The current study addressed three primary limitations of previous research on the relations among stress, negative affect and adolescent alcohol use. These include failure to distinguish among different types of negative affect, inattention to potential moderators of the relation between affect and alcohol use (e.g., impulsivity), and insufficient utilization of high-risk samples (e.g., children of alcoholics). In the current study, anger, anxiety and depression were found to differentially mediate the relation between stress and alcohol use, such that depression was the only significant mediator (above and beyond the effects of the other two affect measures). Impulsivity was also found to moderate the depression to alcohol use relation such that depressed, impulsive adolescents drank more heavily than depressed, nonimpulsive adolescents or nondepressed adolescents. Research implications include a need for future attention to the unique relations between forms of negative affect and alcohol use and to variables that might moderate these relations.