Can you sober up faster by going for a run?

How will it affect your blood alcohol levels?

If you go for a quick jog around the block, will it be safe for you to drive home after a night at the pub?

These are the types of questions that Adam Savage and the Mythbusters folks from Discovery Channel wanted to find out, so they put Adam on a treadmill to find out.

Here’s what happened:

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3KCjIAhSPc

One lesson that he learned is that a treadmill is not a good tool to use when you’ve been drinking. It takes coordination to run on and can be difficult enough for some people when they are sober, especially if they haven’t used one before.

They also decided that exercise can help you sober up slightly (not shown in the above video), but I’d tend to think that it isn’t going to work well enough to enable you to drive home safely if you are too drunk to do so. If you do think you need to run before driving, then 5 minutes is definitely not enough time.