genetics of alcohol preference is clearly intertwined with genetic approach and avoidance tendencies for other tastants. However, the principal limitation of two-bottle preference drinking in our opinion is that under most circumstances, even high preferring genotypes will not drink enough to become overtly intoxicated. For mice, it requires a blood ethanol concentration (BEC) of approximately 100 mg% before behavioral intoxication can be demonstrated unequivocally (Crabbe et al. 2005, 2008). There are numerous methods that can be employed to elevate voluntary drinking to a degree that this threshold is surpassed. However, they require very long-term access to alcohol solutions (e.g., months), generally employ periods of deprivation alternated with access, and/or require extensive training. Alternatively, if alcohol is sweetened, animals will readily drink to intoxication, but the specific role alcohol plays in directing their drinking is questionable. Many of these alternative methods are described in a paper that first reported the development of a new model, “Drinking in the Dark” or DID (Rhodes et al. 2005).
