Heavy social drinkers who report greater stimulation and reward from alcohol are more likely to develop alcohol use disorder over time, report researchers from the University of Chicago, May 15 in the journal Biological Psychiatry. The findings run counter to existing hypotheses that innate tolerance to alcohol drives alcoholism.
In a double-blind, placebo-controlled study, a team led by Andrea King, PhD, professor of psychiatry and behavioralneuroscience at the University of Chicago, analyzed the subjective response of 104 young adult heavy social drinkers to alcohol and tracked their long-term drinking habits.
"Heavy drinkers who felt alcohol's stimulant and pleasurable effects at the highest levels in their 20s were the ones with the riskiest drinking profiles in the future and most likely to go on and have alcohol problems in their 30s," King said, "In comparison, participants reporting fewer positive effects of alcohol were more likely to mature out of binge drinking as they aged."
Alcohol has both stimulant and sedative effects. Building up a tolerance to the sedative effects increases the experience of the stimulant effects and is a path to addiction.......