The secondary aim of this study was to examine alcoholism severity as a predictor of subjective responses to alcohol in the laboratory. To that end, results suggested a positive association between alcoholism severity and self-reported sedation and alcohol craving during the infusion, although the effects were seen across both alcohol and placebo conditions. In other words, these effects were not specific to alcohol. The original hypothesis based on the literature on alcoholism neurobiology (Koob, 2003; Koob and Le Moal, 2008; Robinson and Berridge, 2001), was that individuals at later stages of alcoholism would experience fewer positive, hedonic, and stimulant effects. While there was no evidence of a negative association between severity and the rewarding effects of alcohol, that may in part, be due to the nature of the sample. Specifically, individuals with a CIWA-Ar score ≥ 10 were excluded from the experimental arm of the study, as it may have been unsafe for them to abstain prior to the infusion sessions. As such, more severe alcohol dependent patients may have been excluded, thereby reducing sample variability and power to detect
