The Alcohol Literacy Challenge™ (ALC)is an IOM Model “Universal” underage and binge drinking prevention program. It is the first classroom based alcohol prevention lesson that challenges students’ beliefs about the effects of drinking alcohol. It combines the latest media literacy approaches to alcohol marketing with bar laboratory research showing that most of the experience a person calls “being drunk” is a result of that person’s beliefs, not the chemical effects of alcohol.
Decades of bar laboratory research has found that people in a bar setting routinely get drunk by drinking non-alcoholic beverages if they believe they are drinking alcohol. They will exhibit all the mental and physical characteristics associated with drinking, without realizing that an estimated 90% of the positive affects they’re experiencing are their own mental creations.