Human alcohol administration paradigms have proved critical for advancing knowledge of alcohol dependence etiology and mechanisms of treatment response (King et al., 2011a, 2011b; Plebani et al., 2012; Ray et al., 2010). While only a small proportion of these studies have modeled alcohol consumption as the dependent variable (Zimmermann et al., 2013), such paradigms are particularly important in that the progression from early use to addiction is ultimately contingent on repeated cycles of self-administration (Kalant, 2010). Early efforts to model self-administration under controlled conditions helped to characterize cognitive and motivational aspects of consumption in alcohol-dependent participants (Marlatt et al., 1973; Mello and Mendelson, 1965; Zimmermann et al., 2013). Subsequent evidence that self-administration varied based on reported stimulant and sedative effects of alcohol (de Wit et al., 1987, 1989) informed the conceptualization of subjective alcohol responses as candidate endophenotypes for alcohol dependence (Crabbe et al., 2010; Hines et al., 2005; King et al., 2011b; Morean and Corbin, 2010).
