There is some evidence that genetic correlations and associations with polygenic scores (PGS) show stronger genetic relationships between externalizing and alcohol initiation/consumption and between internalizing and problematic use. Problematic alcohol use, but not consumption, is genetically correlated with indices of psychopathology (Sanchez-Roige et al., 2019; Walters et al., 2018; Zhou et al., 2020). Evidence further shows opposing genetic correlations in which alcohol frequency and quantity are associated with reduced and increased risk for psychopathology, respectively (Mallard et al., 2022; Marees et al., 2020; Sanchez-Roige et al., 2019). PGS for risk-taking is associated with future alcohol consumption (Ksinan, Su, Aliev, Spit for Science Workgroup, & Dick, 2019), while PGS for major depression is related to problematic use and dependence (Andersen et al., 2017; Casey et al., 2019). Despite the currently limited clinical utility of PGS (Rodrigue et al., 2023), investigating whether patterns of association between behavioral stage-based PGS and alcohol milestones, and, reciprocally, between alcohol PGS and stage-based symptom onsets, mirror phenotypic associations would yield important insight into the nature of these relationships. For instance, identifying PGS associations in the context
