In addition, we evaluated if the placebo drink was believable for participants. We observed that the “drunk or intoxicated” SHAS subjective response scores were significantly different following placebo drink administration compared to baseline subjective response scores (p=0.0015), whereas there was no difference in BAC levels between baseline and following placebo drink administration, with BAC being zero at both time points (Figure 2). Also, we observed significant differences between subjective response scores following placebo drink and all time points following alcohol administration (p<0.0001); as expected, the drunk or intoxicated scores increased with the cumulative alcohol drinks until participants reached peak BAC, and decreased following the alcohol drinks as BAC was declining.
