Participants in this arm will attend 4-6 30-minute behavioral health appointments with a behavioral health provider in an integrated primary care setting. All participants will attend 4 core alcohol-focused appointments focused on providing information and skills to manage unhealthy alcohol use. Participants may elect to attend up to 2 additional optional appointments focused on supplemental strategies to manage alcohol use or to address co-occurring mental and behavioral health concerns.

Primary care usual care consists of universal annual alcohol screening; those who are identified as at-risk receive a brief advice intervention from their primary care provider and may be offered an integrated primary care referral. The brief advice intervention is standardized and triggered automatically by a positive screen. Integrated primary care consists of brief assessment and intervention with licensed, independent behavioral health providers. Patients may decline integrated primary care referrals, complete several appointments, and/or be referred to specialty treatment

The intervention consists of 4-6 30-minute behavioral health appointments with a behavioral health provider in an integrated primary care setting. It includes 4 core alcohol-focused appointments focused on providing information and skills to manage unhealthy alcohol use that have been adapted from existing evidence-based treatments in integrated primary care and specialty care. Participants may elect to attend up to 2 additional optional appointments focused on supplemental strategies to manage alcohol use or to address co-occurring mental and behavioral health concerns, including mood, trauma, sleep, and pain.

Quality of life will be assessed by the abbreviated World Health Organization Quality of Life Assessment (WHOQOL-BREF), a 26-item self-report measure of QoL in the past 2 weeks in 4 areas (social, physical, psychological, and environment) on a 1-5 scale.

Alcohol problems will be assessed by the Short Inventory of Problems-Revised (SIP-R)147, a 17-item self-report measure of frequency of alcohol problems on a 0-3 scale.

Alcohol-specific functional impairment will be assessed by the Addiction Severity Index - Lite, a semi-structured interview developed among Veterans in substance use treatment that assesses alcohol and drug use and problems and 5 areas of functioning: medical, legal, psychiatric, employment, and family/social

Length of sessions in the experimental condition will be measured to test if the average is within guidelines for integrated primary care treatment (30 minutes maximum).

An independent rater will listen to session tapes and record if each essential element was delivered on a checklist.

Alcohol use will be assessed with the Timeline Followback (TLFB), a calendar-based measure that records standard drinks consumed each day in the past month to yield percent of drinking days, average drinks per drinking day, percent of heavy drinking (i.e., ≥4 drinks/occasion) days, and a variable indicating if alcohol use is above NIAAA-recommendations.