Therefore, the present study was designed to improve and extend the previous alcohol challenge studies in women, with three primary objectives. The first objective was to conduct a controlled laboratory study to comprehensively assess the behavioral and subjective response to alcohol at different phases of the menstrual cycle in a large sample of women (n = 45). Since there is some evidence that women may drink more during the late luteal phase, we compared the effects of alcohol during the late luteal phase to the midfollicular phase (e.g., Harvey and Beckman, 1985; McLeod et al., 1994; Podolsky, 1963; Mello et al., 1990). The second objective was to extend our previous findings (Evans and Levin, 2003) and those of Eng et al. (2005) on the role of a family history of alcoholism in response to alcohol in women since this sample of 45 women consisted of 24 FHP and 21 FHN women. In the present study, FHP women had a confirmed paternal history of alcoholism (those with a maternal history of alcoholism were excluded) and FHN women had no first-degree family
