Posted By stevehaigh
The facts are if you drink you can kill so

DONT DRINK & DRIVE

The End

Posted By Raymond Rapp
Debbie

As a 'rule of thumb' the average person will lose a half pint of alcohol per hour through natural evaporation. Hence 4 pints consumed will take 8 hours to reach zero alcohol in the body. And before someone adds it - the body does produce a very small amount of natural alcohol.

Ray

Posted By Glyn Atkinson
Unless you buy in some accurate equipment or know where to find a nice policeman who wants their chips cooling, (Blow in the bag, sir ! - You have to be a certain age for that one !), the honest answer is that you are not going to know for certain, it has to be a quantified breath or blood test that would tell you properly.

The facts and figures could be for Mr or Mrs Average, and who are they ?

Metabolism is so varied between people that no list of figures and calculations would be truly effective.

Would you want to really risk it anyway ??

Posted By safety medic
Frustrating I know, when the question is answered by flippancy!

Debbie,

For the (average) person drinking (average strength) alcohol it would take approx 1 hour per unit of alcohol.

Each unit is based on actually quite weak strenght (3.0/3.5% I think), which means a single unit of strong lager (stella etc) would actually take two hours for the liver to process.

Add on whether the person has eaten before, eaten after, individual tolerance to beer, smoking, practice! and the average is'nt so average. But one unit per hour is a good enough starting point.

On my last job we found many people coming to work over the drink drive limit to work on construction site where random testing was in place, they were confined to welfare unit sufficiently sober.

For internet searching try using medical sites, I seem to remember getting some stuff a while ago for similar poster but cant find it now. Sorry!

Also to consider during the xmas period is the binge drinking which has a negative effect on the liver and causes long term damage.

Posted By Pete48
Debbie, by way of some relief to the advice here, why not try this site? But read the disclaimer closely!
http://www.crabbsac.org.uk/articles/N005.htm

If you use the approach of informing people about just how long it takes for alcohol levels to drop and thus highlight the potential dangers of the morning after; then make sure you are very clear about the fact that it is only indicative. As others have said it depends on a lot of individually specific circumstances. They are however a useful guide for people who like to drink sensibly but who may get a little carried away with the festive spirit.