In this study, we use a large (N = 6,731), deeply-phenotyped target sample of European-Americans who reported ever drinking alcohol (and enriched for those with alcohol dependence) and a very large (N = 112,117) discovery GWAS in a European-only volunteer cohort (the UK Biobank) to examine the genetic overlap between alcohol consumption and non-problem as well as problematic drinking behaviors. Our target sample consists of individuals from the Collaborative Study of the Genetics of Alcoholism (COGA) who have been assessed one or more times using an instrument specifically designed to evaluate risk for substance use and common psychiatric disorders. We utilized a PRS approach to examine the polygenic overlap between self-reported alcohol consumption in the UK Biobank volunteer cohort and several aspects of drinking in COGA. We aimed to leverage the unique strengths of both samples in this study to ask (a) whether a polygenic score for alcohol consumption (average intake per week) from a population-based cohort predicts a range of drinking milestones in a sample that is enriched for familial risk for alcohol problems, (b) whether any association between
