This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Reply to article  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citation map  • Citing articles on Web of Science (26)  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in this journal  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Nancy K. Mello, PhD; Jack H. Mendelson, MD

Arch Gen Psychiatry. 1971;25(6):527-539.

Abstract
Drinking patterns of 15 alcoholic volunteers, given unrestricted access to alcohol, were strikingly similar, both within and between subjects with respect to: total volume of alcohol purchased; the total volume of alcohol purchased at each purchase opportunity; the distribution of interpurchase times; and the daily mean blood alcohol levels. Individual alcoholics may show great variations in the overall daily volume-frequency patterns which appears to be dependent in part on the schedule of reinforcement associated with alcohol acquisition. There was little temporal concordance in discrete drinking episodes between subjects studied in the same group. The implications of these data for simulation of naturally occurring spontaneous drinking patterns are discussed.

Author Affiliations
Washington DC; Boston

From the Division of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, National Institute of Mental Health, Washington DC (Dr. Mello) and the Department of Psychiatry, Boston City Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston (Dr. Mendelson).

Footnotes
Accepted for publication Jan 11, 1971.

Reprint requests to National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, National Institute of Mental Health, Intramural Research, William A. White Bldg, Rm 493, St. Elizabeths Hospital, Washington DC 20032 (Dr. Mello).

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?