酒精会在体内停留多久?

How Long Does Alcohol Stay in Your System? 

酒精会在体内停留多久? 

We’ve all known not to drink and drive. But how long does alcohol stay in your system? Should you worry about driving, say, the morning after a night out with friends? We asked an expert to explain just how long it takes your body to rid itself of alcohol. 

喝酒不开车，这个道理我们都懂。但酒精会在体内停留多久呢？如果前一晚和朋友出去喝酒，第二天能不能开车呢？专家给我们答疑——酒精在人体内多长时间可以排干净。 

For starters, we’ll give you a refresher on what happens to your body when you drink. You’ve probably heard that alcohol use—depending on how much you drink—can harm your liver. But you may not have been warned about just how much stress you put on this vital blood-filtering organ after even just a few hours of partying.

首先，我们先聊一聊喝酒时身体发生的变化。你也许听说过，喝酒伤肝——取决于喝多少。但也许并没有人告诉你，仅狂欢几小时就会对这一重要的血液过滤器官施加极大压力。

“When you get alcohol in your blood, it passes through the liver, and the liver breaks it down,” explains George Koob, PhD, director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, a division of the NIH. 

“人体血液含酒精时，酒精会流过肝脏，被肝脏分解，”美国国家酒精滥用和酒精中毒研究（美国国立卫生研究院的下属部门）的所长乔治·科布（George Koob）博士解释道。 

The main job of your liver is filtering blood that’s flowing from your digestive tract to the rest of your body. In the process of breaking down the alcohol you consume, your liver encounters toxins. Heavy drinking can make your liver fatty and cause scarring that can eventually restrict blood flow. This can cause liver cells to die and, consequently, halt liver function. 

“肝脏的主要功能是过滤从消化道流向身体其它部位的血液。在分解酒精的过程中，肝脏会‘中毒’。酗酒会导致脂肪肝，形成限制血液流动的疤痕。进而导致肝细胞死亡，最终，肝脏停止运转。”

So, how long does alcohol stay in your system? Individuals metabolize alcohol at different rates. In general, Koob says most people can break down half a drink every hour. He also explains it in terms of your blood alcohol content (BAC). “If you’re at 0.08, if you don’t drink anymore, in two hours you’d probably be [at] about 0.05,” he says. So, that translates to your BAC lowering at about 0.015 an hour. (In the US, your blood alcohol content is calculated as a percentage of the grams of alcohol you’ve consumed per every 100 milliliters of your blood.) 

那么，酒精会在体内停留多久呢？不同的人代谢酒精的速度是不同的。总体而言，科布表示，大部分人每一小时可以分解半杯酒。他还从血液酒精浓度的角度进一步解释。“如果你的血液酒精浓度为0.08且不再继续喝酒，2小时后即会降到0.05左右，”他说道。所以，换言之，血液酒精浓度每小时降低0.015。（在美国，血液酒精浓度的计算方法是：每100毫升血液含有的酒精克数比。） 

Again, keep in mind that people’s bodies react differently to alcohol. All the averages you hear when it comes to alcohol use are just that. What happens to your friend when she has four drinks might not be exactly what happens to you if you try to drink as quickly as her. 

切记，每个人的身体会对酒精做出不同反应。所有关于饮酒一事的平均数就是这么个道理。你和你的闺蜜同时喝了4杯酒，但最后的结果却可能截然不同。