Withdrawal from ethanol: simple quantitative behavioral tests for its evaluation.

Several behavioral manifestations were evaluated after withdrawal from ethanol in rats maintained for 6 weeks on an all-liquid diet containing ethanol. Compared with control animals (on a sucrose diet) or with animals on the chronic ethanol-containing diet, animals undergoing withdrawal displayed a greatly decreased locomotor activity in a runway, as indicated by the number of runs per trial and the time required to complete the first run. These animals also had a markedly decreased head-poke and rearing activity. All of these behavioral disturbances persisted for 3-5 days after termination of ethanol. It is suggested that behaviors such as these, which require no pretraining of animals, can be used to evaluate quantitatively the severity of withdrawal in rats.