Morning Drivetime DUI: How many drinks can you sleep off in 8 hours?

Chronic DUI driver gets two years in prison: "A breath test an hour later showed that his blood-alcohol level was .22 percent, nearly three times the .08 percent level that constitutes drunken driving, authorities said." This was at 8 am.

When I took my first driving test, the only questions I missed were the DUI questions. It wasn't going to affect me, so I didn't pay much attention. That has remained true throughout my life - I avoid driving after drinking and I wait two hours per drink before driving if I absolutely HAVE to drive. So BAC hasn't been on my radar.

But this article piqued my interest and I looked up BAC. I was a bit surprised. By one source, it takes 45 minutes to lower BAC by .01, so the driver in this article would take over 16 hours to completely sober up. Granted, getting drunk to the .22 BAC level is a lot of hard work (depending on the guy's weight, it would take him 6 to 15 drinks in an hour, or 6 to 15 drinks more than his body broke down over the time he was drinking, to reach .22), so you could be talking a full 24 hour cycle, 8 hours of drinking to get that drunk, 16 hours to sober up. It would take him 11 1/4 hours to drop from a .22 BAC to the .07 BAC level that would make it legal to drive again, over 16 hours to totally sober up.

Women have it tougher, unless they bulk up. A little 120 lb. woman would reach a BAC of .22 with just 6 drinks. According to drinkinganddriving.org, an average person takes 45 minutes to lower their BAC by .01, so the woman would still need 11 1/4 hours to get down to the legal limit - although drivers are still impaired at .07, and can still be prosecuted for driving under the influence if they get into an incident behind the wheel - so the goal is to metabolize the alcohol down to a BAC of 0. From a BAC of .22, it takes 16 1/2 hours to drop to 0. Yikes. It's likely we've got a lot of drunk drivers in the morning commute.

Even the responsible drinker who walks to the bar or has a designated driver needs to count drinks if they're planning to drive in the morning. Put another way, if someone wants to wake up sober in 8 hours, the maximum BAC that can be metabolized over 8 hours of sleeping is about 10.66, 3 drinks for a little guy, 7 drinks for a 240 pound fellow, 2 1/2 drinks for a 100 lb. woman, 6 drinks for a 240 pound woman. So, for fun, I put together this handy little chart.

How many drinks can an average person sleep off in 8 hours?

Caveats:

Alcohol metabolism varies from person to person. Dehydration, overall health, presence of other drugs in the bloodstream, including prescription and over-the-counter medications, etc., can impact blood alcohol absorption and metabolism. This chart is not advice for a specific person but merely a representation of assumptions about an "average" person.

Methodology:
Blood alcohol level continues rising after the last drink is ingested, so I assumed 7 hours to metabolize the drinks consumed. In 7 hours, at a rate of .01 BAC per hour, an average person can drop from a BAC of .093 to .00. Using the charts from drinkinganddriving.org, I divided the BAC per drink by weight into the .093 BAC that can be metabolized in 7 hours, arriving at the number of drinks metabolized in 7 hours.

Most people do not slam 2 to 5 drinks, one right after another, and go to bed. But if you go to bed at 10 pm and drive to work at 6 am, an average man can only sleep off 3 or 4 drinks. Figure you get off work, go to dinner, stop at the bar at 8 and leave at 10... I never realized how few drinks an average man can sleep off between 10 pm and the 6 am commute. If you're talking about the partying youngsters staying 'til closing time at 2 am, even a big guy can only sleep off 2 drinks before morning commute, and most folks don't stay at a bar 'til 2 am for just 2 drinks. Add in the variability of individual alcohol metabolism and the fact that a patron doesn't usually know if a mixed drink contains exactly 1 oz of liquor or if a glass of wine is exactly 5 ounces, and it's tough for a person to know their exact BAC when they leave a bar or party, let alone 8 hours later when leaving for work.

Maybe you'd find these charts more realistic:

How many drinks can an average person metabolize between the 6 pm happy hour and the 6 am commute?

Methodology:
Assume 1 hour to absorb the first drink, leaving 11 hours to metabolize. The highest BAC that an average person can metabolize in 11 hours (at a rate of .01 per 45 minutes) is .1467. Divide .1467 by the BAC level an average person of a given weight gets from one drink.

