Adolescent stress alters ethanol ingestion and agonistic behavior in the male golden hamster.

These data suggest that shock stress during adolescence increases ETOH consumption and may contribute to an increase in aggression in early adulthood. Interestingly, shock stress without ETOH results in timid behavior in early adulthood. One might speculate that adolescent hamsters "self-medicate" to deal with continuous stress. However, because of the variability between experimental groups, it is necessary to replicate these studies with larger numbers of animals and expand the findings to include blood ETOH concentrations.