This Is Why It Feels Like Time Travels Faster When You Drink Alcohol

We all know the phrase 'time flies when you're having fun', and for many people that notion is proven when they're out having a few drinks.

Sometimes it can feel like the music has only just started when you're suddenly met with the sound of silence and harsh lights; other times you might feel like you've only just started joking about with your mates at the pub when you find yourself surrounded by empty glasses and listening to the call of last orders.

So why does time always seem to fly when you've consumed alcohol? Well, there are a couple of possibilities.

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Citing neuroscientist Warren Meck, Liverpool John Moores University lecturers Ruth Ogden and Catharine Montgomery suggested one such reason may be because the intake itself affects the way our brain monitors time, altering the speed of an 'internal clock'.

Another suggestion is that the activities we're engaged in at the time influence the way we perceive the passage of time, potentially by keeping us busy and preventing us from monitoring the position of the clock's hands.

To further explore the question of how alcohol affects our perception of time, the lecturers sought to find out whether time still 'flew' when participants weren't engaged in the types of social interactions typically associated with alcohol.

In the study, described for The Psychologist, researchers asked people to complete a word-classification task without telling them they would later be asked how long the task lasted, meaning they would hopefully be less likely to monitor the time.

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Once the task was complete, participants were asked to estimate how long they thought it lasted and whether time passed at the same speed as normal, or faster or slower than normal.

Participants then also performed a series of tasks in which they made judgements about the length of short tones.

The study found the participants' ability to estimate the duration of the word-classification task in minutes and seconds was unaffected by alcohol consumption, though the consumption of a high dose of alcohol did result in the feeling that time passed more quickly.

The fact that participants were not engaged in a social activity at the time suggests that simply the act of drinking alcohol itself is enough to affect our perception of time.

However, the researchers note that the feeling of time passing quickly may be exaggerated further when alcohol is coupled with activities which distract us from watching the clock.

So there you have it - while I wouldn't advise using alcohol as a way to speed up boring tasks, it seems time really does fly as a result of it.

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