A, Timeline of chronic intermittent ethanol (CIE) and forced swim stress (FSS) treatment. Following 6 weeks of baseline drinking with 15% EtOH for 1h daily, mice underwent four cycles of AIR/CIE. On alternating weeks, mice had 1h daily access to alcohol. A subset of CIE and AIR mice underwent FSS 4h prior to each drinking session. On day 3 of test 4, a subset of mice in each group was sacrificed during withdrawal, with the remaining sacrificed following a 1h drinking session (“reaccess”). B, CIE mice increased their voluntary alcohol intake across the four alcohol vapor exposure cycles. FSS further escalated drinking in CIE but not AIR mice (*, p<0.05 vs. AIR; ^, p<0.05 vs. CIE). C, Blood ethanol concentrations (BEC) during the four alcohol vapor exposure weeks. BECs did not differ between CIE and CIE+FSS mice (p>0.05). D, For network analysis, mice were divided into groups of low and high drinkers (LD and HD, respectively) based on intake below or above the mean of 2.7 g/kg averaged across tests 3 and 4, indicated by the dotted gray line. Only one CIE mouse showed consumption below this cutoff. E, During the final reaccess drinking session, alcohol intake was significantly higher in HD vs. LD mice (p<0.0001).