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Misc Why doesn't alcohol follow the half-life rule?

rickolasnice

rickolasnice

Bluelighter
Joined
Apr 19, 2007
Messages
6,810
Question says it all really..

As far as i know alcohol is metabolized through your system at 1 unit per hour.. But most (if not all drugs i can think of / know of) are metabolized in terms of half life..

Or am i just being incredibly stupid..

<3
 
The human body on average with a healthy human can metabolize 1 drink every 2 hours. so with that logic, the half life of something like a single shot of vodka would be 1 hour. Im not positive on this though.

I think it also depends on things like body mass, if you have eaten prior to drinking, etc...
 
It accumulates and the liver isn't great at eliminating it, so it's eliminated at a constant rate as quickly as it can... Resulting in a duration mostly based on amount imbibed and tolerance.
 
Alcohol metabolism is one of just a few drugs who has a zeroth-order reaction; meaning, irrelevant of how much ethanol you intake, your body can only metabolize a certain amount of it at a time.

I know I have answered this question before in OD. Did you sue the search engine? ;)

More recreational drugs follow the first order reaction type of metabolism (I'm sure my word choice is a little off but you all get the idea). A first order reaction type of metabolism would imply that the dosage you're on, will influence how much is metabolizeid at once. (as "half life" refers to the time it takes your body to metabolize half of a drug concentration; the amount of time doesn't change, your body will just metabolize half of the drug within that time, doesn't have practical limits like ethanol does).
 
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