Excessive alcohol consumption is a prevalent issue worldwide, with high societal and personal costs. The significant disease process associated with excessive alcohol consumption is alcohol use disorder (AUD). AUD patients face many biological and psychological changes that make cessation or abstinence from alcohol incredibly difficult. Specifically, these individuals have an overt fixation on acquiring alcohol, which may lead to issues with family, occupation, and the law. Further, those attempting to abstain from alcohol may face severe withdrawal symptoms, such as irritability, vomiting, anxiety, tremors, and even seizures. 

Thus, there are many challenges to the cessation of alcohol drinking, and current treatments still leave much to be desired. This collection focuses on methods aimed at discovering the mechanistic underpinnings of brain changes incurred from excessive alcohol drinking and subsequent behavior. As there are many different facets of alcohol misuse, it would be beneficial to consolidate a range of reproducible animal models and recent innovative techniques to push toward better clinical outcomes.