There is no way to cure drunkenness quickly. Your liver processes alcohol at a fixed rate of about one standard drink per hour, and nothing you do can speed that up. If you had five drinks, you’re looking at roughly five hours before your body clears the alcohol. That said, there are practical steps to feel better while you wait, and a few important safety concerns worth knowing about.
Why Nothing Speeds Up Sobriety
Your liver breaks down alcohol using a specific set of enzymes, and those enzymes work at a steady, predictable pace: approximately one standard drink per hour. A standard drink means 12 ounces of beer, 5 ounces of wine, or 1.5 ounces of liquor. Your liver doesn’t care how urgently you want to sober up. It will process alcohol at the same rate whether you’re sleeping, exercising, or standing in a cold shower.
This is a biological constant, not a rough estimate. There’s no supplement, food, or technique that meaningfully changes how fast your liver works once alcohol is already in your bloodstream. Men tend to have slightly more of the enzymes that break down alcohol in the stomach before it reaches the bloodstream, which is one reason body composition affects how drunk you get in the first place. But once you’re intoxicated, the clock is already running.
Coffee, Cold Showers, and Other Myths
The most common “cures” for drunkenness don’t actually reduce the amount of alcohol in your body. They just change how you feel.
- Coffee or energy drinks: Caffeine makes you feel more alert, but it does not reduce the effects of alcohol on your body. The CDC is clear on this point: mixing caffeine with alcohol can actually be dangerous because it tricks you into thinking you’re less impaired than you are. You’re just as drunk, but now you’re a wide-awake drunk.
- Cold showers: A blast of cold water will shock you into feeling more alert for a few minutes. It does nothing to your blood alcohol level. You also risk slipping and injuring yourself while intoxicated.
- Activated charcoal: This gets recommended online constantly, but activated charcoal cannot absorb alcohol. It works for certain poisons, but alcohol is specifically one of the substances it’s useless against. There’s no evidence it prevents or treats intoxication or hangovers.
- Vomiting: If alcohol is already in your bloodstream (which happens within minutes of drinking), throwing up won’t make you sober. It may prevent additional absorption if you just drank, but deliberately inducing vomiting carries its own risks, including choking.
What Actually Helps While You Wait
You can’t speed up the process, but you can make the waiting period more comfortable and safer.
Eating food is one of the most useful things you can do. Research from Johns Hopkins University found that consuming food while drinking increases the rate of alcohol elimination from the bloodstream by 25 to 45 percent. Eating before drinking has the strongest effect because it slows how quickly alcohol reaches your small intestine, where most absorption happens. But eating after you’ve already been drinking still helps to some degree. Go for substantial food with protein and fat, not just crackers.
Drinking water matters too. Alcohol is a diuretic, meaning it makes you urinate more than the volume of liquid you’re consuming. Dehydration is responsible for many of the worst symptoms of being drunk and hungover: headache, dizziness, dry mouth, and fatigue. Alternating water between alcoholic drinks is ideal, but even drinking water after the fact helps your body recover. Aim for a full glass of water for every drink you’ve had.
Fresh air and light movement (a slow walk, not a run) can help you feel less nauseated and more grounded. Don’t exercise intensely. Your coordination is impaired and your body is already working hard.
Sleeping It Off Safely
“Sleep it off” is common advice, and rest genuinely helps. But sleeping while very intoxicated carries real risks that most people don’t think about. If someone passes out drunk and vomits while lying on their back, they can choke. Alcohol also suppresses breathing and heart rate during sleep. For people with sleep apnea, alcohol further relaxes airway muscles, which can cause dangerously low oxygen levels.
If you’re going to sleep, lie on your side, not your back. This is called the recovery position, and it prevents choking if you vomit. If you’re watching over someone who’s very drunk, check on them periodically. Don’t assume they’re fine just because they fell asleep.
When Drunkenness Becomes an Emergency
There’s a line between being drunk and alcohol poisoning, and it’s important to recognize it. Call emergency services if you or someone else shows any of these signs:
- Breathing problems: fewer than 8 breaths per minute, or gaps of 10 seconds or more between breaths
- Loss of consciousness: unable to wake up, or drifting in and out
- Seizures
- Vomiting while unconscious or semi-conscious
- Skin changes: clammy skin, bluish color, or extreme paleness
- No gag reflex: if the person doesn’t respond when you touch the back of their throat, they can’t protect themselves from choking
Alcohol poisoning can be fatal. Blood alcohol levels can continue to rise even after someone stops drinking, because alcohol in the stomach is still being absorbed. Someone who seems “just really drunk” can deteriorate quickly. Don’t leave a severely intoxicated person alone to sleep it off.
A Realistic Timeline
To set expectations: if you stopped drinking and want to know when you’ll feel sober, count the number of standard drinks you had and add roughly one hour per drink from the time of your last drink. Four beers finishing at midnight means your body clears the alcohol around 4 a.m., give or take. You’ll start feeling progressively better before that point, but your blood alcohol level won’t hit zero until your liver finishes the job.
Body weight, biological sex, food intake, and how quickly you drank all affect how drunk you got in the first place, but they don’t dramatically change the clearance rate. The one-drink-per-hour rule holds for most people. The honest answer to “how do I cure drunkenness” is that you ride it out, stay hydrated, eat something, and give your liver the time it needs.