Pharmacological analysis of the mixed discriminative stimulus effects of ethanol.

Ligands acting at separate receptor systems are independently recognizable as ethanol in drug discrimination procedures. These findings suggest that the internal stimulus effects of ethanol are composed of actions at more than one receptor system and that these mixed effects remain distinct and do not blend to form a single subjective state. Furthermore, the relative contributions of these receptor systems to the ethanol cue depend upon the ethanol training dose and are not uniformly amplified when the dose of ethanol is increased. The data gathered from these studies can be used to identify transmitter systems that may contribute to dose-specific behavioral effects of ethanol.