How Long Does Alcohol Stay in the Body?

Last Updated: August, 7, 2025

How Long is Alcohol in My System?

How long alcohol lasts in the body depends on several factors including the amount consumed, body weight, metabolism, and overall health. Approximate alcohol detection times in different bodily sample types are as follows:

Blood: Up to 12 hours
Breath: 12–24 hours
Urine (EtG test): 2–5 days
Saliva: 12–24 hours
Hair: Up to 90 days

How is Detection Time Calculated?

Alcohol detection times are calculated based on how long alcohol and its byproducts, known as metabolites, remain measurable in different parts of the body. In blood, alcohol can typically be detected for up to 12 hours. This is because blood alcohol concentration (BAC) decreases at a steady rate of about 0.015 per hour, meaning a BAC of 0.08 would take roughly five to six hours to fully clear. Breath tests, like breathalyzers, can detect alcohol for about 12 to 24 hours after drinking, since alcohol vapor is exhaled through the lungs until it is fully metabolized.

Urine tests vary in sensitivity. Standard urine tests detect alcohol for up to 24 hours, while more advanced EtG (ethyl glucuronide) tests can identify alcohol metabolites for up to three to five days after use. Saliva tests have a similar window to blood and breath—usually 12 to 24 hours—because alcohol is present in oral fluids while it circulates in the bloodstream. Hair tests have the longest detection window, identifying alcohol metabolites like EtG or FAEE for up to 90 days, based on average hair growth rates. These detection windows are established through clinical research and forensic testing, where alcohol levels are tracked over time following controlled consumption.

What Affects Alcohol Detection Times in Your System?

Several factors affect how long alcohol can be detected in your system:

Amount of alcohol consumed: More drinks mean longer detection times.
Type of alcohol: Stronger drinks like liquor are processed differently than beer or wine.
Body weight and composition: People with higher body fat may retain alcohol longer.
Metabolism: Faster metabolisms clear alcohol more quickly.
Age: Older adults may process alcohol more slowly.
Sex: Women generally have higher BAC levels than men after drinking the same amount.
Liver health: A healthy liver metabolizes alcohol more efficiently.
Hydration and food intake: Eating before or while drinking slows alcohol absorption.
Medications: Some drugs interfere with how alcohol is processed.
Type of test used: Blood, breath, urine, saliva, and hair tests each have different detection windows.

How Long Does it Take for Alcohol to Leave Your Body Completely?

It typically takes about one hour for the body to metabolize one standard drink, but the total time for alcohol to leave your body completely depends on how much you drank and individual factors like metabolism, weight, age, and liver health.

For example, if you had five standard drinks, it could take about five to seven hours for all the alcohol to be processed and cleared. However, traces of alcohol metabolites, such as EtG, can remain in your system for up to 3 to 5 days and be detectable in certain tests.

Even if you no longer feel intoxicated, small amounts of alcohol or its byproducts may still be present in your system and show up on tests.

Can You Flush Alcohol Out of Your System Faster?

No, you cannot flush alcohol out of your system faster. The liver metabolizes alcohol at a fixed rate of about one standard drink per hour, and this process cannot be sped up by drinking water, coffee, taking cold showers, or exercising. While staying hydrated and resting can help you feel better, they do not speed up how quickly your body breaks down or eliminates alcohol. Ultimately, only time allows alcohol to leave your system completely.

Alcohol Metabolism in the Body

When you consume alcohol, it enters your bloodstream through the stomach and small intestine. This absorption happens quickly, especially if you drink on an empty stomach. Once in the bloodstream, alcohol travels throughout the body and affects various organs, including the brain. The majority of alcohol is broken down by the liver through a two-step metabolic process. First, the enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase converts alcohol into a toxic compound called acetaldehyde. Then, another enzyme called acetaldehyde dehydrogenase breaks that down into acetate, a less harmful substance. Acetate is eventually converted into water and carbon dioxide, which are removed from the body through urine, breath, and sweat. Around 90 to 95 percent of alcohol is metabolized this way, while the remaining 5 to 10 percent exits the body unchanged. The liver processes alcohol at a steady rate of about one standard drink per hour. There is no way to speed this up with water, caffeine, or cold showers. Only time can fully eliminate alcohol from your system.

The longstanding understanding is that your body will metabolize one alcoholic drink per hour. This rule leads to the recommendation that in any given sixty-minute period, a person should not have more than one “unit” of an alcoholic beverage, which is the equivalent of one bottle of beer, one five-ounce glass of one, or one-and-a-half ounces of distilled spirits. This rule is a general guideline, however, and it is not an accurate predictor of how long alcohol will stay in your body. That length of time and the factors that affect it are complicated and will vary dramatically from person to person.

The primary factors are how much and how often a person drinks, the type of alcohol they drink, their age, genetic background, family history, and general physical health. Alcohol is a foreign substance that is toxic to a person’s body at high doses. Your body works to metabolize toxins, and a healthier person or someone who has a genetic predisposition for a faster metabolism of alcohol will rid himself of this toxicity faster than an unhealthy or aged person.

Each unit of an alcoholic beverage contains approximately 0.6 fluid ounces of pure alcohol. A person’s bloodstream absorbs alcohol very quickly, often in less than ten minutes after that person begins to consume a drink, with peak absorption occurring at roughly 40 to 60 minutes after the drink is consumed. A person will therefore begin to feel the effects of an alcoholic beverage quickly, but will not experience the full effects of the alcohol in a single drink for up to an hour afterwards. A person who is eating while consuming alcohol will experience slower alcohol absorption as their body works to metabolize both the food and the alcohol simultaneously.

Some amount of that 0.6 fluid ounces of pure alcohol will remain in the bloodstream of most people for up to two hours after a single unit of an alcoholic drink is finished. Because the full effects of a single drink are not experienced for up to an hour after it is consumed, a person who drinks very quickly will be at a greater risk for alcohol poisoning, in which the concentration of alcohol in their body overwhelms their body’s ability to metabolize and flush the alcohol out. When that happens, a person might begin to act incoherently, lose consciousness, vomit, or lose control of basic metabolic functions.

The amount of alcohol in a person’s body is typically represented by a measure of their blood alcohol concentration, or “BAC”. An average person’s body will metabolize alcohol at a rate of .015 of BAC per hour. A person with a BAC level of .08, for example, will continue to have some trace of alcohol in their system for more than five hours after they reaches that level (i.e. .08 divided by .015 equals 5.33). Again, this formula represents an average across a large population of drinkers, and it is not an exact measure of how long alcohol will stay in the bloodstream of any specific individual.

These guidelines and averages are most useful in helping a person to manage or monitor the amount of alcohol in his system. For example, a person might estimate that his BAC will be at a maximum of .045 after he consumes three units of alcoholic drinks in two hours. At that point, he will know that there will be traces of alcohol in his system for three more hours.

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