If you’ve recently made the switch to non-alcoholic beer from regular beer, a few things might have taken you by surprise.

A lot of people don’t expect near beers to taste so similar to regular beer, for example. Or they’re surprised to find out how much variety there is these days, with different craft producers keen to make non-alcoholic or low-alcohol versions of their own beers, with their unique flavours and colours.

But one of the most surprising things to hear is the number of people who report that non-alcoholic beers still make them feel drunk. If you’ve had this experience, you’re definitely not alone. 

There are several reasons why this might happen. In this article, we take a look at some of the studies that have looked into this effect and break down whether or not it is theoretically possible to get drunk on non-alcoholic beer (Spoiler alert: it’s not).

Can non-alcoholic beer make me drunk?

Chemically? No. 

The act of drinking non-alcoholic beers can give you the impression that you feel drunk (which we’ll go into further down), a perception which can feel very real. But despite what some people say, NA beers can’t actually make you drunk because they simply don’t contain enough alcohol.

Non-alcoholic beers do contain some alcohol, just not enough

It is true that many non-alcoholic beers do have small levels of alcohol, another fact that people find surprising when they first make the call to switch. There are several reasons for this, but it’s mostly because it’s expensive and difficult for producers to get those last few traces of alcohol out and legally, it’s not required.

In the U.S, the legal limit NA beers are allowed to contain is 0.5% alcohol by volume (ABV), compared to around 5% ABV for regular beer. For beers labelled low-alcohol, this can be up to 2.5% ABV, and these limits and differences in categories vary depending on which country you’re in.

In theory, people argue, drinking enough NA beers should give you the same amount of alcohol as the equivalent in regular beer. If you drink 10 NA beers at 0.5%, they say, that’s the same as one regular beer.

20 would be the same as two, etc and so while it would require drinking crazy amounts of NA beer, it should be possible to drink enough to start to feel those effects.

This leads many to suggest that this is what’s behind that feeling of being drunk on near beers. You haven’t drunk enough to be totally drunk, but enough to feel that familiar buzz.

However, getting drunk is not simply a question of how much alcohol you drink, but rather how much you drink over a period of time, and therefore how much alcohol builds up in your bloodstream.

Blood alcohol concentration

Blood Alcohol Concentration (BAC) refers to the percentage of alcohol present in a person's bloodstream. A BAC of 0.1%, indicates one unit of alcohol for every 1,000 units of blood. In most states, a person is legally intoxicated if their BAC is .08% or higher.

Increasing your BAC requires drinking more alcohol than your liver can break down. If the amount you drink per hour exceeds this, the alcohol will begin to build up in your bloodstream. 

The factors that affect your BAC aren’t just the quantity of alcohol you consume, but the amount of the time in which you drink them, the levels of key enzymes in your liver involved in breaking the alcohol down, the water composition of your drinks, your weight and a range of other things.

At what BAC do you start getting drunk?

According to Stanford University, a BAC as small as 0.01% can be enough to give you that first sense of relaxation and elevation in mood that people associate with their first drink. 

To reach other recognisable markers of being drunk, including the first slight impairments of reasoning and memory, would require a BAC of around 0.04%.

In order to reach these levels, you need to consume alcohol at a faster rate than your liver can process it. But even if you drink large quantities, the percentage of alcohol in NA beers is small enough that your body will process it as you drink it. 

One definitive study done in Germany among 78 normal weight adults showed that even drinking 1.5 litres of 0.5% beer in one hour resulted in a maximum BAC of 0.0056%. This is still only half the BAC it would require to feel even the earliest and slightest sensations of being drunk.

So, if it’s not technically possible to get drunk from non-alcoholic beer, what’s going on?

Alcohol expectancy and the placebo effect on behaviour

Psychologists and behavioural scientists have shown that the psychology of drinking plays a large part in the feeling of getting drunk. This is an example of what’s commonly known as the placebo effect. 

When an association between two events has been learned, the first will elicit an expectancy of the second. Once learned, the expectancy itself can beget the associated outcome.

Studies have shown that alcohol expectancy can cause feelings of drunkenness, and even mistakes of judgement and perception. People who believe they are drinking alcohol, even though they are receiving a “fake” form of the drink, can show signs of drunkenness and insist that they “feel” drunk too. 

While people drinking NA beer might not believe they are drinking alcohol, the effects of drinking something so similar to an alcoholic drink, usually in an environment with others drinking too, can create the expectancy of getting drunk, and this can be strong enough to make someone actually feel those effects. 

Just because the placebo effect is psychological, doesn’t make it feel less real. So while your feelings of being drunk might be totally convincing, they do not mean that you are drunk, in the way that you would be if your BAC had reached the required levels.

Last thoughts

Non-alcoholic beer has a ton of benefits, and it’s a great feeling to take control of your health, your body and your life, while knowing that you can still enjoy your favourite social activities. But the psychological effects of drinking with others remain powerful. 

This is especially worth thinking about it if you are trying to recover from alcoholism or a worrying drinking habit. If you know that you struggle to fight cravings, non-alcoholic beer is definitely a step in the right direction, but bear in mind that it could feel a little too close to the real thing.