Can You Drink Alcohol Before Or After Getting A Tattoo?

It’s generally recommended that no alcohol should be consumed for 24 hours before getting a tattoo. There are multiple reasons why drinking alcohol before getting a tattoo can cause problems:

Alcohol Thins Your Blood

It’s a scientific fact (source) that alcohol consumption leads to temporary blood thinning (much like how blood thinners work).

The magnitude of this thinning effect depends on how much alcohol is consumed, but even small amounts can be enough to generate a change in blood consistency.

Although you’re never going to end up dying from blood-loss simply by getting tattooed after a heavy drinking session, there are a couple of problems that can be caused by the thinner blood when being tattooing. These issues include:

Visibility – The thinner the blood, the easier it’s going to be for it to leak out of the tiny puncture wounds caused by a tattooing needle. This excess blood is going to pool over your skin and make it much more difficult for your artist to accurately tattoo where he needs to.

A tattoo artist already has to be extremely accurate when working through patches of excess ink, so he doesn’t need another problem added to the mix.

Not to mention, if the tattoo artist is of lesser experience, he may not yet have the skills to properly tattoo through the excess blood over the area, potentially causing your tattoo to be of lesser quality compared to if you didn’t have any alcohol-fuelled adventures before your tattooing session.

Ink Dilution – Excess blood being pumped to the tattoo area can cause more blood to mix with the ink. This process can thin/dilute the ink, which can result in your tattoo looking faded and washed out.

Any subsequent continuous/heavy bleeding could also potentially flush recently tattooed ink back out of the area, making your tattoo look patchy and faded once healed.

Impaired Judgement

Walking into a tattoo studio heavily intoxicated could potentially be the biggest mistake of your life. Remember that you are about to make a decision that will keep with you for an entire lifetime.

Tattoo Refusal

The vast majority of tattoo artists will refuse your tattoo request on the spot if they have any suspicions whatsoever that you may be intoxicated as you enter the studio.

Not only can you not legally sign the consent form / liability waiver that all tattoo shops require, but you could also be greatly damaging a tattoo shop’s reputation should anybody find out that the studio is tattooing intoxicated customers (on the other hand, they should never knowingly do this anyway).

Intoxicated customers can cause many problems for a tattooing artist, not in the least down to the fact that alcohol naturally makes people much more fidgety and decreases their ability to be able to sit very still for long periods of time – this can be very distracting to the artist and could degrade the quality of work done on the tattoo.

Of course, when you go into a studio drunk and fidget through a session while being a general distraction to the artist, you’re naturally going to march into the studio the next day complaining about the sub-par work done on your body while complaining about the lack of skill from the artist, which will be completely down to no fault of their own.

This can ruin an artist’s reputation so be considerate and think of the bigger picture before thinking about getting a tattoo after drinking alcohol.

General Mood When Being Tattooed

Getting a tattoo while fighting a hangover is not pretty (especially if it’s a long session). Not only may you feel ill/sick at times during the day, you may also have headaches, feelings of tiredness and other less than optimal side-effects.

This self-infliction makes your whole tattooing experience a lot less of a positive experience, and can become a burden on your tattoo artist if you’re constantly moaning to him all day complaining about how awful you feel.

The best advice I can give is to ensure that you always turn up to the tattoo parlour in the best and clearest state of mind possible, with a relaxed and refreshed mental state with a good night’s sleep behind you.

Will Drinking Alcohol Before a Tattoo Make it Less Painful?

Maybe, maybe not, but either way, it’s just not worth it.

Everybody’s bodies are different and while for some people the alcohol might dull the pain for a little while, the dampening of pain will likely be short-lived, and for some people alcohol can make the experience feel even more painful!

And there’s also that small issue of probably not even being allowed past the studio reception counter if you’re suspected of having even the tiniest amount alcohol in your system. So as previously said – it’s just not worth it.

Although they can be quite hit-and-miss depending on the person, there are various tattoo numbing creams and sprays on the market that can be applied to the skin in order to help lessen the amount of pain you go through will being tattooed.

All numbing creams on this page will have no adverse affects on the quality or outcome of your tattoo if applied to the area before tattooing commences.

If you’re truly worried about not being able to handle the pain while being tattooed, take a peek at our great article on dealing with tattoo pain here. This page will hopefully answer many of the questions you may have about tattooing and the pain it might cause – and how to better cope with the pain.

Can you Drink Alcohol After Getting a New Tattoo?

Don’t think that just because your hard day of being tattooed is over that you can go out that same night and party until the sun comes up. This can be extremely detrimental to the healing of your tattoo and there are many potential problems that can arise from drinking too much and too soon after getting your new tattoo:

Excess Bleeding

Generally, your tattoo will continue to ooze blood and plasma for the next 48 hours after your tattoo was completed. This means that for roughly 48 hours (sometimes longer), the tattoo is going to be affected by any additional thinning of your blood caused by drinking alcohol.

Not only can this excess blood lead to having to contend with more blood-stained clothing and bedsheets, it can also amount to a bigger problems:

While your tattoo continues to leak out excess fluids, the skin around the area is going to have greater difficulties scabbing as quickly as it normally would, which in-turn can cause delays in the healing process, and increase the risk of infection setting in. This is because the wound isn’t being protected from harmful bacteria as effectively as it should be due to the lack of scabbing.

Sub-Optimal Healing

Depending on the amount you drink, alcohol can greatly affect your ability to heal and regenerate during sleep and rest due to many bodily functions being impaired while essentially being poisoned by the alcohol.

This impairment means that the biggest organ in your body – the skin, isn’t able to work on effectively healing the area around your tattoo as well as it would be able to if your system was alcohol-free.

Tattoo aftercare and healing is at its utmost importance during the first 2-3 days after getting your tattoo completed, and you should therefore ensure as best as possible that your body is in an optimal state to work on healing your tattoo as well as it can during this initial 2-3 day period.

Rough Treatment

Most of us have been there – getting ridiculously drunk and throwing yourself around a bar or dance floor without a care in the world, bumping into everyone and everything you come into contact with while falling every few seconds.

Although there is nothing wrong with ‘letting your hair down’ once-in-a-while, getting completely wasted straight after getting a tattoo is not the best time to do it.

Can you imagine the horror of waking up the morning after a heavy night out and finding that half of your beautiful new tattoo has been grazed off by accidentally falling over and sliding across a concrete side-walk during your drunken walk home from the bar?

Be careful and treat your tattoo as immaculately as possible during the first few days of healing by avoiding as many potential tattoo-ruining situations as possible – your future self will thank you for it.