Legislating to the Lowest Common Denominator (pardon my language)

Today I had to send a copy of my driver's license to buy psuedoephedrine allergy medicine by mail order. How about you create a list of people who actually committed drug crimes, and make them jump through hoops to buy pseudoephedrine. Stop hassling honest, responsible, law-abiding citizens. Stop legislating to the lowest common denominator. Put the burden of stupidity on the stupid and leave the rest of us the hell out of it.

If existing laws don't encourage law-abiding behavior, it's because you aren't enforcing them or the penalty isn't severe enough or the law doesn't belong on the books. Forcing honest people to jump through hoops in a futile attempt to force dishonest people to be honest - it isn't working, it's a flawed idea, and I'm tired of being bullied because lawmakers don't understand that the criminals don't CARE what the law is. That's why they're criminals. Do you really think that meth heads won't break into pharmacies if you cut off their supply? Has this law solved the meth problem? Then why do I have to jump through hoops to get freakin' cold medicine?

People convicted of a DUI don't have to register their purchases on a Federal database to buy alcohol. Hell, when federal drug databases DO catch abuse, nothing happens. When we get an explosion of laws and regulations, authorities can't enforce them all, and it's only honest people who suffer - honest people waste time and effort and money trying to understand and comply with all the regulations dumped on them, while the crooks continue to rob, lie, cheat, and steal.

I would like to see a constitutional amendment that specifies that every proposed law or rule MUST include specific plans for funding AND enforcement for at least 10 years, with a requirement that all laws are evaluated for possible unintended consequences over a 10-year period, AND all laws not directly impacting the safety of citizens expire after 10 years unless it is renewed by lawmakers, and, lastly, only emergency legislation can come up for a vote before voters have had 60 days to evaluate proposed legislation and contact their legislators with input.

Why shouldn't we hold lawmakers to a high standard of legislative quality? Why shouldn't they jump through some hoops before they force us to jump through hoops?

we wil inhairet ur wurld wether u lik it or not (don't worry - the actual post is in real English)

Do you ever think about the fact that these txt'ng young people will be the ones running your senior centers, funding your Social Security, and controlling the media in your old age? How does that make you feel?

Do you think names will be spelled fu-net-ickly on pension checks? Breakups, firings, layoffs, death notices, and denial of benefits will be notified via text message. Suspenders will come back in style as today's youth refuse to pull their pants up but discover the hazards of trying to actually accomplish something with baggy pants halfway down their thighs. Roadway lanes will officially be recognized as mere "suggestions" and showing up to work on a "schedule" will be voluntary - even for judges, police officers, ER docs, etc. Oh, yeah - there won't be any primary care docs. The existing med school system won't let go of the brutal academic and residency requirements, so only materialistic young folk will suffer through it - and they ain't doing it for a piddling quarter mil a year.

The Star Spangled Banner will be re-recorded as a rap song, and our grandchildren's generation will rebel against their parents boring rap music - by embracing country music. Teenaged rebellion will end, because teens simply cannot shock their parents anymore with anything short of 1) fiscally and socially responsible behavior and/or 2) killing things. Google's face-recognition technology will be perfected, and Google will make a trillion bucks by searching out your doppelganger and hiring him/her to go out and make friends for you, without you having to suffer the inconvenience of pretending to care about "friends'" stupid lives and boring interests.

Americans will stage a bloodless coup in the entertainment industry, wresting control back from the Canadians. We will discover that 47% of illegal "Mexican" immigrants are actually illegal Canadian immigrants with their first-ever tan.

Naw. I think that the primacy of connection will fade and today's youth will discover the joy of workaholism to avoid dealing with non-work life. But I do think their kids will struggle to rebel musically, and I fear that they will decide to rebel by playing Country and Western music at a polite volume, wearing belts that hold their pants at their waist, and either taking piercing to the next level (pierced ribs, perhaps?) or eschewing piercing altogether. And all of today's citizens complaining about illegals taking American jobs, will find themselves complaining that they can't find home healthcare aids to change their Depends. Yes folks, even today's troubled youth can grow into tomorrow's entitled retirement class, but, first, they've got to kill us off to collect their inheritances. Nighty-night, sleep tight.