Drinking Coffee To Get Sober

Does Not Work

12/10/09 - With the holiday season upon us, a familiar end-of-party ritual is coming under fire. It turns out that drinking coffee after an evening of imbibing your favorite holiday cocktails doesn't actually sober you up. In fact, caffeine may make matters worse: it can give you a false sense of your sobriety and your ability to, say, drive a car -- even though you're still just as intoxicated.

"Caffeine will make you less sleepy and maybe you are less likely to fall asleep behind the wheel, but it won't make you any less drunk," says the study's co-author Thomas Gould, an associate professor of psychology at Temple University in Philadelphia. "If you need to stop quickly, you are not going to have the braking time you normally have when you're sober. You are not going to be able to quickly and properly make choices."

What the caffeine-booze combo actually results in is an "awake drunk," a state that can lead drinkers to take more risks than if they simply feel tired and intoxicated, says Gould. The finding that caffeine doesn't reverse the negative cognitive impact of alcohol has important implications, not just for post-party traditions, but also for those popular alcoholic drinks containing caffeine.

Flavored beverages such as United Brands' Joose, which contains caffeine and an alcohol content of 9.9% (twice that of beer), have become all the rage among the college -- and younger -- crowd. Young adults are guzzling up drinks with names such as Wide Eye and 3 A.M. Vodka because, they say, the caffeine boost with the alcohol lets them drink all night long without getting tired.

While previous studies have examined caffeine's interaction with alcohol, Gould says his is perhaps the first to look at whether caffeine reduces alcohol-related problems in "learning," which includes the ability to avoid things we know cause us harm. Such harmful things may include getting behind the wheel of a car or having unprotected sex with a stranger while drunk.