Experimental design. 9 rats were treated with either ~25 mg/L EtOH vapor or room air for 8 hr/day for 3 weeks in vapor chambers. On the experimental day [2-13C]EtOH was infused via tail vein according to a pharmacologic model (Ramchandani & O’Connor 2006) to reach 21.7mM (100 mg/dL) plasma EtOH by 15 minutes and maintained for the rest of the 2-hour infusion, followed by euthanasia via focused microwave irradiation. During the infusion, blood samples were drawn from a saphenous vein at 5, 15, 30, 60, 90 and 120 minutes. Tissue and blood samples were prepared for NMR analysis. Brain metabolite 13C enrichments were normalized by the final plasma acetate enrichments.