The issues delineated above could be described as reflecting our uncertainty about what the preference drinking assay is modeling. Certainly it is not “alcoholism” in its entirety, for even long-term preference drinking does not generally lead to clear signs of withdrawal when ethanol is removed, and the drinking lacks the compulsive features consistent with human substance abuse. A more realistic assessment is that it may model selective features of the human disorder (McClearn 1979). But which? The human diagnosis is largely behavioral: 5 of the 7 symptoms that can contribute to a diagnosis of alcohol dependence are behavioral rather than strictly medical. Principal among them are such symptoms as the feeling of loss of control over drinking, the supplanting of normal activities or the destruction of family and career by drinking-related behaviors. None of these is convincingly modeled in rodents. 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,
