Back in January, we were checking out what new bills had been introduced in the state legislature when I spotted Senate Bill 5067. It proposed lowering the legal alcohol limit in Washington from 0.08% to 0.05% BAC. “Have you guys heard about this?” I hollered into the newsroom. “Oh yeah, they do that every year,” someone shrugged.

They were right. There has been a perennial effort in Olympia to make our drunk driving laws stricter. But here at The Stranger, the more we talked about it, the more we realized we really didn’t know what the difference between 0.05 and 0.08% ABV felt like. And thus, an experiment was born.

Eight months later, stocked with booze, breathalyzers, and Mario Kart 64, we turned ourselves into lab (saint) rats and figured it out. Did we all drink more than we expect

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