I feel better now, so let me drive!

Many ads about driving drunk portray the drunk person stumbling to their car, then his/her friend tells him/her not to, and he/she (apparently conscious) says "Ok." But in actuality, the drunk person feels sober enough to drive, even though his blood alcohol concentration tells him/her otherwise. Drunk driving claims over 17,000 American lives each year, and you believe people wouldn't get the hint that driving drunk is bad? Everyone knows it's bad, but whether they are conscious of how drunk they are is a completely different story. A study on multiple individuals who has to complete a maze with simple instructions. Normal sober people could easily navigate the maze. The individuals in the experiment were asked to drink enough to bring their alcohol concentration in their blood to .10%. While the drunk individuals ascended and descended heights in their alcohol blood concentration during the maze test, many made frequent errors as their alcohol blood concentration rose. While the feeling of soberness took over, their skills and judgment making were more than obviously impaired. So, many drunk individuals aren't aware that they are still drunk even after the headaches and nausea pass and thus make an impaired judgment to drive.

This is related to biology because the scientists conducting this research are using human subjects and increasing their alcohol blood concentration to conduct experiments on how well they use their judgment skills to navigate the maze while making no mistakes (they are provided simple tasks). While normal sober people will be able to navigate the maze with few errors, the individuals with an alcohol blood concentration of .10% have navigate with multiple errors, all the while oblivious that they still are drunk. This experiment concludes that drunkards feel better faster than they are sober.

This experiment is important because many fall under the false pretense that drunk people drive even though they feel like crap. However, in reality many people who drive drunk don't even realize they are still drunk. It's important to know this because in the future, we all might find ourselves (hopefully not) drunk and pondering if we should drive. While many are oblivious that they are still drunk, we can perhaps make the conscious decision to just chill and ask someone to drive us. We won't know for sure we aren't still drunk until you wake up to a room full of clouds (or something burning).