# Dialysis and Alcohol

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dialysis-and-alcohol/578238>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [April 13, 2011, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dialysis-and-alcohol/578238 "2011-04-13T16:30:33Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Double\_Foolscap](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85e7bf/32.png) [@Double\_Foolscap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Double_Foolscap)\
**Post date:** [April 13, 2011, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dialysis-and-alcohol/578238/1 "2011-04-13T16:30:33Z")

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Disclaimer: this is not a personal medical question as I’m not on dialysis and have no access to a dialysis machine.

If you are drunk when you are put on dialysis, will it sober you up? Or in any way remove alcohol from the system?

I know that the liver has more to do with removing alcohol from your system than the kidneys, but an anecdote from my colleague got me thinking (serving booze at Christmas during dialysis thanks to it being filtered out during the process).

I tried to Google this but it kept on talking about medicinal alcohol being used in prep, so it didn’t help.

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**Author:** ![KarlGauss](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/karlgauss/32/3713_2.png) [@KarlGauss](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KarlGauss)\
**Post date:** [April 13, 2011, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dialysis-and-alcohol/578238/2 "2011-04-13T16:48:19Z")

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Dialysis is very effective at removing alcohols from the blood. It is the treatment of choice for methanol poisoning, but will also remove good old ethanol as well.

I should note that as small molecules, alcohols in general are ideal candidates for removal by dialysis.