed pace of roughly one US standard drink per hour, and no drink, food, shower, or supplement changes that rate. Everything marketed as a fast way to sober up changes how you feel, not your blood alcohol. The only honest strategy is to stop drinking, hydrate for the hangover, and give it the hours it needs.

Does coffee sober you up?

No. Caffeine counteracts sleepiness, so you feel sharper, but reaction time, judgment, and blood alcohol are unchanged. Researchers call the result a wide-awake drunk. Feeling sober while being impaired is more dangerous than knowing you are drunk, which is why coffee is the worst of the myths rather than the most harmless one.

Does throwing up help you sober up?

Barely, and only within the first hour or so. Vomiting removes alcohol that is still in the stomach, but absorption into the blood starts within minutes of drinking. Whatever has already been absorbed is beyond reach. If someone cannot stop vomiting, or vomits while drowsy or passed out, that is an emergency, not a sobering-up technique.

How long does it take to sober up completely?

Count your standard drinks and divide by roughly one per hour, then add a margin because bodies differ: the published elimination range spans 0.012 to 0.020 percentage points of BAC per hour. Six drinks means roughly six to twelve hours after the last one. The tool on this page does that arithmetic for a typical adult, and lets you try every remedy against it to watch the number refuse to move.

Does sleep help you sober up?

Sleep does not speed up elimination, but it is still the best use of the hours the process takes: alcohol wrecks sleep quality, impairment while unconscious is harmless, and being rested improves how you handle the hangover. Sleeping it off is correct advice about comfort and safety, as long as nobody treats waking up as proof of being sober.

What actually helps a hangover, then?

Water and electrolytes for the dehydration, food when your stomach accepts it, and time for everything else. None of this lowers BAC; it treats the aftermath. Rehydration is genuinely worth doing properly, which is what our hydration site covers in detail.

Related tools and answers

Am I still drunk?

The estimator: when your BAC likely reaches zero, as an honest window.

Hangover cures

The other half of the morning: every remedy graded by what the evidence supports.

How long does a hangover last?

14 to 23 hours, and it starts when your blood alcohol reaches zero.

BAC calculator

Blood alcohol for right now, as a range, with the decay curve drawn.

How long does alcohol stay in your system?

Blood, breath, urine, saliva, hair: the detection windows.

Standard Drink Calculator

Count the night correctly; cocktails are the usual undercount.

What does BAC stand for?

Blood alcohol concentration, what the levels mean, and the legal limits.

Am I too drunk to drive?

Where the sobering-up question usually leads, answered without a number.

How these estimates work

The Widmark formula, every assumption, and every error source, cited.

Sources

  1. NIAAA. Understanding the dangers of alcohol overdose.
  2. Jones, A.W. (2010). Evidence-based survey of the elimination rates of ethanol from blood. Forensic Science International.
  3. Cederbaum, A.I. (2012). Alcohol metabolism. Clinics in Liver Disease.
  4. Marczinski, C.A. & Fillmore, M.T. (2006). Clubgoers and their trendy cocktails: implications of mixing caffeine into alcohol. Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology.