Any amount of alcohol affects your ability to drive. There is no foolproof way of drinking and staying under the limit. Your tolerance to alcohol depends on a range of factors including:

• weight
• gender
• age
• metabolism
• current stress levels
• whether you have eaten recently
• amount of alcohol
• whether you are on medication.

What is a unit?

Alcoholic drinks have a range of units on them depending on how much pure alcohol ‘ethanol’ is in the actual drink. Normal sized glasses of wine will have around 1.5 units of alcohol in them. Some super strength lagers have around four units in one pint. It takes a healthy males’ body one hour to remove each unit of alcohol. This means that if a healthy male drank one pint of super strength lager he would not be fit to drive until four hours later once the alcohol had left the body.

The morning after

If you have had a heavy session one night and then decide to drive to work early the next morning, be aware that you may still be over the legal limit. If you think you may be still over the limit the next morning find another way of getting to work so that you don’t have to drive.