Your liver clears roughly 0.10 to 0.15 per mille per hour, at a steady rate that neither coffee nor a cold shower can speed up. Below you’ll find a table with rough clearance times by drink and a simple sum for the morning after a long night. In short: one standard drink takes about an hour and a half, and after a long night your body keeps working for 8 to 12 hours, sometimes more.
A guide, not a guarantee: every figure in this article is an average. The real time depends on your weight, sex, food, fatigue and metabolism, and the only sure measurement is the breathalyser.
Your liver works at a fixed speed
About 90% of alcohol is broken down in the liver, and the rest leaves through your breath, sweat and urine. The enzymes run at full capacity from the very first drink and never shift into a higher gear, no matter how hard you try to help them along. The rate of 0.10 to 0.15 per mille per hour is the average benchmark that forensic experts in Bulgaria rely on too.
So the maths is simple and unforgiving: everything that went in has to wait its turn. From a peak concentration of 1.0 per mille you drop below the 0.5 per mille limit after about 4 to 5 hours. You’re back at zero after 7 to 10. The table shows what that means in actual drinks.
Rough clearance times by drink
The table assumes a person of around 75 kg, on an empty stomach, at an average rate of breakdown. With a lower body weight or faster drinking, the times stretch out.
| What you drank | Peak concentration (estimate) | Until fully clear |
|---|---|---|
| 1 small beer (330 ml) | ~0.2‰ | ~1.5 to 2 hours |
| 2 glasses of wine (2 × 150 ml) | ~0.5‰ | ~4 to 5 hours |
| 3 to 4 drinks | ~0.8 to 1.0‰ | ~7 to 10 hours |
| A long night (6+ drinks) | ~1.5‰ and above | ~12 to 15 hours |
Where the legal limits fall and what 0.5, 0.8 and 1.2 per mille actually mean is explained in the article on the blood alcohol limit in Bulgaria. Before you start counting hours, though, check which myth you still believe.
The myths that don’t work
- Coffee. It wakes you up, but it does not lower your blood alcohol: caffeine masks the fatigue, the per mille stays exactly the same.
- A cold shower. It refreshes your skin, not your blood.
- Greasy food after drinking. It comes too late. It only helps when eaten before or during the drinking, because it slows the absorption.
- Exercise and sweating. They flush out a negligible share of the alcohol.
- An hour of sleep. It resets nothing: the breakdown runs at the same speed while you sleep.
What all the myths share: they make you feel less drunk without making you any less drunk. And feeling is the worst gauge there is, because tolerance changes your confidence, not your per mille. That’s why the morning question has a numerical answer, not an intuitive one.
Can I drive in the morning?
It depends on when you stopped and how much it was. A classic Sofia sum: last drink at 2:00 in Studentski grad, leaving for work at 8:00. Six hours of sleep shave off around 0.7 per mille, while the peak after six drinks is often above 1.5. The maths doesn’t add up, and residual alcohol is the most common surprise at morning checks.
The rough formula: hours since your last drink × 0.12 per mille, subtracted from the peak concentration. A personal breathalyser gives a rough idea, but the cheap models aren’t calibrated like the police ones, so don’t bet your licence on them. When in doubt, wait, or choose another way to get home.
That’s why many people settle the question the same evening: both you and the car get home at once, and the morning doesn’t start with sums. What that looks like in practice you’ll see in the step-by-step description of the service, and what it costs you’ll learn from the drink and drive prices, stated before you set off.
Get the car home tonight too
No per mille sums in the morning: our driver takes your own car back to your door.