Being drunk typically lasts anywhere from 1 to 6 hours depending on how much you drank, though the aftereffects can linger much longer. Your body eliminates alcohol at a fixed rate of about 0.015 BAC per hour, which works out to roughly one standard drink per hour. Nothing speeds that up.
How Your Body Processes Alcohol
Your liver does nearly all the work. It breaks alcohol into a toxic intermediate compound, then into a harmless byproduct that gets converted to water and carbon dioxide. The entire process runs at a steady pace: about one standard drink per hour. A standard drink in the U.S. contains 14 grams of pure alcohol, which equals one 12-ounce beer, one 5-ounce glass of wine, or one 1.5-ounce shot of liquor.
This rate is essentially locked in. Your liver processes alcohol on a fixed schedule, and there is no way to force it to work faster. If you drink four beers in two hours, your body needs roughly four hours from your last sip to fully clear the alcohol, not two. The math is straightforward: count your drinks, subtract what your liver has already processed, and the remainder tells you approximately how many hours you have left.
What Determines How Long You Feel Drunk
The biggest factor is simply how much you drank relative to your body size. A 140-pound person who has three drinks in an hour will reach a higher BAC and stay intoxicated longer than a 200-pound person drinking the same amount. But several other variables shift the timeline in meaningful ways.
Biological sex plays a significant role. Women generally have lower body water content than men, which means alcohol is more concentrated in the bloodstream per drink. Enzyme activity also differs: research in the American Journal of Physiology found that females had 70% higher activity of the primary alcohol-processing enzyme compared to males, but this actually produced a sharper spike in the toxic intermediate compound, contributing to stronger and sometimes faster-onset effects.
Food in your stomach slows alcohol absorption. Drinking on an empty stomach lets alcohol hit your bloodstream quickly, producing a faster, more intense peak. A full meal can delay that peak significantly, spreading the intoxication over a longer but less intense window. How fast you drink matters too. Sipping two glasses of wine over dinner feels very different from taking two shots back to back, even though the total alcohol is similar.
A Rough Timeline by Number of Drinks
- 1 to 2 drinks: You may feel mildly buzzed for about 1 to 2 hours. Most people won’t feel meaningfully impaired.
- 3 to 4 drinks: Noticeable intoxication lasting roughly 2 to 4 hours. Coordination, reaction time, and judgment are clearly affected.
- 5 to 7 drinks: Significant drunkenness lasting 4 to 6 hours or more. Speech, balance, and decision-making are substantially impaired.
- 8+ drinks: Heavy intoxication that can last 6 hours or longer, with residual impairment stretching well into the next day.
These are rough estimates for an average-sized adult. Your actual experience depends on the factors above, and the “feeling sober” point often comes well before your BAC actually reaches zero.
Why Coffee and Cold Showers Don’t Work
Coffee, cold showers, energy drinks, exercise: none of these speed up alcohol elimination. The Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation puts it plainly: it does not work. A cold shower might make you feel more alert, and caffeine can temporarily mask drowsiness, but neither changes your BAC or restores impaired coordination and judgment. The danger is that feeling more awake tricks you into thinking you’re sober when you’re not. Your liver clears alcohol on its own schedule, and nothing overrides that clock.
How Long Alcohol Stays Detectable
Even after you feel completely sober, alcohol or its byproducts can still show up on tests. Blood tests detect alcohol for up to 12 hours after drinking. Breath tests pick it up for 12 to 24 hours. Urine tests generally detect alcohol for 12 to 24 hours, though after heavy drinking that window can extend to 72 hours or more.
This matters if you’re facing a workplace test, a legal situation, or planning to drive the morning after a night out. Feeling fine is not the same as being clear. A common scenario: someone has six or seven drinks ending at midnight, sleeps until 7 a.m., and assumes they’re good to drive. In reality, their BAC may still be above zero.
The Hangover Phase
Hangovers are essentially the tail end of being drunk, and they can extend the overall experience considerably. Symptoms typically peak right around the time your BAC drops back to zero, which means the worst of a hangover often hits the morning after rather than during the drinking itself. Headache, nausea, fatigue, sensitivity to light, and difficulty concentrating are the most common complaints.
According to the NIAAA, hangover symptoms can last 24 hours or longer. The severity depends on how much you drank, whether you were hydrated, how well you slept, and individual variation. Some people recover by the afternoon; others feel off for a full day. There is no reliable cure. Hydration, food, and time are the only things that consistently help.
Why Some People Process Alcohol Differently
Genetics account for a large share of the variation. Some people produce more or less of the key enzymes that break down alcohol, which changes both how quickly they feel drunk and how long it lasts. People of East Asian descent, for example, commonly carry a genetic variant that causes the toxic intermediate compound to build up faster, leading to facial flushing, nausea, and a rapid heartbeat even after small amounts of alcohol.
Age also matters. As you get older, body composition shifts toward more fat and less water, which increases the concentration of alcohol in your blood per drink. Liver function can also decline with age or with chronic heavy drinking. While the liver can adapt somewhat to regular alcohol exposure, this adaptation comes through a secondary processing pathway that actually generates more harmful byproducts and contributes to liver damage over time. It’s not the kind of “tolerance” that protects you.
Medications interact with alcohol metabolism too. Some common medications compete for the same liver enzymes that process alcohol, which can slow clearance and intensify intoxication. If you take prescription medications regularly, the interaction can meaningfully change how long a drunk lasts and how severe it feels.