Ethanol consumption of free feeding animals during restricted ethanol access.

The present experiments demonstrated that the within session patterns of ethanol consumption of animals given unrestricted access to both food and water can be controlled by altering the schedule of access to ethanol. The first experiment demonstrated that the number of ethanol responses emitted per bout was inversely related to the number of one hour access periods presented per session. In a second experiment, ethanol access was limited to only the dark period of a 12 hour light-dark cycle. Total daily ethanol responding was similar to that of animals that had access to ethanol 23 hours a day. Further restrictions on ethanol availability by restricting access to the last 20 minutes of each hour of the dark period, resulted in an increase in the number of responses emitted per bout.