Alcohol experiment: Own drunkenness is often underestimated

According to an experiment, a large part of the people underestimate their breath alcohol value after enjoying beer and wine - and overestimates their fitness.

The alcohol-prone attempt at the University of Witten-Herdecke in the Ruhr area describe doctors in the specialist magazine "Harm Reduction Journal".90 participants from Germany - with good physical fitness and an average of 24 years old - were asked for the study to get drunk with Pils and white wine under controlled conditions.Among other things, you should assess when you had reached the legal alcohol boundaries for driving.In Germany this is a value of 0.5 per thousand.

Many exceeded the limit

The test subjects should continue to drink until they thought they had reached the alcohol boundaries.On a first day of study, 39 percent of the participants only reported after they were over the threshold.On a second day of study, it was even 53 percent who had drunk too much.A few overwhelmed the statutory limit very clearly - and still considered themselves to be traveling.

The results were regardless of whether the test subjects had drunk beer or wine first.The gender also made no significant difference in the ability to assess self -assessment, it says in the study.According to the experts, alcohol at the wheel is still a high, but avoidable accident and thus health risk, despite many educational efforts worldwide.

"The frequency of the misjudgments must worry us because a few are enough to trigger serious accidents in road traffic," said study director Kai Hensel, who is now working at the University Hospital Göttingen, the German Press Agency.It has also been shown that the slope to underestimate one's own drunkenness increases with increasing alcohol consumption: the more the test subjects drank, the further their self -assessment deviated from the actual measured values.

Controlled pregnancy

"However, the study also provides information on certain learning effects, so that we believe that it can help to sharpen your own awareness of the effect of alcohol on the ability to drive," said Hensel continued.It is therefore advisable to make you experienced in reconnaissance campaigns how quickly your own limit in terms of driving ability can be achieved - for example by test stations in areas where alcohol is drunk, says Hensel.

In the experiment, for example, 1.4 liters of beer were drunk in just over two hours until the alcohol boundary was exceeded.In the white wine, a narrow bottle was sufficient - "whereby it can be assumed that the breath alcohol value measured after more than two hours rises from then on 0.6 per thousand even after drinking stop because the alcohol gradually goes into the blood," says Hensel.In addition, the participants had previously eaten together.

Further study results that had dealt with the subsequent hangover effects of the control..