When you’ve had a couple of drinks and need to drive home, sobering up is a top priority. Cue the steaming cup of coffee.
It’s a common piece of advice—drinking coffee sobers you up. We hate to break it to you but that’s bull. All you’ll be is a more awake drunk. In fact, doctors are recommending against coffee after drinking alcohol.
Caffeine can trick your brain into thinking that you’re less drunk than you actually are, warns Robert Swift, MD, PhD, professor of psychiatry and human behaviour at Brown University. Here’s why doctors say being alert doesn’t equal sobriety.
What Alcohol Does to Your Brain
As soon as you start drinking, alcohol signals your brain to pump out higher levels of a brain chemical called dopamine. You might have heard it as the chemical involved in reward and pleasure. But it also has other roles in the brain. When alcohol is involved, dopamine activates the production of a chemical called cyclic AMP.
Cyclic AMP makes your brain more active. You feel happier, and you’re more talkative and energised. To make sure your brain doesn’t go into overdrive during this time, your body keeps the chemical in check using special enzymes.
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Once you stop, alcohol’s sedative properties start to kick in. The alcohol promotes the release of other neurotransmitters that start to slow down all of your brain’s processes. You begin feeling tired and fuzzy, and your reaction time gets sluggish, says Swift.
The Dangerous Combination of Caffeine and Alcohol
When you add an 8-ounce cup of coffee to the mix, the caffeine blocks the special enzymes that control the energizing cyclic AMP. This ramps up alcohol’s feel-good effects while turning down its sedating effects.
So even though alcohol continues to make your brain more sluggish, you start to feel more energised and not as drunk. You might wonder if you can have another round or are good enough to drive home.
And that’s a problem because caffeine masks alcohol’s sedation, but it doesn’t actually reduce the amount of alcohol in your blood, says Swift. You’re still drunk.
“Caffeine acts to make you more alert and awake but does not sober you up,” warns Jarid Pachter, DO, a doctor at Stony Brook Medicine who specialises in family medicine and addiction medicine. “Alcohol is metabolised at a fixed rate and caffeine will not change that.”
An Alcohol and Coffee Combo Messes With Sleep
What’s more, this alcohol-coffee mix screws with your body in bed. A few hours after you stop drinking it, alcohol causes an energizing rebound in your brain, which can cause you to wake up in the middle of the night. If you can even get to sleep.
Since caffeine sticks around longer in the body (about 5 hours), its stimulating effects will make it harder to doze off. Plus, Pachter warns coffee increases anxiety, which can keep you tossing and turning in your sleep. It can also worsen dehydration and increase the risk of a hangover the next day.
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If you’re among the unlucky few to wake up hungover, we’re sorry to say coffee won’t help you here either. Yes, you might feel less groggy but coffee is masking the underlying issue. People who are hungover can still experience drunk-like cognitive impairment. “If you wake up with a hangover and then drink caffeine, you may feel more awake but your judgment may be impaired, leading to bad decisions,” says Pachter.
When asked what would help, Pachter had only one answer. “The only real solution to recovering from a night out is time.”
This article by Marygrace Taylor and Jocelyn Solis-Moreira was published on Men’s Health US
