5 Common Myths About Alcohol and Driving

1)   Eating loads of bread or starchy carbs after drinking will “sponge up” the alcohol and lower your BAC.

False.  Eating a large meal before you begin drinking, or sometimes simultaneously while drinking, may delay the onset of your highest BAC measurement.  Without a meal, you will likely experience your highest BAC thirty minutes after your last drink.  With a meal in your stomach, your highest BAC may not come until two hours later.  However, that doesn’t mean it will sober you up over the long run.  And eating after you have already begun drinking has little to no effect on your BAC measurements.  Once your body has begun to absorb the alcohol, there’s not much that can stop the process.  In fact, if you have been drinking beer and try and consume bread or other carbs to appear more sober, you may be doing more damage than good.  The yeast in beer can feast on the particles of bread between your teeth and multiply, making your breath smell even more strongly of alcohol.

2)   BAC is a reliable predictor of how impaired a driver is.

False.  Habitual drinkers are often less impaired than are infrequent drinkers with the exact same BAC measurement.

3)   A coffee or a cold shower will work to sober you up

False.  Stimulants may artificially make you feel more alert (and cold temperatures similarly work to “wake up” the body), these effects are very temporary and your BAC will only decrease with the passage of time.  5 cups of coffee won’t prevent you from blowing over the legal BAC in a traffic stop.

4)   Sucking on a penny will decrease your BAC or mask the smell of alcohol on your breath

False.  The origins of this urban myth are murky, and it is completely unsupported by medical evidence.  Sucking on a penny will do nothing but leave you with a metallic taste in your mouth while you’re sitting in the back of a squad car.

5)   If I only drink beer and avoid hard liquor I should be fine to drive

False.  Alcohol is alcohol, regardless of the form it takes.  While it’s true that you would have to consume a higher volume of beer to achieve the same BAC as a lower volume of whiskey or wine, a standard 12 ounce can of beer contains the same volume of alcohol as a 1.5 ounce shot of whiskey.  You may feel a little fuller after the beer, but you consumed the exact same amount of alcohol either way.