Psychiatric criteria of legal responsibility after the consumption of alcohol: the German situation.

Psychiatry deals with addiction but it is not concerned very much about the symptomatology of acute alcohol intoxication. This causes problems in connection with the legal system: intoxication is the most frequent cause of diminished legal responsibility in Germany, and judges want to have a system to assess the grade of intoxication as simply and reliably as possible. So they found the blood alcohol concentration (BAC) to be a safe indication. But the BAC has various effects not only on different people but also on the same person in different situations: other factors are influential, i.e. alcohol habituation and physical condition, personality, mood and situation. Therefore it is necessary to describe the typical syndromes of intoxication and their dependency on BAC.