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Understanding compulsive drinking behavior is key to improving outcomes in the treatment of addiction. In the present study, we investigated compulsive‐like drinking in alcohol‐addicted rats using the alcohol deprivation effect (ADE) model of relapse behavior, which involves repeated deprivation and reintroduction phases; the latter approximate relapse.

High‐resolution longitudinal drinking and locomotor data were measured while rats (n = 30) underwent a four‐bottle (water, 5%, 10%, 20% alcohol v/v) free‐choice ADE paradigm. Alcohol bottles were adulterated with the bitter compound quinine during a reintroduction phase to test for compulsive behavior. We characterized how drinking and locomotor behavior during ADE + quinine differed from a regular ADE and how, at the individual level, behavioral parameters extracted from the regular ADE related to compulsive‐like drinking …