What is Alcohol? And how long does it stay in your system?
Many people ask how long will alcohol stay in your system, and the answer depends on several factors.
Alcohol is a drink made from fermented grains or fruit, and it contains ethanol — a substance that classifies it as a drug. While many people are familiar with how alcohol feels in the moment, fewer understand how long alcohol stays in your system after drinking.
As a depressant, alcohol enters the body’s system and slows down the different vital functions. This can lead to slurred speech, slowed reaction time, unsteady movement, confusion, and other impairments — especially when consumed in large amounts.
Interestingly, people often feel a mild sense of stimulation or a “buzz” after one or two drinks. But once the body starts processing more alcohol than it can eliminate, the effects of alcohol’s depressant properties become more apparent — and how long alcohol stays in your system becomes more important for your health and safety. Blood, hair, saliva and urine are all different for when it comes to how long alcohol can be detected in your system. Read on to learn more.
What Are the Effects of Alcohol?
- Lowered inhibitions
- Slurred speech
- Poor coordination
- Confusion
- Memory loss
- Difficulty concentrating
- Difficulty breathing.
How Long Does Alcohol Stay in Your System?
In the human body, alcohol is metabolized primarily by the liver. On average, the liver can process about one standard drink per hour. A standard drink typically contains around 14 grams of pure alcohol — about what you’d find in a 12 oz beer, 5 oz wine, or 1.5 oz liquor.
Some alcohol is also eliminated through breath, sweat, and urine. However, the amount of time alcohol stays in your system can vary depending on several factors: gender, weight, diet, overall health, and how quickly you drank.
Even though metabolism varies, alcohol can be detected in the blood for up to 6 hours, in saliva and breath for up to 24 hours, in urine for 12–72 hours, and in hair for up to 90 days.
Alcohol is detectable in the bloodstream for up to 6 hours after your last drink. This is the window where BAC levels can be measured using blood tests, often in medical or legal situations. The exact amount of time alcohol remains in your blood depends on your weight, metabolism, and how much you consumed.
Alcohol can be detected in breath and saliva for 12 to 24 hours. Breathalyzers measure the alcohol content exhaled from the lungs and estimate blood alcohol concentration (BAC). Saliva tests, often used in roadside or employment screenings, reflect recent alcohol use but may vary by test type and individual hydration levels.
Urine tests can detect alcohol for 12 to 72 hours, depending on the testing method. Standard urine tests detect ethyl glucuronide (EtG), a byproduct of alcohol. Factors like hydration, body fat, and frequency of drinking can affect how long alcohol can be detected in urine.
Alcohol use can be detected in hair for up to 90 days. Hair tests don’t show recent impairment, but they do reflect long-term drinking patterns. These tests detect alcohol metabolites, not alcohol itself, making them common in legal, court, or workplace settings.
How Does the Body Digest and Metabolize Alcohol?
When alcohol goes through the digestive tract, it first hits the stomach and small intestine’s tissue linings and the liver. Once digested and metabolized, alcohol runs through the body’s bloodstream and then eventually goes to the brain.
The liver is the bodily organ that metabolizes alcohol. In the body of the average adult male, the human liver can metabolize around 1 drink of alcohol per hour.
Because alcohol is a liquid drug that the liver can metabolize quickly and essentially send straight to the body’s bloodstream and brain, it does not take long for alcohol to hit your system and make you feel its symptoms.
How Long After Drinking Alcohol Will You Feel Its Effects?
It takes the average healthy person around 15 to 45 minutes after drinking alcohol to feel its symptoms. One of the main ways to measure how much alcohol an individual has consumed is to measure that person’s blood alcohol level, or BAC.
One of the most common ways to measure alcohol in the body is by looking at blood alcohol concentration (BAC). BAC levels reflect how intoxicated a person is and how impaired their judgment and motor functions may be.
- At 0.05% BAC, you might feel relaxed but your coordination is already affected.
- At 0.07%, your ability to drive is significantly impaired.
- A BAC of 0.10% or higher indicates intoxication and increases the risk of alcohol poisoning, especially if large amounts are consumed quickly.
Why Does Everyone Process Alcohol Differently?
Alcohol affects each person differently because of factors like gender, weight, age, diet, medication, and overall health. These variables influence how your body absorbs, metabolizes, and eliminates alcohol — and how quickly your BAC levels rise.
Gender
Women typically have a higher liver volume per unit of lean body mass and lower water content than men. This means alcohol becomes more concentrated in the bloodstream, causing BAC to rise faster — even when consuming the same amount of alcohol.
