system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Why does alcohol leave such a recognizable smell on your breath when non-alcoholic drinks, like Coke, don't?
gpt
The smell lingers as long as you're drunk because it's not coming from residual booze in your saliva, it's the smell of your blood itself.

When you imbibe an alcoholic beverage, ethanol (the active ingredient that gets you drunk), is absorbed into your bloodstream. Ethanol is a volatile chemical (it evaporates easily), so when alcoholic blood passes through your lungs, some of the ethanol evaporates into the air that you exhale. It's this process that allows a breathalyzer to measure BAC based on your exhalation.