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I'm pretty big on not driving under the influence, and was wondering how long fellow forumites wait before getting behind the wheel after they've had a big session the day/night before?

I have often thought about this.

I have had a quick look on the net and found that the rate of reduction varies from person to person depending on your weight, gender (a bit faster for women than men), amount of alcohol that has been consumed, age, medication and fatigue levels.

One source said that there is nothing you can do to speed up the drop in alcohol content, another said that a 100g dose of fructose can speed up the loss by about 80%!

This Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_alcohol_content has an interesting table that you can use to calculate your alcohol content based on your weight, gender and number of drinks. It also states: "Subtract approximately 0.01 every 40 minutes after drinking". This may be the magic number you are looking for.

I'd be pretty conservative in the calculations as you are also likely to be fatigued and feeling ill, both of which may impair your driving on the morning after.

I had a program once from DASA that you plugged in your details and the details of the drinking session and it gave you a time to wait before coming back below .08.
I was really surprised by putting in different scenarios the affect of a couple of high octane bevies at the end of the night caused.
For me with them I couldn’t drive for 13 – 14 hours.
It has influenced the mix in my drinking sessions, when thinking about driving the next day.

Thanks for that mate .. One of my mates (who is a fair bit older) says he always abided by the 15 hour rule so I try where possible to stick close that - I reckon sleep, particularly decent sleep plays a big part in it too.

I think the state government should issue a pocket breathalyser to each driver out of the huge state road tax income they raise dressed up as fines.
That would prove they were serious about saving lives.

i saw an interesting comment on drink driving the other day. it is pretty much the only road rule where there is a grey area for the driver. you categorically know when you are speeding via your speedo, you know when you have run a red light as you should have seen it. with drink driving it is a guessing game. even for people that have only had a "drink or two" are guessing that they arent over the limit, there is no real way for them to know for sure without tapping a police officer on the shoulder and asking to be breathalysed.

I've never been sure about this one. I must admit there's been a couple of times where I've driven the next morning thinking I'm fine and when looking back that afternoon realised I probably wasn't. Not good.

I'm much more conservative these days and rarely plan to be anywhere the morning after a session.

Gingernuts wrote:I've never been sure about this one. I must admit there's been a couple of times where I've driven the next morning thinking I'm fine and when looking back that afternoon realised I probably wasn't. Not good.

Heaps of people get done for exactly this on Channel 9's RBT* show.

Think they're fine the next morning when, in fact, they're way over the limit.

*I'm a sucker for shows where people caught red-handed lie through their teeth to get away with something even though it's obvious they're lying through their teeth and won't get away with it.

I'm usually confident I'll be all right after being at a function and certainly next day because I don't have "sessions".
I may have 3 or 4 drinks over a meal at a friends place or a barbecue.
At the Christmas do I went to last week I had 2 beers, one of them light, and 1 Champagne over about 3 hours.
I wasn't quite sure whether that would put me close to 0.05 though and would have checked with a breathalyser I had one handy.

In my young days I presumed I was ok to drive next day - even after monster sessions which would have probably had the blood alcohol > 0.25.
Nowadays I doubt if I could drink enough to get it much past 0.1, which makes it easier to manage driving next day. My rule of thumb lately is 1 hour for each standard drink + "1 hour for the pot"

FattyLumpkin wrote:In my young days I presumed I was ok to drive next day - even after monster sessions which would have probably had the blood alcohol > 0.25.
Nowadays I doubt if I could drink enough to get it much past 0.1, which makes it easier to manage driving next day. My rule of thumb lately is 1 hour for each standard drink + "1 hour for the pot"

Constance_Perm wrote:Thanks for that mate .. One of my mates (who is a fair bit older) says he always abided by the 15 hour rule so I try where possible to stick close that - I reckon sleep, particularly decent sleep plays a big part in it too.

a mate of ours got picked up at 2pm the next day after stopping drinking at 2. Dunno what he was drinking, nor how long but he was MILES over the limit still at 2pm the next day. BE CAREFUL!

Constance_Perm wrote: I reckon sleep, particularly decent sleep plays a big part in it too.

irrelevant....

From a Nutrition lecture 18 years ago - funny what sticks in your mind from Uni.....

Takes 2 standard drinks (stubbie mid strength beer) to get you to 0.05, 3 standard drinks to 0.08. Takes 1 standard drink per hour from there on in to keep you at that level. Five Crownies is 7 standard drinks.

Therefore if you drink five Crownies in 2 hours (not hard) it will take you six hours to get back to below 0.05.

Coffee, sleep, berocca etc make no difference just got to allow for your Microsomal Ethanol Oxidising System (MEOS) in the liver to do its work. For the average person it is 1 hr per standard drink.

all this talk about a big blitz on, i have seen one police car in the past few days

Bulldog wrote:all this talk about a big blitz on, i have seen one police car in the past few days

Is that in Adelaide or Brisbane Bulldog?

brisbane

alway's wonder wether it be worth it to buy a top of the shelf breatho, an outlay of a few dollars compared to loss of licence and a fine ?

Basher McCracken wrote:alway's wonder wether it be worth it to buy a top of the shelf breatho, an outlay of a few dollars compared to loss of licence and a fine ?

Not to mention killing or injuring yourself or someone else if you have a prang whilst drunk driving...

fish wrote:

Basher McCracken wrote:alway's wonder wether it be worth it to buy a top of the shelf breatho, an outlay of a few dollars compared to loss of licence and a fine ?

Not to mention killing or injuring yourself or someone else if you have a prang whilst drunk driving...

trouble is how accurate are they, they have to be callibrated very regularly to be accurate and believe me when I say when I was in SAPOL and put people on the alcometres which were regularly calibrated the results from that machine to the Breath Analyis machine varied quite dramatically on alot of occasions.

quite simply I read in this thread earlier, have a big time out on the grog, play safe and dont drive for about 15 hours. Regardless of what they say a decent nights sleep doesnt help because you are relaxed and not burning up what is in your body