I once heard a rule that it takes roughly an hour for your body to process a serving of alcohol(a serving being a bottle of beer, a glass of wine or a shot of liqour). Assuming that’s true, does the presence of non-alcholic beverages in your system affect that at all?
Say, somebody had a couple beers,but was still thirsty and drank an equal amount of water. Would that actually effect processing time by dilition?
Or somebody drank alcohol mixed with juice/soda? Does that have any effect?
I don’t know if you can shorten it, but you can make the time longer by drinking antifreeze or methnol. If it doesn’t kill you in the process that is. They compete for the same ‘place’ in the liver where they are broken down. Ususally it is done the other way around however, if your cat/dog drank antifreeze you give it a shot of something to slow the breakdown of the antifreeze.
I think there is also something to speed it up but only used in emergency medical situations.
I’m guessing it wouldn’t cause a significant effect, since by the time the alcohol is being processed, it’s well-diluted by the rest of your bloodstream.
The contents of your digestive tract, of course, effect how quickly alcohol hits your bloodstream. Hence consuming food with booze.
A side issue, if you have a BAC over the legal limit to drive, if you drink enough water or other to increase your total blood volumn, would that lower your BAC?
I would think the total volume of your blood would remain pretty constant, water would travel through (most other means), and be gone.
Also if you had enough alcohol in your system to put you over the BA limit, water would pass through you too quickly to effectively drown out the background Dirty Dirty Liquor.
Actually, milk works far better than water at “sobering you up.” Not that it actually sobers you, but it coats your stomach and slows the absorption rate into your bloodstream. Kind of like food.
Soda (anything carbonated) actually increases the absorption rate.
Water and juice only help in so much as the higher the ratio of them vs. alcohol, the more time it will take you to drink the alcohol. The only purpose of most mixers is to make the alcohol palatable.
But no, water won’t slow down the rate of absorption; a well-hydrated buzz is still a buzz. It will make your next morning far more pleasant, but it won’t delay the alcohol from taking effect.