The effect of alcohol on memory for feelings: does it really help users to forget?

In an innovative piece of research, Cowan (Cowan, J. D. Testing the escape hypotheses. Alcohol helps users to forget their feelings. J. Nerv. Ment. Dis., 171: 40-48, 1983) purports to have found that alcohol helps users to forget their feelings by impairing their ability to retrieve specific emotional states (i.e., reproduce particular mood ratings) originally experienced (rated) 48 hours earlier. Close inspection of Cowan's procedure and memory measures reveals, however, no basis for such a finding. Since his subjects rated their emotions on each of three occasions in addition to the one to be remembered and even reported virtually the same moods on each occasion, Cowan's memory test results were not unique to the intended target memories from 48 hours earlier but may have derived instead from any time at which mood was assessed, including just minutes before the memory test itself. To highlight the problems of interpretation encountered in this design, an alternative analysis of Cowan's data is offered, suggesting that alcohol may enhance, rather than impair, memory for feelings. The implications of that result for alcohol abuse are quite different from those proposed by Cowan, or by the "escape" hypotheses that he was trying to test.