Does coffee help you sober up after drinking alcohol?

[Uncle...@gmayl.con]

Question: Does coffee help you sober up after drinking alcohol?

You may have heard you can drink coffee or take a cold shower to sober
up from drinking alcohol, but does it really help? Here's the scientific
answer and explanation:

Answer: The answer to this question is a qualified "no". Blood alcohol
level doesn't diminish, but you might feel more awake from drinking
coffee.

Your body takes a certain amount of time to metabolize alcohol.

Drinking coffee does not reduce recovery time time, which is dependent
on the quantity of the enzymes alcohol dehydrogenase and aldehyde
dehydrogenase. You cannot make these enzymes more abundant or more
effective by drinking coffee.

However, coffee contains caffeine, which acts as a stimulant, while
alcohol is a central nervous system depressant.

Although you will be intoxicated until your body metabolizes the
alcohol, the caffeine can serve to wake you up. So, you're still drunk,
but not as sleepy. Worse, judgement remains impaired, so an intoxicated
person may feel recovered enough to perform risky tasks, like operating
a motorized vehicle.
Caffeine and the Effects of Alcohol Over Time

Caffeine isn't going to make a big difference in how awake you feel
early on while drinking. For the first hour and a half after drinking
alcohol, blood alcohol levels rise and people actually feel more alert
than before. Drinkers don't feel sleepy until 2 to 6 hours after
drinking. This is when you're most likely to reach for the coffee as a
pick-me-up.

Caffeine takes about half an hour to hit your system, so the impact on
your wakefulness is delayed, not an immediate reaction to drinking a cup
of joe. As you would expect, decaf isn't going to have much of an
effect, one way or the other, except to help replenish fluid lost from
the dehydrating effect of alcohol.

Caffeine or any stimulant dehydrates you, but full-strength coffee
doesn't really worsen the effect from drinking alcohol.
Experiments on Whether Coffee Sobers You Up

Even if your metabolism is faster, experiments have shown that even
after several cups of coffee, caffeinated drunks don't fare better than
their intoxicated, uncaffeinated counterparts. There doesn't seem to be
any shortage of volunteers willing to drink alcohol and coffee for
science, either. The Mythbusters team performed eye-hand coordination
tests, had a couple of rounds, performed tasks, and then tested
reactions again after several cups of coffee. Their small study
indicated coffee did not help eye-hand coordination.

The effects of caffeine on intoxication aren't limited to humans,
Danielle Gulick, PhD, now of Dartmouth College, examined how well young
adult mice were able to navigate a maze, comparing a group injected with
different amounts alcohol and caffeine versus a control group injected
with saline. While the drunk and sometimes caffeinated mice moved around
more than their sober counterparts and were more relaxed, they did not
complete the maze as well. The drunk mice, with or without caffeine, did
not exhibit anxious behavior. They explored the maze just fine, but they
were not able to figure out how to avoid parts of the maze that had
bright lights or loud noises. While the study doesn't say, it's possible
the mice simply didn't mind those things while intoxicated. In any case,
caffeine did not alter mice behavior, compared with how they acted when
exposed to alcohol alone.
The Danger of Drinking Coffee If You're Drunk

One dangerous effect of drinking coffee while intoxicated is that the
person under the influence thinks he is more sober than he was
pre-coffee. Thomas Gould, PhD, of Temple University, published a study
in the journal Behavioral Neuroscience that concluded people associate
feeling tired with being intoxicated. If they aren't sleepy, they may
not recognize they are still intoxicated.

Not all research is so clear-cut. Studies have been conducted on the
effect of drinking coffee on the driving ability of intoxicated subjects
(no, the drunk drivers weren't out on public roads). Results to date
have been mixed. In some cases, coffee seemed to partially reverse the
sedative effect of alcohol, leading to an improvement in reaction time.
In other tests, coffee did not improve driving performance.

http://chemistry.about.com/od/foodchemistryfaqs/f/Does-Coffee-Sober-Up-A-Drunk.htm


Knowing this, why do all AA meetings serve coffee as if it's a
requirement of AA?
Or is the coffee just a substitute drug to replace the alcohol?

[Elkillhowlick]

Yes!!!
I used to order coffee a half hour before last call so I could pound a few more down