How Long Does Alcohol Stay in Your Urine?

Alcohol…even though for some it tastes and makes feel good, it poisons our body and affects our central nervous system. Drinking too much diminishes our coordination, judgment, depth perception, and memory. Consumed alcohol reaches our stomach already within 5 minutes.

So, how long does alcohol stay in your urine?

First, it is important to understand what happens when we drink alcoholic beverages and how alcohol leaves our body. Alcohol is absorbed into bloodstream. It leaves our bodies in 2 ways: 10% leaves through our breath, urine. The rest 90% are broken down through metabolism.

Women metabolize alcohol slower than men. Alcohol burns off at the rate of .015 percent of blood alcohol concentration (BAC) or 1 drink per hour. Consequently, time needed for alcohol to completely leave your system varies. For example, a person with a BAC=.15 will have no measurable alcohol in his/her bloodstream ten hours after the last drink was ingested (.15 divided by .015 = 10). Here are several other examples:

BAC level	Metabolism time (hours)
.02	1.33
.05	3.33
.08	5.33
.10	6.66

How long does alcohol stay in your urine? With the help of some urine alcohol tests, alcohol can be detected up to around 48 hours after a person has taken alcohol.

However, the EtG Urine Alcohol Test demonstrates the presence of EtG in urine. What does this mean? Presence of EtG in urine shows that ethanol alcohol was taken within past 3 or 4 days (80 hours after ethanol alcohol has been metabolized by our body).

This test can’t show how much alcohol a person ingested, but this test can detect alcohol consumption after alcohol has already been metabolized by a person’s body.

Here are some interesting facts and hints for you:

• While drinking, eat food: high protein food such as cheese, meat and peanuts are especially good. This will help to slow absorption of alcohol into your system.
• Don’t be fooled. Such standard drinks as beer, liquor or wine (both mixed drinks and straight spirits) contain almost identical quantity of pure alcohol. All drinks are the same when it comes to a breathalyzer.
• It is good to skip a drink now and then. Taking some non-alcoholic drink in-between alcoholic beverages will help to keep the level of alcohol content in your blood down.
• Be active instead of just sitting around and drinking.

Remember: drinking coffee, doing some exercises, taking a shower and other similar behaviors actually have no effect on how fast alcohol is metabolized. Unfortunately, only time can do that.

So, how long does alcohol stay in your urine? The answer is up to 80 hours.