Sommer et al., 2008). In a series of studies involving a mouse model of alcohol dependence and relapse drinking, repeated brief exposure to forced swim stress prior to alcohol drinking sessions significantly increased drinking in alcohol dependent mice, but did not alter intake in nondependent mice (Lopez et al., 2016). Interesting, this stress procedure did not further increase drinking in two other drinking models that typically engender high levels of alcohol intake – the drinking-in-the-dark (DID) model and the intermittent access (‘every-other-day’) model (Anderson et al., 2016a). These results suggest that stress may interact with chronic alcohol exposure and withdrawal in a unique manner to facilitate and further augment escalated drinking in dependent subjects (Anderson et al., 2016b). Further, behavioral sensitization to stress may be critical in rendering subjects more vulnerable to relapse. Indeed, experimental evidence suggests that stress can provoke relapse-like behavior more easily in subjects with a history of dependence (Liu and Weiss, 2002; Sommer et al., 2008).
