Drink driving
Having previously said I don't drink, I'm going to see how drunk I can get and still be under the UK alcohol limit. I decided it was a teeny bit unethical to get behind the wheel, so I'm going to test myself on GTA V instead.
I created a simple course that mimics my everyday life. So I'm going to drive from my luxury penthouse apartment to the clothes shop for a new dress, then go for a haircut before driving to the golf course.
But first, Science™. Or if science isn't your thing, just skip to the heading marked Sober.
Blood alcohol concentration
When a bottle says that it's 5% or 40% alcohol, that's the amount of the liquid in the bottle which is pure ethanol, the stuff that gets you drunk. So a pint (568mL) of Carlsberg Export at 5% is 28.4mL of ethanol (568 * 5 / 100).
In the UK we use a system called units to make it easier to keep track of what you've drunk. One unit is 10mL of ethanol. So a pint of Carlsberg Export is 2.84 units (28.4 / 10), although it just says 2.8 on the can to avoid confusing drunk people.
Still with me?
Drink drive limits are expressed as the amount of ethanol in a certain amount of blood, or breath. The UK drink drive limit is currently 80mg of ethanol per 100mL of blood (or 35 μg per 100mL of breath). 80mg/100mL is more commonly expressed as 0.08 BAC (Blood Alcohol Concentration).
But how much do I need to drink to stay below that?
The Widmark method
The generally accepted method for calculating blood alcohol is the Widmark method, which is gives the blood alcohol concentration in g%:
BAC = (0.8 * ethanol in mL * 100) / (weight in Kg * 1000 * gender constant)
The gender constant is 0.68 for men and 0.55 for women and relates to the different amounts of water in the bodies of men and women. Re-arranging this to give me the most I can drink and still be below the UK drink drive limit gives me a wonderfully simple formula:
Ethanol in mL = weight in Kg * gender constant
For me, this is 47.6mL ethanol, which is 4.76 UK units. This is just over a pint and half of Export, or four shots of gin, which is what I'm going to drink.
I know before I even open the bottle that I'm going to be utterly incapable of driving anywhere.
Sober
First, I need a benchmark, so I drove the course sober in 5 minutes and 39 seconds.
Drunk in the game
If you've played GTA V, you'll know that there are all sorts of ways to get high in the game. As an extra benchmark I wanted to get plastered in the game (still sober in real life) and then drive the same course to see what time I get. The vehicle swerves all over the road after you've had a few and is very hard to control.
The main problem here is that you can't shop or get a haircut while the police are after you, and drink-driving catches their attention pretty quickly.
It didn't end well and no matter how many times I tried, I couldn't get to the golf club without dying. Here's an example.
Drunk in real life
To be honest I wasn't looking forward to this, it's definitely one of the worse ideas I've had lately. But here goes.
I drank four shots of gin and a pint of tonic water in ten minutes and then tried to play the game. I got round the course in 7 minutes 12 seconds, but I found it hard to navigate the menus and failed to buy a dress or get a haircut.
There's no way I should be driving in real life. My driving wasn't that bad, I could control the car much easier than being drunk in the game, but I found it very hard to concentrate on playing and keeping the truck on the road. I guess this is why we have drink-drive laws! Apologies for the mumbly, slurred commentary in the video.
Want to give it a go?
Comments
Recent posts
Five things I'm going to miss about Cornwall

In ten days we're leaving the UK for new adventures in Spain...
Read moreOwning less stuff

We're off to Spain for new adventures in a couple of weeks, and we've spent the last three months sorting our possessions into the four S's: ship, store, sell or skip...
Read moreArchive
2016December 2016 (2)November 2016 (2)October 2016 (2)September 2016 (3)August 2016 (4)July 2016 (5)June 2016 (4)May 2016 (4)April 2016 (5)March 2016 (4)February 2016 (4)January 2016 (5)2015December 2015 (4)November 2015 (4)October 2015 (5)September 2015 (4)August 2015 (3)July 2015 (4)June 2015 (4)May 2015 (5)April 2015 (4)March 2015 (4)February 2015 (4)January 2015 (4)What's this about?
Hi I'm Mat and I'm addicted to new hobbies. I used to think this was a bad thing but now I'm embracing it.
Writing them all up in this blog encourages me to finish projects, and helps me keep track of which ones I've tried.
Licky

Following on from last year's experiment where I compared the cleanliness of the dog's feet versus my own, I thought we'd have a rematch with our tongues...
Also in Games...
Poker Scrabble

I'm still obsessed with poker and a bit sad that Kat doesn't enjoy the game at all...