Alcohol and triazolam: differential effects on memory, psychomotor performance and subjective ratings of effects

The effects of alcohol (0.80 g/kg) and the benzodiazepine hypnotic triazolam (0.25 mg/70 kg) were compared directly in a double-dummy, double-blind, placebo-controlled, repeated-measures design in 18 healthy volunteers. While alcohol (0.80 g/kg) and triazolam (0.25 mg/70 kg) produced comparable levels of psychomotor performance impairment, a dissociation was observed, such that the magnitude of memory impairment (measured by d', participants' sensitivity in discriminating between old and new words in the recognition memory paradigm) was greater with triazolam than with alcohol, whereas subjective ratings of the overall strength of drug effect were higher with alcohol than with triazolam. Participants also adopted a more conservative response bias in the recognition memory paradigm in the alcohol (0.80 g/kg) condition relative to both placebo and triazolam (0.25 mg/70 kg). In addition to characterizing the adverse effects of two widely used psychoactive substances, the present results may also contribute to the understanding of underlying neurochemical mechanisms.