how long does alcohol really stay in your system?

Answer 1

Your liver clears it at approximately the rate of one ounce/hour-this is one ounce 80 proof alcohol, one 8 ounce glass of wine or one 12 ounce beer. It can vary from person to person or take longer if you are taking medication (many meds are cleared through the liver also) but it's a good rule of thumb to stick to no more than one drink/hour if you don't want to be legally intoxicated.

Answer 2

As anyone who's been to a cocktail party has found out, we absorb alcohol at different rates. Weight is the chief reason, but a number of other factors affect Blood Alcohol levels, including your body type, metabolism, and any medication you're taking, not to mention the strength of your drinks and if you've eaten recently. For almost everyone, impaired physical and mental acuity arrive on the heels of that first drink.

Drinking responsibly means knowing how alcohol affects you and the amount you can drink without endangering yourself or others. A person with a Blood Alcohol level in the range of .08 to .10 is considered legally intoxicated, and it takes only a few drinks to get there. Use this calculator to estimate your own blood alcohol content under different circumstances.

http://health.discovery.com/tools/calculators/alcohol/alcohol.html

Answer 3

It is entirely dependant on the individual. They say the AVERAGE HEALTHY liver will remove a unit of alcohol an hour after the first hour. This is due to the fact that alcohol takes 20 mins to enter your bloodstream. This is why, unless you drink less than a unit of alcohol an hour, you can't actually "drink yourself sober", more the fact that for a period , you got so drunk that you stopped putting the alcohol in!!!