Say that you have been drinking and you know that it wouldn’t be wise to get behind the wheel, but then a situation arises where you have to. Maybe you were on call and you were just told that you have to come in to work, for instance. Maybe it’s simply time to leave the bar or the social gatherings that you were attending, but you want to get sober so you can drive home.
There are a lot of myths about getting sober, such as drinking a cup of coffee. People will talk about how this can help to sober you up, and they may also suggest that you eat a meal, take a cold shower, drink a big glass of water or do other things of this nature. But do these things work?
All that works is time
These little tactics will not work because they don’t actually have any effect on your blood alcohol concentration level. This level is going to drop at a rate of roughly 0.015% per hour. The legal limit is 0.08%. Nothing that you put into your body after the fact, such as food or coffee, is going to decrease that BAC. Even something like a cold shower can make you feel more awake, but you are still just as impaired as you were before.
The only thing you can do is wait for your body to metabolize that alcohol and work it through your system. In many cases, this can take hours. At the rate noted above, it would take four hours for someone to go from a BAC of 0.06 all the way back to 0.00 – and that person wouldn’t even have been over the legal limit to start with.
If you do end up facing DUI charges, be sure you know about all of your criminal defense options.