Imagine that you need to drive somewhere, but you know that you’ve been drinking. For instance, maybe you went over to a friend’s house to watch a sporting event and now it’s time to drive home. Or, perhaps you were out to dinner with your in-laws and you had too many glasses of wine. There are many ways in which this can happen.
In situations like this, people know that they shouldn’t drive, because it is dangerous and potentially illegal. They know that they might be over the legal limit. But they also know that they need to drive, or they feel like they have no other choice. What they want is a way to quickly get sober, and they may think they have some solutions.
A few common tactics. But do they work?
There are many things that people tell you to do in order to get sober. Some people will tell you that you need to order a hot cup of coffee. Others will tell you that a glass of water would be fine. If you’re at home, some would advise you to take a cold shower to help sober yourself up. Others claim that eat a meal will help.
None of this works. A shower or a cup of coffee can wake you up, to be sure. But nothing can sober you up because it doesn’t have any impact on your blood alcohol concentration levels.
What can make you more sober?
What you really need to sober up after drinking too much is time. For every hour that goes by, your blood alcohol concentration will drop by approximately 0.015%. How long it takes you to get back down to a safe level depends on a lot of factors, but largely just on how much you’ve had to drink and how high your BAC is to start. You can’t rush this process. It simply takes time, and driving too soon puts you at risk.
If you do find yourself facing DUI charges, especially if you thought you were sober and driving safely, you need to know about all of your legal defense options.
