How long does alcohol stay in the body when drunk? What happens after 5 minutes, an hour and 8 hours?

Already 5 minutes after drinking alcohol, its blood level increases, and after 30–60 minutes it reaches its highest values. There are several factors that cause alcohol to be absorbed much faster and – simply put – it hits us extremely hard. Below is an excerpt from the book «How much can you drink? About addictions and their treatment »by Johannes Lindenmeyer, the Polish version of which was published at the end of July.

1. One of the things that accelerates the absorption of alcohol into the bloodstream is the carbon dioxide in it. This is why when we drink champagne, our head quickly becomes buzzing
2. Alcohol is absorbed more slowly when the person drinking it has a full stomach, especially with a filling, fatty content.
3. When the alcohol is drunk, it is transported through the gastrointestinal tract to the stomach. 20 percent When you drink alcohol, it enters the bloodstream through the walls of the stomach. The remaining 80 percent. it enters the small intestine and from there it enters the circulatory system
4. More information can be found on the Onet homepage

When Baron von Münchhausen, known for his prone to lies, returned from the war in Our Country, he told his friends an incredible story about a general who had a very strong head. According to this story, the general drank three bottles of vodka and one bottle of arak each evening, and still remained sober! He, Baron Münchhausen, had long been trying to discover how it was possible for a man to drink so much without any problems. Finally, he noticed that the general, heavily shot by a cannonball, had a defect in his skull that was covered with a silver plate. At regular intervals, the general, while drinking vodka, opened the plate slightly so that the alcohol could escape from his head before it reached his brain. In order to joke the general, the baron, unnoticed by anyone, stood behind him and, as he was emptying the skull, threw a lit match into it. The alcohol caught fire immediately and the general, his head burning blue, sat among the astonished officers. From then on, the general asked the baron to “light it” for entertainment. He could then drink more vodka than before.

Few friends believed the story told by the baron, but it is amazing how few people know exactly how alcohol enters the body, how it affects it, and how it leaves it. This is what this chapter is about.

At this point, it is important to reassure drug addicts that alcohol and all drugs with addictive potential belong to the same class of substances that act on the central nervous system. This means that all these substances affect the human brain and are similarly absorbed by the body and excreted from it in a similar way.

The only differences are in the type of action, its strength and, above all, the speed of absorption and degradation in the body. The information in this chapter on the effects of alcohol on the body also applies to other addictive substances. The differences will be clearly highlighted.

Due to its very simple structure, chemists call alcohol a “stupid molecule”. It also has no flavor in itself. So it is seasoned in various ways to give it an attractive taste.

The absorption of alcohol by the body

Transport through the stomach and small intestine

When the alcohol is drunk, it is transported through the gastrointestinal tract to the stomach. Unlike other addictive drugs, 20%. When you drink alcohol, it enters the bloodstream through the walls of the stomach.

The remaining 80 percent. it enters the small intestine and from there it enters the circulatory system. The stomach and intestines are entwined with a dense network of tiny vessels through which not only the raw materials necessary for life are collected, but also poisons such as alcohol.

Alcohol in the bloodstream

Within seconds, alcohol, like any other substance, reaches all organs in the body, including the brain. Thanks to its structure, which is low in fats, it easily crosses the blood-brain barrier, the task of which is, among others, to protect the brain against the ingress of various poisons. Alcohol’s rapid entry into the bloodstream and the crossing of the blood-brain barrier make it a particularly dangerous addictive drug. For example, drinking a glass of vodka immediately may prove fatal for some people. Drugs that are inhaled or directly injected into the blood work even faster.

Absorption of alcohol by the body

After drinking, alcohol passes through the gastrointestinal tract to the stomach. Through the walls of the stomach 20 percent. the drunk alcohol passes directly into the bloodstream. The remaining 80 percent. it enters the small intestine and from there it enters the circulatory system.

