People become intoxicated at different rates. An hour into our study, the 51-year-old man, who weighs 210 pounds, was asked to touch the red tip of the indicator used to check eye motion with his index finger. He missed. And giggled. Though everyone had consumed between two and three drinks, only he and the youngest woman, weighing 150 pounds, would have been considered for a possible arrest based on behavior and field sobriety tests. Both had consumed three rum-and-Cokes.

Each volunteer then blew into the portable breath tester. At that point, none of the panel—not even the two singled out as possible arrests—was above a .06 blood alcohol level.

You can be seriously impaired even if your blood alcohol level is below the legal limit. After two hours of steady drinking, none of our volunteers was comfortable continuing. In fact, most had claimed an hour earlier that they already felt past the point of driving. “I can’t believe anyone would get in a car and drive feeling the way I do right now,” one panelist said after registering a .067. “I’m glowing. I’ve got gills.”

Still, by the end of our experiment, only two had reached a .08 blood alcohol level. The officers told us that, based on the other tests, they would have considered four of the five panelists for possible DUI arrest.

Some people can drink a lot without showing many signs. The lone non-suspect at the end of the experiment was our 34-year-old beer drinker, who normally drinks about 15 beers a week and, at 280 pounds, was the heaviest of the group. Twenty minutes after finishing his sixth beer, his blood alcohol level was .05 and he was too full to continue drinking. (Beer is absorbed into the body more slowly than other forms of alcohol.) The officers saw no signs of impairment.

On the other hand, the lightest and youngest man, weighing 150 pounds, blew a .116 after five rum-and-cokes. But because he showed four of six clues when he was given the test for uneven eye motion, he was a borderline suspect without the breathalyzer results.

Even if you can’t smell alcohol on your breath, someone else can. About an hour into our experiment, other magazine employees began saying that it smelled like a bar when they walked by our office.

And our conversation with the officers that afternoon yielded a few other insights.

You don’t have to be wavering all over the road to get arrested. According to Seckendorf, most DUI arrests begin as routine traffic stops for equipment or moving violations—a broken headlight or failure to use a turn signal. Only when the officer gets to the car window do the smell of alcohol, slurred speech or other indicators arouse suspicion that the driver is impaired.

Don’t bother telling the cops that the reason you blew high was that you just finished a drink and there’s residual alcohol in your mouth. To combat that defense, suspects are observed for a minimum of 15 minutes before officers administer the breath test. “Eleven minutes is the very longest it would take for alcohol to dissipate from the mouth,” says Butler.

Believe it or not, apparently everyone who’s stopped for a possible DUI in Sarasota seems to have had exactly the same number of drinks before getting behind the wheel. “Two drinks, that’s what everyone says,” Butler says. So save your breath before you lie about how many you’ve had.

If you realize you’ve had too many, it’s already too late to do anything about it. You feel drunk because the alcohol has been absorbed into your bloodstream and reached your brain; once it’s there, nothing you put in your stomach—water, coffee or scrambled eggs—will speed you to sobriety. Put down that energy drink and call a cab.

Sobriety tests can be overwhelming, but they’re nothing compared to the whirlwind that begins with an arrest. Even after you’re deemed fit for release, you’ll likely have to post $500 bond just to get out of jail.

Your first court appearance is the morning after you got arrested, when the judge will decide if there’s probable cause to charge you with DUI. “They usually find probable cause,” says Manatee County assistant public defender Bill Richardson. “Otherwise they won’t arrest you.”

The fine for a first-time DUI will be at least $250, and as of July, a DUI conviction requires you to get $100,000 of liability insurance before you can get your license reinstated. You can even get up to six months in jail. Penalties essentially double with each subsequent DUI conviction. Three DUI convictions within 10 years is an automatic felony: up to $5,000 and five years in prison.