Giving Up Alcohol in the Age of Covid-19

Several studies conducted last fall found that binge drinking has increased during the pandemic. A survey of more than 1,500 adults published in September in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that the frequency of alcohol use increased by 14% in all adults from the previous year. In women, binge drinking increased by as much as 41%.

Amanda wasn’t a problem drinker, but she was worried she could easily become one during the pandemic. “Removing the option altogether felt much easier than I expected to moderate, given everything that was going on,” she says. She is one of a growing number of people inspired by the pandemic to adopt some 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 the participants had completely stopped drinking during the lockdown.

The alternative alcoholic beverage market, meanwhile, has exploded and is projected to exceed $ 29 billion by 2026. Jen Batchelor, the co-founder of Kin Euphorics, a line of non-alcoholic beverages, says sales of their most popular canned cocktail, Kin Spritz, quadrupled during the pandemic. “People recognize that they don’t want to poison their power supply when the state of the world is as it is,” says Ms. Batchelor. “They want to maintain their freedom of choice in a time when roulette is already atmospheric. But the mindset isn’t, “I’ve kicked alcohol.” It’s “I have moved away from alcohol.” It’s a choice, rather than what we often think of as a necessity, someone’s need to stop drinking – or else. “

“I think a lot of people are getting more sober these days through a fresh, modern, data-driven lens, where it’s so easy to measure the input into your life and what variables make you feel different – what affects your sleep, your hydration, your mindfulness ”Said Bill Shufelt, co-founder and CEO of Athletic Brewing Company, a craft non-alcoholic brewery whose sales in 2020 were over 500% higher than the year before.“ And I think isolation and being at home has helped people in particular identify the variables that make them feel better or worse. ”

People who quit alcohol often report that they are not doing this to address a drinking problem, but to prevent one from developing. “In this day and age when people feel more anxious, it has become very common for the patients I see to quit alcohol preventively,” said Chicago psychotherapist Kelley Kitley. “People tell me: I don’t identify as an alcoholic, I’m not going to pass out. But now that everything is so high, I recognize that I might be tempted to use alcohol as a coping mechanism. ”

Chris Cucchiara, a 32-year-old real estate agent in Pismo Beach, California, hasn’t had a drink since January last year. “I thought I would start as soon as the pandemic started, but I kept going,” he says soberly. “I have used alcohol in the past to suppress anxiety. It became a goal to test myself during the pandemic, sort of a project. Will the sobriety continue when the pandemic is over? Mr. Cucchiara says he isn’t sure, but he’s happier now than he has been in a while.

“It’s interesting how a pandemic can fuel both healthy and unhealthy choices,” said Manhattan psychologist Sarah Gundle. “People are absolutely struggling to find ways to deal with it as some of their other tried and true methods, like the gym and friends, are being taken away. 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 nice structure and focus that can be very calming and helpful. ”

Dr. Gundle has heard from her more introverted, freshly level-headed patients that they have found relief that they can now socialize without drinking. “They are at home and more comfortable, and no one has to know that they are drinking a seltzer and not a gin and tonic,” she says.

Even some who have never thought about sobriety – and perhaps never again, once life returns to ‘normal’ – have made the shift for the duration of the pandemic. Brian O’Ceileachair, a 39-year-old content director and Irish expat living in Orlando, Florida, says the pandemic ended his more than 20 years of drinking several days a week. A friend posted on Facebook that he had been sober for a year, and Mr. O’Ceileachair was inspired “to take some time off”.

It didn’t take long for him to see a shift in his stress level and overall mood. “The work became easier to do, the kids became less irritating, the mornings became significantly easier,” he says. “I’m currently having the longest sober streak of my life, and frankly, I regret not figuring this out years ago. Everyone knows me as a grumpy curmudgeon, but since I quit drinking I’m not that guy anymore. “

Ruby Warrington, author of the 2019 book ‘Sober Curious’, says she saw her Facebook group Sober Curious triple during the pandemic. “I saw a lot more people who might consider themselves normal social drinkers, suddenly realized they wanted to sedate and knew that wasn’t great,” she says. “I also saw that many people who might have used alcohol as a social lubricant questioned their habits because they no longer needed it to socialize.”

In the UK, she says, the number of people abstaining from alcohol for Dry January has increased from 3.9 million in 2020 to 6.5 million this year. An estimated 15% of Americans participated in Dry January in 2021, up from 10% last year. Ms Warrington believes the shift has a lot to do with the fact that it could be much easier to forgo alcohol completely than to try to moderate. “We spend an awful lot of brain power drinking, and once we’ve had one, our reactions have already changed,” she says.

Before Covid-19, Lillie Marshall, a 39-year-old teacher, writer and mother of two in Boston, was a “ classic mother drinker, ” she says. “I’d teach all day, come home exhausted, reward myself with a drink, maybe two.” Once the lockdown started and she found herself teaching at home and taking care of her two young children, she realized she “couldn’t survive this thing” unless she was in top form. She had never considered her one-time drink a problem, but she was sure it wasn’t helping.

Her best friend had come to the same realization. She advised Ms. Marshall to read Holly Whitaker’s 2019 book “Quit Like a Woman,” which notes that as a coping mechanism, alcohol consumption can feel like it helps but eventually hurts. Mrs. Marshall and her friend stopped drinking and started daily meditations.

It wasn’t long before she noticed she was sleeping better, had more energy, and was much less irritable. Her productivity was immense – no time wasted drinking or even the slightest hangovers. “I was like, ‘Oh my God, like that one drink?’” She says. The friends had set a goal of not drinking for 21 days, but almost 10 months later, they haven’t looked back. “Plus, my husband isn’t working for pandemic reasons this year, and we’re saving a lot of money,” says Ms. Marshall. “Oh, and I have abs again!”

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