Okay, joking aside. My MC's father has a drinking problem, for years he has been sober but after the passing of his wife, he retreated to drinking. The MC finds him drunk and nearly passed out. What is the best and safest way to sober someone up quick?. as for as keeping him sober, the MC will be handling that. Also I am sure there are other things i'm not taking in to consideration. I don't drink, and if I do it's very rare and usually a glass of wine with a good meal, so I have no clue in this department.
If someone is intoxicated to the point of (almost) being unconscious, there is little you can do to sober them up. They have to sleep it off. In hospital they may get a saline drip, but how much this ‘sobers them up’ I’m not sure (there is research to suggest it is of little benefit). You can’t remove the alcohol from their blood, the level of which is why they are drunk; it must be metabolised by the body, and the rate at which it can do this is fixed, although can vary from person to person. A drip may help them feel better (they will be less dehydrated) when they wake up and get told to fuck off home, I mean, discharged... So, I think there is nothing realistically your MC can do to speed up the sobering process. Edited to add: if the father has not got to the point of passing out, just drunk, your MC might be able to help him to ‘get his shit together’. Coffee, water and food can help someone function at a higher level (assuming they don’t vomit, something in the stomach will slow the absorption rate of any alcohol still in there, caffeine could perk them up a bit and food could increase their glucose levels), but they will not be any more ‘sober’ as you have not removed any alcohol from the blood. They may just appear less drunk. If it’s vital that the father ‘sobers up’ a bit, and you want to keep it as close to reality as you can, this could be an option.
I’m in agreement with the above poster. There is next to nothing you can do to sober someone up. At my place of business (treatment facility), when someone blows extremely high, we take them to a hospital. They get put on an IV (as mentioned above), but the real benefit of the hospital is the proximity to hospital equipment should the drunk person have complications. Seizures are one of the big worries when people sober up, and the medication given to people to avoid it is a benzodiazepine, which is unsafe to give to people who have a high BAC. Sometimes those seizures happen in no-mans land before it is safe to give the medication to prevent a seizure. The important thing to remember while writing your story is that the MCs primary concern should be keeping his father safe, not sobering him up. That will happen when it does.
Thanks! They live in a Time where drips don't exist yet. I was kind of leaning towards having sleep it off, I was told to make sure he's sleeping on his side so that he doesn't asphyxiate on his own vomit.
Does activated charcoal work on alcohol? Edit: not really https://www.google.com/amp/s/broadly.vice.com/amp/en_us/article/gyxbm3/i-ate-activated-charcoal-to-try-to-prevent-myself-from-getting-drunk
Just to add to this: The process of detoxifying from alcohol consumption involves several enzymes which are themselves toxic. Attempting to accelerate this process (for example by artificially introducing these enzymes into the bloodstream) would be harmful to the body. The only way you could safely accelerate the detoxification from alcohol would be to use an artificial liver - i.e. divert the bloodstream into something which removed or neutralised the ethanol in the blood without introducing anything into the bloodstream, and then pumping the detoxified blood back into the body. A blood transfusion would probably work too. But it wouldn't be instant in any case - cells which had already been affected by the ethanol would still take time to return to normal even when all of the ethanol was removed from the blood, and then you still have the side effects to deal with (the hangover).
That's a very good point, i'll have the MC stay at her father's bedside along with one of his guards, to make sure he stays safe.
Is the drunk father physical dependent on alcohol? Does he go through withdrawals such as hand shaking, seizures and hallucinations when when he is sober. IMO I think physical withdrawals with the father would make would make for a good story
He is a King, so he drinks to relieve stress. So I think that counts. He did cut down on the request of his wife, the scene in question takes place after a traumatic event sends him into depression, and he over drinks to compensated. My MC, finally has enough and forces rehab on her father. One of the rare times his friends and bodyguards disobey him. I haven't really explored the psychological aspects... till now... after I am done with the Rewrite I might have to go back and explore the idea. I didn't give it much attention since it was supposed to be short part of the book, but with how my Books are structured, it might be interesting to go back and study it further. My books are divided into parts, with each being a sort of Novella, (Or a series of Novellas in the same book). This will require further study. .
