HHS HealthBeat (January 5, 2010)

The morning after

From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I’m Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.

If you party hearty on New Year’s Eve, feeling fine on New Year’s Day doesn’t mean you are fine. A study says post-drinking impairment lingers.

Damaris Rohsenow of Brown University tested that by having 95 healthy, heavy drinkers between 21 and 33 years old get legally drunk one night, then sleep 8 hours. Afterward, she tested their ability to pay attention and make quick decisions.

Rohsenow says that, on the morning after, they were still impaired:

[Damaris Rohsenow speaks] "Don’t consider driving the morning after the night before. If a person is going to get drunk, they should be doing it on a night when they are not going to be needing to drive the next morning."

The study in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research was supported by the National Institutes of Health.

Learn more at hhs.gov.

HHS HealthBeat is a production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I’m Ira Dreyfuss.

Last revised: May 7, 2011