How Long Does Alcohol Stay in Your System?

Knowing how long alcohol stays in your system can help you make important decisions regarding your health and safety.

How Does Alcohol Interact With Your Body?

Alcohol is a central nervous system (CNS) depressant. This means that it slows the delivery of messages between your brain and various parts of your body. However, its initial effects are similar to what you might expect from a stimulant. 

After your first drink or two, you may experience effects such as: 

• Diminished inhibitions
• Increased talkativeness
• Improved mood
• Burst of energy

Eventually, though, alcohol’s depressant properties will make themselves known, and you will likely start to feel effects such as:

• Impaired coordination
• Slurred speech
• Delayed reaction time
• Impaired cognition
• Poor judgement

Alcohol elicits these effects in part by altering the performance of several neurotransmitters, including dopamine and serotonin. These chemical messengers are associated with pleasure, learning, motivation, and mood. 

Initially, alcohol use increases your body’s dopamine and serotonin levels, which accounts for its early stimulant-like effects. Following this initial rush, as your dopamine and serotonin levels begin to fall. Additionally, your mood and energy level may also begin to crash. 

How Long Does Alcohol Stay in Your System?

The question “how long does alcohol stay in your system?” can have several correct answers, depending on your purpose for asking. For example, do you want to know how long alcohol will be present in your body, or are you trying to find out how long alcohol will show up on drug test?

If you are inquiring about alcohol being detected on a drug test, that answer can also vary depending which type of test you’re talking about. The answer to “how long does alcohol stay in urine?” will be different than the response to questions about alcohol’s detectability in breath, blood, saliva, or hair.

Let’s start with the first version of the question, how long does alcohol stay in your system?

There’s no precise answer to this question. Many factors, such as a person’s weight, metabolism, and overall health can influence how long it will take their body to process and eliminate alcohol.

However, the following information can help us make an informed estimate:

• The half-life of alcohol is about four or five hours. A half-life is the amount of time it takes for your body to reduce the amount of a substance by 50%. 
• It usually takes four to five half-lives for a substance to fall below a detectable, clinically significant, level.
• Applying this formula to alcohol gives us a range from 16 hours (four hours multiplied by four half-lives) to 25 hours (5 hours multiplied by 5 half-lives).

So, how long does alcohol stay in your system? According to the information above, you can expect to have some amount of the drug in your body for about 16-25 hours.

Now, let’s turn our attention to the second version. How long can a drug screen detect alcohol? Since there are many types of drug screens, this question is actually asking, how long does alcohol stay in urine, blood, saliva, breath, and hair?

Depending on which type of screening you complete, here’s how long you’re likely to test positive for alcohol:

• Breath analysis: Usually up to 12 hours after your last drink. However, some people may test positive for up to 24 hours
• Saliva test: Up to 12 hours
• Blood test: Typically a maximum of 12 hours
• Urine test: 72-120 hours (three to five days)
• Hair follicle test: As long as 90 days after the last time you consumed alcohol

You may have noticed that some of these tests can detect alcohol long after the drug should have been eliminated from your system. How can that be?

The answer isn’t as mysterious as it might first appear. Drug screens aren’t only set up to only identify the actual presence of a specific substance. They can also detect metabolites, which are byproducts that your body creates as it processes and eliminates a drug. The presence of these metabolites are proof that you recently had alcohol in your system.

Thus, while alcohol may only stay in your system for 24 hours, alcohol metabolites could be detectable for a few days to a few months, depending on which type of test you take.

How To Get Alcohol Out of Your System

Here’s a quick overview of how your body metabolizes (or breaks down and eliminates) alcohol from your system:

• When you take a drink, most of the alcohol enters your bloodstream by passing through the lining of your small intestine or stomach.
• Your bloodstream carries the alcohol to organs and tissues throughout your body. 
• Your liver plays an essential role in removing alcohol from your body. The liver produces several enzymes – including alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH) and aldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH) – that begin to break alcohol down on a molecular level.
• Initially, the ADH enzyme converts alcohol into a poisonous, potentially carcinogenic compound called acetaldehyde.
• Then, the enzymes convert the acetaldehyde to a less dangerous substance called acetate.
• Your body breaks the acetate down into water and carbon dioxide, which it can then easily and safely eliminate.

The speed with which this occurs can be influenced by several factors. These factors include your age and body weight, how much you’ve been drinking, how long you’ve been drinking, and the health of your organs. 

Contrary to what you may have seen in films or on TV, you cannot speed up this process by activities such as drinking black coffee or taking a cold shower. As far as your behaviors are concerned, there are only two steps you can take to get alcohol out of your system:

1. Stop drinking.
2. Wait for your body to do what it’s designed to do.

If the first of these steps is difficult or impossible for you, it may be time to get professional help. Untreated alcohol addiction can be devastating – but when you get the care you need, you can start living a much healthier life in recovery.

Is Alcohol Becoming a Problem? Contact Sanctuary Treatment Center for Help

Sanctuary Treatment Center offers a full continuum of customized care for adults who have become addicted to alcohol.

Treatment options at our alcohol rehab in Los Angeles include detoxification, inpatient care, and outpatient programming. We also offer detailed discharge planning services to ensure you are connected with the resources that can support your continued recovery after you transition out of our care.

To learn more about how we can help you or a loved one, or to schedule a free assessment, please visit our Contact page or call us today.