Quitting alcohol in the Covid-19 era

Several studies carried out last fall found that excessive alcohol consumption increased during the pandemic. A study of more than 1,500 adults published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in September found that the frequency of alcohol consumption increased by 14% over the previous year for all adults. For women, excessive alcohol consumption rose by a whopping 41%.

Amanda didn’t drink much, but she feared she could easily become one during the pandemic. “Removing the option altogether seemed much easier than waiting for me to moderate, given everything that was going on,” she says. She is part of an increasing number of people inspired by the pandemic to adopt a kind of preventive sobriety. In July, a survey of 2,000 people commissioned by the addiction awareness group, Alcohol Change UK, found that 7% of participants stopped drinking completely during the blockade.

The alternative alcohol beverage market, in turn, has exploded and is now expected to exceed $ 29 billion in 2026. Jen Batchelor, co-founder of Kin Euphorics, a non-alcoholic beverage line, says sales of her most popular canned cocktail , Kin Spritz, quadrupled during the pandemic. “People are recognizing that they don’t want to poison their energy supply while the state of the world is what it is,” says Batchelor. “They want to maintain their agency at a time that is already humorous roulette. But the mentality is not ‘I kicked alcohol’. It’s ‘I changed alcohol.’ It is a choice, not what we often think of as a necessity, the need for someone to stop drinking – or else. “

“I think a lot of people are reaching the sobriety of a new, modern and data-based lens today, where it’s so easy to measure the inputs in your life and what variables make you feel differently – what it affects your sleep, your hydration, your mindfulness, ”says Bill Shufelt, co-founder and CEO of Athletic Brewing Company, a non-alcoholic craft brewery whose sales in 2020 increased by more than 500% over the previous year. “And I think that isolation and being in their homes especially helped people to identify the variables that make them feel better or worse.”

People who quit alcohol generally report that they do it not to solve a drinking problem, but to avoid creating one. “Right now, when people are feeling more anxious, it has become very common among the patients that I am attending to prevent alcohol preventively,” said psychotherapist Kelley Kitley of Chicago. “People are telling me: I don’t identify myself as an alcoholic, I’m not passing out. But with everything so intensified, I recognize that I could be tempted to use alcohol as a coping mechanism. ”

Chris Cucchiara, a 32-year-old realtor from Pismo Beach, California, has not been drinking since January last year. “I thought about starting as soon as the pandemic started, but I continued” soberly, he says. “I used alcohol to suppress anxiety in the past. It became a goal to test me during the pandemic, a kind of project. ”Will sobriety persist when the pandemic is over? Mr. Cucchiara says he is not sure, but he is happier now than he was some time ago.

“It’s interesting how a pandemic can fuel healthy as well as unhealthy choices,” says psychologist Sarah Gundle of Manhattan. “People are definitely struggling to find ways to deal with this, as some of their other tried and tested methods, like the gym and friends, are being phased out. But making a conscious decision to do something different during this time – like an experiment or a short-term goal or something more permanent – can provide a pleasant structure and focus that can be very comforting and helpful. ”

From her most sober, most introverted patients, Dr. Gundle heard reports of relief that they are now able to socialize without the need to drink. “They are at home and more comfortable, and nobody needs to know that they are taking a goalkeeper and not a gin and tonic,” she says.

Even some who have never considered sobriety – and perhaps never again, once life returns to “normal” – made the change during the pandemic. Brian O’Ceileachair, a 39-year-old content director and Irish expat who lives in Orlando, Florida, says the pandemic ended his 20-year streak of drinking several days a week. A friend posted on Facebook about being sober for a year, and O’Ceileachair was inspired “to take a break.”

It didn’t take long for him to notice a change in his overall mood and stress levels. “Work has become easier to handle, children have become less irritating, mornings have become significantly easier,” he says. “I am currently in the longest sobriety phase of my life and, honestly, I regret not realizing it years ago. Everyone knows me as a petty curmudgeon, but since I stopped drinking, I’m not that guy anymore. “

Ruby Warrington, author of the 2019 book “Sober Curious”, says she saw her Sober Curious group on Facebook triple during the pandemic. “I saw a lot more people who could be considered normal social drinkers suddenly realized that they wanted to numb and know it wasn’t great,” she says. “I also saw many people who could have used alcohol as a social lubricant questioning their habits because it was no longer something they needed to socialize with.”

In the UK, she says, the number of people who abstained from alcohol in Dry January jumped from 3.9 million in 2020 to 6.5 million this year. It is estimated that 15% of Americans participated in Dry January in 2021, against 10% last year. Ms. Warrington believes that the change has a lot to do with the fact that it can be much easier to abstain completely from alcohol than to try to moderate it. “We spend an enormous amount of brain energy drinking and, as soon as we take one, our responses are already altered,” she says.

Prior to Covid-19, Lillie Marshall, a 39-year-old teacher, writer and mother of two in Boston, was a “classic drinking mother,” she says. “I would teach all day, go home exhausted and reward myself with a drink, maybe two.” After the blockade started and she started teaching at home, in addition to taking care of her two young children, she realized that she “would not survive this” unless she was in top form. She had never considered her drink once a day a problem, but she was sure it wasn’t helping.

Her best friend had come to the same conclusion. She advised Ms. Marshall to read Holly Whitaker’s 2019 book, “Quit Like a Woman,” which notes that while using alcohol as a coping mechanism may seem like it’s helping, it hurts after all. Mrs. Marshall and her friend stopped drinking and started doing daily meditations.

It didn’t take long for her to realize that she was sleeping better, had more energy and was much less irritated. His productivity was at an all-time high – no time to drink or even the slightest hangover. “I was like, ‘Oh my God, that drink?'”, She says. Friends set a goal of not drinking for 21 days, but almost 10 months later, neither of them looked back. “In addition to all this, my husband is not working this year for reasons related to the pandemic and we are saving a lot of money,” says Ms. Marshall. “Oh, and I have an abdomen again!”

—Dr. Drexler is a research psychologist and filmmaker based in New York City and the author of two books on gender and families.