Weight
People with higher body weight may dilute alcohol more effectively, leading to a slower rise in BAC. In contrast, individuals with lower weight feel the effects more quickly and intensely.
Age
As we age, our bodies process alcohol more slowly, and tolerance often decreases. Older adults may also take medications that interact negatively with alcohol.
Diet & Food Intake
Eating before or while drinking slows alcohol absorption, which can delay how quickly alcohol can be detected in your system. Drinking on an empty stomach often leads to quicker intoxication.
Speed of Consumption
Drinking several drinks quickly increases BAC levels rapidly and can raise the risk of alcohol poisoning — especially if your body can’t metabolize the alcohol fast enough.
Health & Medications
Chronic health issues, especially liver problems, can reduce the body’s ability to process alcohol. Some medications also slow metabolism or intensify alcohol’s effects.
Female bodies process and metabolize alcohol quicker than male bodies do is that women have a higher liver volume per unit of lean body mass. Because the liver is responsible for the metabolization of alcohol in the human body, having a higher liver volume causes the female body to metabolize and send alcohol to the bloodstream and the brain quicker than the male body.
Something else that affects the rate at which your body processes alcohol is weight. The more body weight you have, the more body mass that can absorb some of the alcohol that you drink prior to it reaching your liver, bloodstream, and brain. This means that a heavier person can consume more alcohol than a smaller person without it affecting him or her.
Age also affects the rate at which the human body processes alcohol. For example, the body of a young adolescent is much smaller and less developed than the body of an adult. As a result, the body of a young adolescent will process alcohol much quicker than that of an adult. This means that it will likely take a smaller number of drinks for a young adolescent to feel intoxicated than it would for an adult.
The more high-protein food you eat, the more substances that you have in your stomach that can absorb the alcohol that you consume. By having the food in your stomach absorb some of the alcohol that you consume, you are allowing less alcohol to go through your body’s bloodstream and brain. As a result, you will not get drunk as fast if you eat high-protein food around the time that you are drinking.
The speed at which you drink also has a large effect on how fast your body processes alcohol. For example, if you drink multiple drinks in one hour, your body will have to process large amounts of alcohol at one time. This will cause you to have a higher blood alcohol level.
On the other hand, if you slowly but surely have drinks throughout the day, your body will not have to process as much alcohol per hour. In return, your body will have a lower blood alcohol level.
Diseases, such as that of genetic enzyme deficiencies, can lower your body’s ability to process alcohol. As a result, drinking too much alcohol can be harmful to people with certain types of diseases. If you have a disease that you think may affect your body’s ability to process alcohol, speak with your doctor about your concerns prior to drinking.
How Long Does It Take to Sober Up?
There’s no quick fix to sober up — no amount of coffee, cold showers, or greasy food will speed up the process. The body eliminates alcohol at a steady rate: about one standard drink per hour.
As long as your alcohol intake exceeds your alcohol elimination rate, you will continue to feel the effects. Only time will lower your blood alcohol concentration (BAC).
Even if you no longer feel drunk, alcohol can still be detected in your system. Driving or making important decisions before your BAC returns to zero can still be risky — and illegal.
If someone has consumed a large amount of alcohol in a short time, especially leading to confusion, vomiting, or unconsciousness, they may be experiencing alcohol poisoning and need emergency help immediately.
We Are Here to Help!
If you are looking for a place to receive treatment for alcohol use disorder that focuses on both substance use issues and mental health, look no further than Sana Lake Recovery Center!
Here at Sana Lake, not only do we provide co-occurring recovery services that focus on both substance use issues and mental health, but we also craft all our treatment programs to the individual.
With alcohol addiction treatment programs that range from residential, to medication-assisted, partial-hospitalization, intensive outpatient, outpatient, detox, sober living, and more, we’ve got you covered.
At Sana Lake, we make sure to care, nurture, protect, and empathize with our members and put their needs first. With multiple locations in areas such as O’Fallon and Dittmer, Missouri, Sana Lake is the leading recovery center in the Midwest. With a certified and caring staff of professionals that work around the clock for our patients, feel free to contact us for help or a referral, or to schedule a tour with us anytime.
At the end of the day, we are here to help you have a successful recovery.
- https://www.drugfreeworld.org/drugfacts/alcohol.html
- https://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/aa46.htm
- https://alcohol.stanford.edu/alcohol-drug-info/buzz-buzz/factors-affect-how-alcohol-absorbed#:~:text=Body%20weight%20deterines%20the%20amount,who%20drank%20the%20same%20amount.
