The only thing that can lower a person’s blood alcohol concentration is time. Drinking water or coffee does not help. Taking a shower could wake you up, but it does not actually sober you up. Your BAC just drops over time after you stop drinking.
The important thing to know about this process is that it is relatively slow. Most of the time, a person’s BAC only goes down by about 0.015% per hour.
For instance, if a person had a BAC of 0.045%, they would not get back to zero for three hours. If they were over the legal limit, with a BAC of 0.09%, it would take six hours.
How this can lead to DWI charges
One issue is that some drivers will wait to sober up before they get behind the wheel, but they simply do not wait long enough. A person may have a glass of water at the bar at the end of the night and spend a half hour waiting for their BAC to go down. But that is such a short amount of time that it will not have changed very much, so they could still be over the legal limit when they get behind the wheel.
In fact, people who have an extremely elevated BAC could still fail a breath test the following morning. If someone stays out late drinking and then has to get up early for work, for instance, they could face impaired driving allegations the next morning. They may argue that they have not had anything to drink that day, and that may be true, but they still have not waited long enough for their BAC to decline.
These types of issues can sometimes lead to an unexpected arrest. If you find yourself facing serious charges, you must know what legal defense options you have.