Drennan Law Firm's Blog

When you think about grabbing a drink, one thing you really need to remember is that that single drink might not be a single alcoholic beverage at all. The amount of alcohol in any mixed drink can vary depending on the mixture.

The standard drink size in the United States is five ounces of wine at 12% alcohol, a 1.5-ounce shot of 80-proof liquor or distilled spirits, eight ounces of 7% malt liquor or a normal 12-ounce can of beer with 5% alcohol content. Now, think about the last time you ordered a drink. Maybe you had a mixed drink that uses two shots of rum and a fruity mixer. Even if that drink is only 12 ounces in total, you're really looking at two alcoholic beverages, not just one.

It was a tough week at work, and your personal life wasn't as good as you'd hoped it would be. You were in an argument with a girl you just started dating, and you felt like you just needed a break from everything. So, to make things easier on yourself, you hopped on your motorcycle and headed down to your local bar. It's no more than two miles from your home, so the idea that you could be stopped for drunk driving never crossed your mind.

Of course, you didn't plan to be so intoxicated that you couldn't drive home, and you expected that the bartender would say something if you did get too drunk. Unfortunately, the way things worked out was that you ended up on your motorcycle when you drove straight through a red light on the way back home. A cop happened to be out, since it was late at night, and they saw you run it. Not long after that, you found yourself arrested and on the way to the police station for drunk driving.

A DUI is a serious charge and one that most people want to avoid. What's interesting about them is that some people have faced DUIs when they didn't ever have a physical alcoholic beverage. How? There are plenty of items that contain alcohol that can build up in your system, some of which are quite unexpected.

One of the primary sources of unexpected alcohol is in the food that you eat. If you're not cooking it yourself, you don't always know what goes into a dish. A recipe that calls for a wine reduction, for example, can actually contain a lot of alcohol. The amount of alcohol that is left after making a sauce or baking all depends on when it was added and at what temperature it was cooked, boiled or otherwise heated.

If you are someone who enjoys alcoholic beverages, whether you enjoy sharing an IPA with your friends after a long day at work or have developed a taste for sipping artisanal whiskeys, you need to make sure you are particularly careful if you get behind the wheel after enjoying one of your favorite drinks.

Knowing when you are safe to drive and when you definitely are not is difficult even in the best circumstances. Our brains have a way of convincing us that the alcohol hasn't affected us as much as it really does. In other words, it's not a very good idea to rely solely on your own analysis of your cognitive state when trying to determine if you are under the influence of alcohol or not.