Oddly, the diagnostic criteria for alcohol dependence in the USA do not include either the quantity or frequency of drinking (Hasin et al. 2006), but there is much current interest in incorporating these indices into the forthcoming new diagnostic scheme, DSM-V (Hasin and Beseler 2009). A crucial feature of preference drinking is that even high-drinking genotypes seem generally to limit their intake to blood alcohol levels below those leading to overt intoxication, quite unlike human alcoholics (Rhodes et al. 2005). Nevertheless, the work on preference drinking has provided many important insights.
