Alcohol And Alcohol On Rats Essay

Shepard Siegel and several colleagues undertook a test, involving rats, to attempt to explain drug tolerance. They injected rats with a small amount of ethanol every day for four days, before moving half of the rats to a new location and injecting them with a larger amount of ethanol. The rats that stayed in the same location remained relatively healthy, while nearly two-thirds of the rats in the new location died of alcohol poisoning. A similar experiment involving rats and morphine showed that the body can overcompensate for the expected effects of a drug when presented with a smaller dose. Rats were given relatively large doses of morphine for several days, and when given drastically smaller doses, their bodies displayed symptoms of withdrawal despite receiving the drug anyway.
Siegel's study with ethanol and rats demonstrates that location can be a conditioned stimulus that causes the body to be prepared to resist the effects of a drug, further indicated by the fact that rats in an unfamiliar location were more likely to die of alcohol poisoning, while rats in their usual location took the alcohol with relatively little issue. The study with rats and morphine demonstrates that drugs themselves can be a conditioned stimulus for the body's response to them, as displayed with how rats' bodies overcompensated with their response to a drug. The resistance of addicts and alcoholics can therefore be attributed to their undertaking certain rituals before drinking or taking drugs, such as doing so in a specific location or listening to a certain song. These rituals signal the body, without the addict realizing, that it is time to prepare for the effects of drugs or alcohol, and thus the body can be ready to resist their effects by the time the drugs or alcohol are