Mental rehearsal of a task under ethanol facilitates tolerance

Male social drinkers learned a motor-skill task and then drank the same dose of ethanol (0.66 g/kg) on five sessions. Sessions 1 and 5 provided pre- and post-treatment measures of performance under ethanol. During treatment sessions, one group (P) practiced and another (M) mentally rehearsed the task after ethanol was administered. A control group (C) rested. On the posttreatment session, groups P and M did not differ and both were less impaired (i.e., more tolerant) than C. These results suggest that the development of ethanol tolerance is sensitive to the same training procedures which facilitate drug-free learning of a task.