I’m by no means a drinker…
But with that said I still frequent bars on occasion.
I usually just have bud light (I know…not very tasty) but I would like to know if my drinking logic actually works out.
So here goes:
Say I go to a bar and I get their early…around 5pm (happy hour) and I order a bud light. I need to leave the bar at ten and want a BAC of 0.0…but I want to drink 5 bud lights and the BAC calculators on several websites say it’s ok to have one beer an hour.
My question is:
What if I was to slam 5 beers in 15 min? Would I piss out some of the Alcohol? Or would it be better to span the 5 beers over 5 hours? Or does it make a difference?
I’m 6’3 and weigh 180 lbs
Alcohol is readily and rapidly absorbed into the bloodstream (hence, its intoxicating effects), where it resides until metabolized by the liver and resultant products (primarily acetic acid). Slamming five Bud Lights in 15 minutes isn’t going to kill you, but it isn’t going to make you break down alcohols any faster, either; indeed, the more you overload the metabolic pathways to break down ethanol, the slower the total breakdown will be. Because alcohol is so readily absorbed into tissues, the “half-life” calculations generally used with many pharmaceuticals don’t apply; breakdown is essentially linear, so whatever amount of alcohol you consume is excreted at a constant rate.
On the average, blood alcohol content reduces by 0.010 to 0.020 per hour, but that is a general measure and varies widely from person to person; women, many Asians, and random others will have lower rates of breakdown. It should be noted that the first thing to go with alcohol intoxication is judgement, and this is particularly true on the downside of breakdown; people who have peaked and then started to break down alcohol tend to underestimate their impairment.
As a side note: Bud Light? Seriously? Please, let us encourage you to aspire to consume a beverage that pleases the palette as well as relaxing the anxiety.
Stranger
Don’t start the countdown right away either. After your last drink, your BAC will continue to climb for a short period (fifteen or twenty minutes, IIRC)
The time and rate of absorption into the blood will depend heavily based on how much food you have in your stomach. Not because the food soaks up the alcohol, but because alcohol is absorbed largely in the small intestine. When you have food in your stomach, your pylorus (aks pyloric valve) will close, allowing the food to stay in your stomach longer to be broken down. IIRC, the stomach will allow about 20% of the alcohol to be absorbed, while the small intestine will absorb around 75% (the mouth, surprisingly, absorbs about 3%).
[Ignatius Reilly] ‘My pyloric valve is most certainly closed now and the undoubtedly the rest of my day iwll be ruined. I hope you are pleased with yourself’[/Ignatius Reilly]