The goal of the current studies was to extend laboratory findings of stress-related craving and its association to future relapse to the real world. Based on the laboratory findings described above, we hypothesized that daily stressful experiences would lead to increased craving, and that craving, acting as a mediator, would prospectively predict alcohol intake the following day (see Figure 1). This hypothesis was tested in samples from two separate studies of treatment engaged individuals with AUD. We disaggregated within- and between-person variability in stress versus no stressful events and craving to isolate the day-to-day fluctuations in stress and craving (within-person) from each person’s average tendency to experience stressors and crave alcohol (between-person). We used the daily single day assessment approach (DD) rather than EMA as our goal was to assess daily stressors, daily craving and prospective next-day alcohol use, rather than identify specific predictors of drinking on a specific day which is best tested using an EMA approach (Serre et al., 2015; Shiffman et al., 2008; Wray et al., 2014). The focus of this paper and the hypotheses were based
