Although stressful life change events are thought to influence the development of alcoholism and to enhance the probability of relapse after treatment, the actual coping responses to specific events among alcoholics remain largely unexplored. Efforts were made to operationalize and classify coping responses and to explore their relationship to treatment outcome in a comparison of recovered alcoholics (N=42), relapsed alcoholics (N=57) and matched community controls (N=89). Comparisons of coping were made after controlling for demographic characteristics, incidence of negative life change events in the past year, the stresses being coped with, and prior levels of functioning (alcohol consumption, emotional and psychosomatic distress). There were no differences between recovered alcoholics and control subjects. Relapsed alcoholics reported using more avoidance and emotion-focused coping responses. The coping responses were also predictive of posttreatment functioning after controlling for the research variables. Results suggest the importance of coping responses to stress in the process of recovery from alcoholism. (Author/NRB)