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Adverse events early in life have been linked to a maladaptive stress response in adulthood that can predispose individuals to psychiatric and physiological disorders. Postnatal stress (PS) shows a variety of long-term neurochemical, hormonal and behavioural changes. The main physiological change is the release of glucocorticoids through activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. We evaluated the consequences of chronic PS on alcohol intake, corticosterone (C) levels and anxiety. In PS, from postnatal day 2 the pups were separated from their mothers and exposed to cold for 1h during 20 days. Then animals were exposed to a voluntary ethanol (6%) intake for 7 days, 30 days of washout and then a second 7-day exposure to a voluntary intake. We measured the volume of intake, C plasmatic levels and anxiety with 3 different tests: elevated plus maze, open field, light-dark transition. Stressed groups significantly increased ethanol intake and showed decreased anxie ty levels. We observed hormonal changes in all treatments, C ranged in all groups, showing an alteration in the hormonal stress response. These results suggest that an exposure to PS increases alcohol intake and alters the HPA axis, which could be relevant to behaviour in anxiety tests. Unlike the anxiogenic effects of stress in adult animals, when the stressor appears early in life we observed decreased anxiety in adulthood. These results and the decrease in C levels indicate an attenuate response to stressful and anxiogenic stimuli.