Jessica Tan didn’t like the taste of alcohol the first time she tried it at the age of 19.
“I was at a party where everything – including beer and Jell-O shots – was gross,” the chemical engineering senior said.
Despite this experience, she gave alcohol a second try. Three years later, she now considers herself a social drinker.
Pharmacy professor Rueben Gonzales, who said he drinks on occasion, has studied alcohol consumption and its effects on chemicals in the brain for more than eight years.
After consuming a drink with 10 percent alcohol, the rats in his research had a similar response to Tan’s gradual affinity for alcohol.
“We know 90 percent of people and 90 percent of rats, when they’re first exposed to alcohol in a voluntary manner, they will go back to it,” Gonzales said. “They will choose to drink it on a regular basis — we’re talking social drinking, not alcoholism. This behavior is then maintained for quite a long time.”
“The first day [the rats are given alcohol], they’re very surprised because the taste is very different, and they don’t drink very much,” he said. “The next day, they double their drinking [and] drink enough to really feel buzzed. The equivalent would be like sucking down three margaritas in a row.”
Gonzales’ latest discovery, presented last month at a neuroscience conference, suggests that on the second day of exposure to alcohol, there is a spike in dopamine, a neurotransmitter that responds to predictive cues in the environment.
“We’re still testing whether or not there’s a dopamine response the first day [of exposure],” he said.
Gonzales published a finding in 2003 that said dopamine spikes within five minutes of consuming alcohol.
“We saw that the dopamine goes up before, essentially, the alcohol gets to the brain,” Gonzales said. “When alcohol was peaking in the brain, the dopamine response was gone. Then the question is ‘What’s causing that?’ Our data suggests that it’s a physiological response.”
Gonzales received news in September that the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, part of the National Institutes of Health, awarded him a Method to Extend Research in Time, or MERIT, award of $2.8 million over a 10-year period. While researchers do not apply for MERIT awards, when they apply for a renewal of their grant, members of the institute may pick them to be among the investigators to whom the awards will be given.
“The MERIT award provides long-term, stable support to investigators whose research competence and productivity are distinctly superior and who are likely to continue to perform in an outstanding manner,” according to the institute’s Web site.
Gonzales said he was always interested in the effects of drugs on chemicals in the brain.
“Growing up, and during high school particularly, I had become fascinated with people taking drugs,” he said. “I was always curious: What about that experience would make them want to do it again and again, particularly when we know it can cause problems?”
Tan said she usually stops drinking when she “feels good,” and that she never gets drunk.
“I don’t drink just to drink,” Tan said. “If I drink something, it’s because it tastes good, but I’m not going to get a margarita at 3 p.m. I know when to stop.”
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