Differences in muscle-tension response to ethanol in young men with and without family histories of alcoholism.

Abstract

T HAS BEEN HYPOTHESIZED that ethanol can decrease a person's level of tension. In turn, this effect has been invoked to explain why some people drink, why some drink to the point of intoxication, and why others go on to develop alcoholism (1). Ethanol's purported effect on tension as related to alcoholism can be seen in two ways.' one hypothesis is that alcoholics, compared with controls, have different baseline levels of anxiety; a second, that ethanol might differentially decrease tension levels in alcoholics (2). Unfortunately, even when the hypotheses are clearly stated, ethanol's role in tension reduction and the significance of this to alcoholism have never been clearly established (2). Regarding the possibility that alcoholics initially have a heightened tension level, most investigators (e. g., 3, 4) have been unable to demonstrate a consistent correlation between measures of tension at rest (such as the galvanic skin response or forearm blood flow) and diagnoses of alcoholism. Although findings are variable, data (5, 6) have more consistently indicated that, compared with controls, alcoholics respond to ethanol with a greater decrease in such physiological measures of tension as electromyogram (EMG) scores. The tensionreducing properties of ethanol are most prominent as blood alcohol