In an alcohol-liquid diet procedure, the diet is typically the sole source of calories available to rats (for example, see Moy et al. 1997), thereby forcing rats to consume the alcohol. Typically, rats are provided a palatable liquid diet containing 5–8.7% v/v ethanol as their sole source of calories sufficient to produce dependence and maintain blood alcohol levels of 100–130 mg% during the dark (active drinking) cycle (Schulteis et al. 1996; Brown et al. 1998; Valdez et al. 2004). High responders during withdrawal from liquid diet will reach blood alcohol levels of approximately 80–100 mg% (Schulteis et al. 1996; Gilpin et al. 2009).
