Ask most smokers when their strongest cravings hit outside of stress, and a lot of them will say the same thing: when they are drinking.
There is a real reason for that. Nicotine and alcohol both affect some of the same reward pathways in the brain, and for years the two have probably shown up together, drink in one hand, cigarette in the other, so often that your brain treats them as a single event rather than two separate choices. Order a drink, and part of your brain is already expecting a cigarette to follow.
Alcohol also lowers the exact defenses you built up to quit. It reduces inhibition, makes "just one" sound more reasonable than it did an hour earlier, and dulls the memory of why you decided to stop in the first place. A craving you could talk yourself out of sober can feel unstoppable two drinks in.
This is why so many relapses do not happen during a hard day at work. They happen at a bar, at a party, on a night that otherwise felt good.
A few things actually help. In the early weeks of quitting, consider cutting back on how often you drink, or how much, not forever, just while the new non-smoking habit is still fragile. If you are going to drink, decide before you start, not after two drinks in, what you will do when the urge hits. Have something to hold, gum, a straw, a drink you can sip slower. Tell whoever you are with that you quit, so there is a witness to your decision instead of just your own willpower at 11pm.
If you slip during a night of drinking, treat it as what it is, alcohol lowering your guard, not proof that quitting failed. The plan did not stop working. One risky situation got the better of it once. Get back to it at the next opportunity.