Drinking coffee increases drunkenness

Drinking coffee does not sober you up and may actually further impair your judgement, new research suggests.

The combination of alcohol and caffeine produces a potentially lethal mix that just makes it harder to realise you are actually drunk in the first place.

And the study published in Behavioural Neuroscience suggests popular caffeinated energy drinks could also raise risks from intoxication rather than lessen them.

Dr Thomas Gould, of Temple University, Philadelphia, said, "The myth about coffee's sobering powers is particularly important to debunk because the co-use of caffeine and alcohol could actually lead to poor decisions with disastrous outcomes."