What is the effect of drinking coffee after drinking alcohol?

• A. No effect
• B. It speeds up sobering
• C. It increases intoxication
• D. It worsens the hangover

Answer: (A)

The main idea here is that caffeine from coffee doesn’t change how alcohol affects your body or how quickly you sober up. Alcohol is cleared from the bloodstream at a fairly constant rate by the liver, and caffeine doesn’t speed that process. So drinking coffee after alcohol doesn’t reduce your level of intoxication or make you legally sober any faster.

What coffee can do is make you feel more awake, because caffeine blocks a brain chemical that makes you sleepy. That doesn’t mean your impairment has vanished—your reaction time and judgment are still affected by the alcohol, even if you feel more alert.

That’s why the best choice is that there is no effect on sobering. The other options describe changes to intoxication or hangover that caffeine doesn’t reliably produce.