Does caffeine help people sober up from the effects of alcohol?
The fear of giving coffee to an intoxicated person is that you will only end up with a wide-awake drunk. Until recently, most evidence suggested that coffee/caffeine did nothing to counteract the sedation and performance disruption from alcohol. More recent studies suggest that caffeine can partially antagonize (interfere with alcohol binding in the brain) the effects of alcohol. Caffeine can also block some of the effects (sedation and decreased performance on cognitive tasks) of tranquilizers such as Valium®, Xanax® and Librium®, which have similar sedative effects as alcohol.
