Sometimes you don’t have time during your important day to wait for that sweet nectar buzz to kick in. We've got what you need.

The sober struggle is real, and sometimes you don’t have time during your important day to wait for that sweet nectar buzz to kick in. Here's a few ways booze gets to your head quicker.

1. Not going to the gym

Sounds like every drinker’s dream scenario: A reason to skip the gym and head strait to the bar. Hell, sounds like every person’s dream scenario. Muscle mass accumulates large amounts of water, which is exactly the place where alcohol likes to hang out. When you skip training, you lose muscle mass and that quiet reserve where alcohol used to reside no longer exists, sending the alcohol straight into your blood stream and placing you on the train to Drunktown.  

2. Lack of sleep

People often say you can sleep when you die. We hate that saying. We love sleep. But it turns out, it’s affecting the amount of booze we need to catch a buzz. Alcohol actually intensifies the side effects of sluggishness and exhaustion that you’ve been feeling throughout the day. By missing a night of sleep, you’re already tired and mentally exhausted. Alcohol compounds that feeling without your BAC increasing one bit.

3. Change in Time Zones

Traveling across time zones to see your family does more to you than simply reminding you why you moved out in the first place. Moving time zones throws your circadian rhythm into a tailspin, which in turn throws off your body’s metabolic functions. As a result, your liver processes alcohol at a slower rate. For every time zone you cross, you’ll need about one day for recovery. Sorry mom and dad, can’t come home because it throws off my circadian clock.

4. Losing weight

Shaving those holiday love handles isn’t such a bad thing after all. Cutting weight from your beautiful figure leaves less H2O in the body that’s required to dilute the booze. And like dehydration, this only allows alcohol to move freely among your luscious veins turning you into the tequila monster that everyone seems to love so much. It only takes a 10 percent decrease in body weight for this to occur. Now here’s a diet we can get behind.

5. You're getting sick

Anyone who’s ever struggled though the oncoming sickness to hit the bars with friends will understand that when you’re under the weather, taking a shot or two sends you down the rabbit hole faster than your best friend NyQuil. The reason for this drinking anomaly is that when you’re sick, you’re dehydrated, and that lack of water means less dilution for the alcohol. In short, there’s more of a concentration of booze flowing through your system and it’s packing a punch harder than Ray Rice in an elevator. 

6. You’re old

There was a time in your good old days when you could polish off a bottle of Fireball, wake up the next morning, and then have a go at another one-seven-five without missing a beat. But after the age of 25, the recovery time between Fireball bottles 1 and 2 took a serious dive. This decrease in tolerance, doctors believe, is due to the adolescent brain processing alcohol differently due to the cerebral development stages — although scientists really aren’t quite sure what exactly causes you to feel drunker. So there you have it, another reason to be excited about getting older.