How long does your system spend on Alcohol?

We were all warned that we should not drink and drive. We have been taught not to mix well with alcohol use and driving. But how long does your system spend on alcohol? Do you have to worry about driving, say, with friends the morning after a night out? We asked an expert to explain how long your body will take to get rid of alcohol.

For starters, when you drink, we'll give you a refresher on what's going on with your body. You've probably heard that the use of alcohol can harm your liver, depending on how much you drink. But after just a few hours of partying, you may not have been warned about how much stress you put on this vital blood-filtering organ.

"When you get alcohol in your blood, it passes through the liver and the liver breaks it down," explains George Koob, Ph.D., director of the NIH division's National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Your liver's main job is to filter blood that flows to the rest of your body from your digestive tract. Your liver finds toxins in the process of breaking down the alcohol you consume. Heavy drinking can make your liver fatty, causing scarring that can ultimately limit blood flow.

This can cause the death of liver cells and halt the function of the liver. RELATED: 7 Ways to Maintain Alcohol Ruining Your Diet So how long does alcohol remain in your system? Individuals have different rates of metabolizing alcohol. Overall, Koob says most people every hour can break down half a drink. In terms of your blood alcohol content (BAC), he also explains it.

"If you're at 0.08, if you're no longer drinking, you'd probably be around 0.05 in two hours," he says. So, that's about 0.015 an hour down to your BAC. (In the US, your blood alcohol content is calculated as a percentage of the alcohol you have eaten per 100 milliliters of your blood.) A Breathalyzer measures your BAC by calculating how much alcohol there is in the air you blow on it. For reference, if you drive with a BAC of 0.08 or higher, you can get a DUI. If you weigh 160 pounds, you can get four drinks there.

Again, remember that the bodies of people react differently to alcohol. When it comes to alcohol use, all the averages you hear are just that. It may not be exactly what happens to your friend when she has four drinks if you try to drink as quickly as she does. Now that you know how long it takes a person to metabolize alcohol (on average), you may wonder how long it takes your body to get rid of the drug completely.

According to the American Addiction Centers addiction treatment network, "Alcohol is detectable in blood for up to 6 hours; about 12-24 hours in the breath, urine, and saliva; and up to 90 days in hair." So just because you've endured the hangover, it doesn't mean somebody can't say you've gone through the weekend if they get a hair sample. A small glass of red wine has about 1.5 units of alcohol for reference. (One alcohol unit is eight grams or 10 milliliters of pure alcohol.) A pint of strong beer has about 3, and a small tequila shot has about 1. If you keep counting how many units you have consumed while hanging out at the bar, you will do your body a favor. You'll know when it's time to slow down and stop if you keep counting.