A continuous access (24 h access) two-bottle choice between alcohol and drinking water was used to measure alcohol consumption [18]. Briefly, mice were housed singly and were provided two water-only graduated glass feeders [19] for a 1-day acclimation period along with a chow diet which was provided ad libitum throughout the experiment. Thereafter, one feeder was filled with alcohol and the other water. Mice consecutively received 4 days each of 3, 6, 9, and 12% (v/v) alcohol in water. Alcohol was made fresh daily, and the alcohol feeder location was changed to control for side preference bias. Consumption volumes were measured daily and a control cage without mice was included on each mouse rack to correct for spillage of liquid throughout the 24-h period. In the event of leakage from a feeder or if cage bedding was stuffed into the feeder by a mouse, data from that cage for that day was excluded from the analysis. Alcohol consumption and preference were calculated as previously described [18]. Some wild-type female C57BL/6J were treated with daily i.p. injections of 15 mg/kg body weight CVC or with an equal volume of the vehicle.
