Driver Who Had 3 Drinks Still Over the Limit the Morning After

Daniel Murrell thought he was doing the right thing by spending the night at a friend's house after having a few drinks on Boxing Day evening last year.

He had a maximum of three Captain Morgan's Spiced and by mid evening he had switched to soda water. 'As a dancer, I don't drink a lot - I'm a fit person,' he says. 

The next morning, Daniel got up early to drive home at 6am and got pulled over for speeding as he drove through the deserted streets of Bournemouth 

When breathalysed Daniel was astounded to find out he was over the limit.

'They put me in handcuffs, drove me to the police station and threw me in a cell. I thought, “Hang on, is this real?” I'd never done anything worthy of arrest in my life. But now, here I was, in a police cell.'

With a shortage of police officers on duty over Christmas, and no one to process him, Daniel ended up spending eight-and-a-half hours behind bars, going over and over the consequences of what had just happened.

This is an all-too-common scenario, especially at this time of year, says Liz Brooker, a road safety manager for Lewisham Council in South London, who has run Road Safety GB rehabilitation courses for convicted drink-drivers.

Up to 25 per cent of the drivers on her courses had been stopped the morning after drinking. 'People just don't think about it,' she says.

Even relatively small amounts of alcohol can have an effect - just three glasses of wine could mean you're still over the limit the next morning,

And a variety of factors make people more prone to still being over the limit the next day: women are more likely than men to still have alcohol in their bloodstream, and medication can also have an effect.

Many people think a good sleep, a cold shower and a strong coffee will sort them out after a big night. But nothing can speed up the body's ability to purge alcohol.

Alcohol is absorbed directly into the bloodstream from the stomach and the small intestine and is carried to the liver, which, among its many other jobs, acts as a filter to remove poisons from the body.

The liver produces chemicals called enzymes, which break the alcohol down into other chemicals. These, in turn, are broken down, until all that's left is carbon dioxide and water, which pass out of the body in urine.

This generally takes about an hour for every unit of alcohol - though this rate can vary depending on factors including weight, gender and medication in your system.

Liver disease expert Dr Nick Sheron, head of population hepatology at the University of Southampton, warns there is a range of complicating factors that can play havoc with the one-hour-per-unit calculation, making any attempt to work out when it might be safe to drive the following day a dangerous lottery.

For a start, he says, blood alcohol is determined by your body fat distribution and weight: fatter people actually have less water content in their body. Water in the body helps to dilute alcohol - hence the blood alcohol level would be more concentrated and higher in an overweight person than in a person of normal weight.

Women are also more likely to be caught in the morning-after trap, as it takes them longer to process alcohol. On average, women weigh less than men and, as women's bodies have a lower water content than men's - on average 52 per cent versus 62 per cent - they are less efficient at diluting alcohol, which, drink-for-drink, leaves a higher concentration in their blood.

Finally, women also have lower levels of a chemical called alcohol dehydrogenase - an enzyme that breaks down alcohol in the liver - so it takes a woman longer than a man to get the same amount of alcohol out of her bloodstream. Medication can also complicate things. Aspirin and birth control pills, for example, interfere with the liver's ability to break down alcohol, slowing the process.

And if you drink faster than the liver can do its job, alcohol will simply build up in your blood, potentially leading to a much higher reading if you are breathalysed.

Contrary to the popular myth, eating a big meal before a drinking session won't stop you from getting drunk: all it does is delay the alcohol getting into the bloodstream.

On the other hand, the alcohol in fizzy drinks, such as champagne, can be absorbed more quickly. One dangerous myth is that regular heavy drinkers can 'handle their drink'. It is true, says Dr Sheron, that production of some of the enzymes produced by the liver to break down alcohol are stimulated by alcohol, 'so if you drink regularly, you will metabolise alcohol a little bit quicker than if you don't'.

But only up to a point. 'Once you get to the stage where your liver is damaged by alcohol, you're likely to metabolise it more slowly,' he says.

Another complicating factor, says Ms Brooker, is that most people still don't think about the ABV (alcohol by volume) of what they're drinking, making it impossible to accurately calculate the units. 'They know they've had three glasses, but was it an 11 per cent prosecco or a 14 per cent chardonnay?' she says.

She adds that police will treat you the same as someone who has gone out deliberately to drink and drive.

Like many police forces, Dorset has a policy of naming and shaming drink-drivers. As well as suffering the embarrassment of being exposed in his local paper, Daniel's livelihood was put in doubt. 'It has had a terrible impact on my life and work,' he says.

One year on, he is still having to live with the consequences. Despite having his driving ban reduced after attending a two-day drink-driver rehabilitation course, Daniel won't get his driving licence back until April.

'I am well aware of the message that, if you're going to drink, don't drive. Of course, that makes sense,' he says. 'It can never be worth it.

'But this was the morning-after. I simply had no idea I could be over the limit.'

www.alcohol-breathalysers.co.uk