Already 5 minutes after drinking alcohol, its blood level increases, and after 30–60 minutes it reaches its highest values. Absorption of alcohol through the bloodstream accelerates:

• carbon dioxide (for example, champagne is especially fast, stimulating and refreshing for many people),

• too much alcohol (percentage) – this is the reason why many alcoholics “cure” their withdrawal symptoms with vodka, they know that this way a hangover will be suppressed as soon as possible,

• stomach surgery – people with a part of their stomach removed can tolerate much less alcohol. So if a heavy drinker starts to drink less after surgery, he or she is often falsely judged by the environment as someone who has coped with an alcohol problem.

Slow performance at full stomach. Alcohol absorption rate is significantly slower when your stomach is full, especially after eating fatty or protein-rich foods. For this reason, some people drink broth, milk, or a tablespoon of olive oil before getting drunk so as not to get drunk too quickly. Also, the administration in southern countries, for example in Greece, to fatty alcoholic beverages rich in nuts, olives or sardines has a practical dimension.

The breakdown of alcohol in the body

The breakdown of alcohol in the body is much slower than it is absorbed. The rate of this decomposition is individually differentiated and proceeds at a rate of 0,1–0,15 per mille per hour on average. This means, for example, that when we drink three half-liter beers and therefore have about 0,8 per mille of alcohol in the blood, we need 8 hours to get rid of it completely from the body. After heavy drinking, it can sometimes take 16–20 hours for a person to be sober in the biological sense of the word. Subjectively, many people feel sober after much less time, which does not mean that they are actually sober.

Compared to absorption, the breakdown of alcohol in the body is much slower. The dashed line in the graph indicates the course of alcohol excretion when consumed in conjunction with a meal.

Three ways to excrete alcohol from the body

There are three ways in which alcohol is excreted from the body: through the kidneys, lungs or skin, and the liver.

Kidneys. From 0,5 to 2 percent the alcohol you drink is excreted directly by the kidneys. For drugs, the amount varies more, but you can use a urine test to determine if the drug has been ingested.

Lungs or skin. About 5 percent. alcohol is excreted through the lungs or skin. It is with this process that the famous “smelling alcohol” is associated, which makes it possible to test its level with a breathalyzer, ie the popular balloon blowing. Clothes can also smell like alcohol after heavy drinking, as alcohol is also excreted through the skin. However, it should be remembered that in this way the body only gets rid of about 5 percent. of alcohol drunk, so the arguments of some people that they fully sweat their alcohol by drinking plenty of fluids are incorrect.

Liver. About 94 percent. the alcohol you drink is eliminated due to chemical reactions in the liver. Alcohol is burned when it reacts with fats, carbon dioxide and water. The product of this transformation, acetaldehyde, is a highly toxic substance and contributes to most health problems. Unable to process the aldehyde, about half of the inhabitants of Japan experience very unpleasant symptoms every time they drink alcohol: severe redness of the face, sweating, headaches and nausea.

Alcohol is the only drug that breaks down into a rich nutrient – there are about 7 calories per gram of pure alcohol. Thanks to it, people addicted to alcohol cover 50 percent. the daily requirement of calories.

Burning alcohol by the liver. The liver burns alcohol with the help of enzymes. They are substances produced in the body that enable and accelerate the metabolism and digestion. To put it simply, two groups of enzymes take part in the process of burning alcohol by the liver:

• ADH (alcohol dehydrogenase), through which the oxidation of alcohol is carried out. Much of the alcohol is metabolized in this way. The mechanism is innate, but there are individual differences in the rate of degradation. Some may tolerate much more alcohol than others.

• MINE (microsomales ethanol-oxidations-system – microsomal alcohol oxidation system) – this method of alcohol excretion is not innate, it becomes active only when the level of alcohol in human blood remains above 0,5 ‰ for a long time. Only then does the liver start to activate the MEOS enzyme. It is a kind of reserve that is triggered to deal with large amounts of alcohol.