Intramolecular vibrational energy redistributions of the O-H stretching (nu(OH)) vibration for the methanol monomer and its water complex, the methanol-water dimer, are investigated by using ab initio full-dimensional classical trajectory calculations. For the methanol monomer, in the high-energy regime of the 5nu(OH) overtone, the time dependence of the normal-mode energies indicates that energy flowed from the initial excited O-H stretching mode to the C-H stretching mode. This result confirms the experimental observation of energy redistribution between the O-H and C-H stretching vibrations [L. Lubich , Faraday Discuss. 102, 167 (1995)]. Furthermore, a lot of dynamical information in the time domain is contained in the power spectra, whose density is given by the Fourier transformation of the total momentum obtained from trajectory calculations. For the methanol-water hydrogen-bonded complex, at the high-energy level of the 5nu(OH) overtone, the calculated power spectrum shows considerable splitting and broadening, indicating significant energy redistribution through strong coupling between the O-H stretching vibration and other vibrations. It is thus clear that the A-H.B hydrogen-bond formation facilitates energy redistribution subsequent to the vibrational excitation of the hydrogen-bonded A-H stretching mode. (C) 2004 American Institute of Physics.