There is no way to speed up how fast your body processes alcohol. Your liver breaks down roughly one standard drink per hour, and nothing you eat, drink, or do will change that rate. If you’ve had five drinks, you’re looking at about five hours before the alcohol is fully out of your system. What you can do is manage your symptoms, avoid making things worse, and wait it out as comfortably as possible.
Why You Can’t Speed Up Sobriety
Your liver uses a specific enzyme to break down alcohol, and that enzyme maxes out at a fixed capacity: about 8.5 grams of pure alcohol per hour for an average-sized adult (around 155 pounds). That’s roughly one standard drink, whether it’s a 12-ounce beer, a 5-ounce glass of wine, or a 1.5-ounce shot of liquor. Once the enzyme is working at full capacity, any extra alcohol just circulates in your blood until the liver catches up.
A tiny amount of alcohol leaves your body through urine and sweat, but it’s negligible. Your kidneys clear about 0.06 liters per hour and sweat glands even less. The liver does virtually all the heavy lifting, and it works on its own schedule regardless of what you do.
What Actually Helps While You Wait
You can’t eliminate alcohol faster, but you can feel better and protect your body during the process.
Drink water. Alcohol is a diuretic, meaning it makes you urinate more than you’re taking in. Dehydration is responsible for a large portion of what makes you feel terrible: the headache, the dry mouth, the dizziness. Alternating water between any remaining drinks and sipping steadily once you’ve stopped will reduce how bad the next few hours feel.
Eat something substantial. If you still have food in your stomach, it slows the absorption of any alcohol that hasn’t yet entered your bloodstream. A meal with fat, protein, and carbohydrates is ideal. Eating won’t lower your current blood alcohol level, but if you drank recently and are still on the upswing of intoxication, food can blunt the peak. Even if you drank a while ago, eating helps stabilize your blood sugar, which alcohol tends to drop. Low blood sugar contributes to shakiness, fatigue, and nausea.
Rest or sleep. Time is the only real cure, and sleeping through some of it is the most practical option. If you’re going to sleep, lie on your side rather than your back. Alcohol suppresses the gag reflex, which means vomiting while asleep on your back poses a real choking risk.
Get some fresh air. Stepping outside won’t lower your blood alcohol, but moving around gently and breathing cool air can reduce nausea and help you feel more alert while your liver does its work.
What Doesn’t Work
Coffee does not sober you up. Caffeine is a stimulant, so it can make you feel more awake, but your coordination, judgment, and reaction time remain impaired. This combination is actually dangerous because it can trick you into thinking you’re fine to drive when you’re not. Your blood alcohol level stays exactly the same whether you drink one cup or five.
Cold showers don’t work either. A blast of cold water will shock you into feeling more alert for a few minutes, but it has zero effect on how quickly alcohol leaves your blood. It also carries a risk: if you’re significantly intoxicated, the shock of cold water can cause you to slip and fall or, in rare cases, trigger a dangerous drop in body temperature.
Exercise doesn’t meaningfully help. While you do lose trace amounts of alcohol through sweat, the quantity is so small it makes no practical difference. Exercising while drunk also raises your injury risk and puts extra strain on a body that’s already working hard to process a toxin.
“Hair of the dog,” or drinking more alcohol to feel better, simply delays the inevitable. You’ll feel temporarily less awful because you’re raising your blood alcohol again, but you’re adding to the total amount your liver has to process, making the eventual comedown worse and longer.
Supplements Marketed for Hangovers
You may have seen products containing dihydromyricetin (DHM), a plant compound marketed as an alcohol recovery aid. While there’s some early interest in its potential to support liver function, no controlled human studies have confirmed that it speeds up alcohol metabolism or reduces intoxication. As of 2024, the first formal safety trial in humans is still underway. Other popular supplements like activated charcoal, B vitamins, and electrolyte packets may help with general recovery comfort, but none of them will lower your blood alcohol level faster.
A Rough Timeline for Sobriety
Knowing when you’ll actually feel sober depends on how much you drank and when you stopped. At one drink per hour of processing, here’s a general guide:
- 3 drinks, stopped drinking at midnight: Alcohol mostly cleared by 3 a.m.
- 5 drinks, stopped at midnight: Cleared around 5 a.m.
- 8 drinks, stopped at midnight: You may still have alcohol in your system at 8 a.m.
These are rough estimates. Body weight, biological sex, liver health, and whether you ate beforehand all shift the timeline. Women generally metabolize alcohol more slowly than men at the same body weight. People with liver damage process it even slower. And these timelines describe when alcohol leaves your blood, not when you’ll feel completely normal. Hangover symptoms like fatigue, brain fog, and nausea can linger well after your blood alcohol hits zero.
Signs That Need Immediate Help
Most drunkenness is uncomfortable but not dangerous. However, alcohol poisoning is a medical emergency, and it’s important to recognize the difference. Look for these signs in yourself or someone you’re with: confusion beyond normal drunkenness, vomiting that won’t stop, seizures, breathing that drops below eight breaths per minute, gaps of more than 10 seconds between breaths, skin that looks blue or gray or unusually pale, low body temperature, or an inability to stay conscious.
If someone is showing any of these symptoms, call emergency services. Do not assume they’ll “sleep it off.” Blood alcohol can continue rising after a person stops drinking, especially if they consumed a large amount quickly, and the suppressed gag reflex makes choking on vomit a serious risk for anyone who loses consciousness.