Alcohol's Effects

The Day After...

A Chart of Alcohol Depletion from the Blood

The chart below illustrates the blood alcohol level of a male employee during a typical work day following an evening at the bar.

Your employee arrives at the establishment, without having dinner, at about 6:00 pm and stays until closing. He arrives home at 1:30 am with a blood alcohol content (BAC) level of .20, which is not uncommon considering the average Driving Under the Influence (DUI) is recorded at .175 BAC. To achieve this alcohol content level, the 170 lb. male employee consumed an average of two drinks an hour for seven hours, on an empty stomach.

* North Dakota's legal blood alcohol content (BAC) is .08.

Impaired Driving vs. Drunk Driving

An Explanation of Terms

Not all individuals exhibit the outward physical characteristics of drunkenness. For this reason the term "impaired" is used in legal terms, instead of "drunk." "Impaired" also better describes the condition which an individual finds themselves after consuming alcohol. An individual's ability to drive after consuming alcohol is impaired even though external signs of alcoholic impairment may not be evident.