Alcohol Abuse Rose During the Pandemic, and More and More Are Now Taking Treatment

The pandemic cost many people more than the effects of the disease itself, with many ending up in a financial hole, while others found themselves drinking, gambling and misusing drugs more just to pass the time.

A new study has found that the pandemic has a particular impact on alcohol abuse and more and more people have ended up in the likes of drug and alcohol rehab centres and treatment clinics worldwide as they now look to battle with their suffering as a result of the pandemic.

The free time, stress of the period and many people’s battle with grief during the period saw people turn to the bottle, with CNN recently interviewing a woman named Brook, who was undergoing cancer treatment during the pandemic.

She said, “I would drink before I went to my chemo sessions. It became more and more of a coping mechanism,”

“When Covid started and I was home, I started drinking more and more and more. “I started not being able to eat, I started throwing up more often, and then I started throwing up blood.”

Visiting the hospital, she found that she had cirrhosis of the liver and a bad bleed from ulcers due to her drinking, with doctors saying she could be dead within a year.

It was the pandemic that accelerated such drinking patterns, and she isn’t the only one, with studies in the US found that there had been a 15% rise in people waiting on liver transplants during the period of 2020 and 2021, with a specific spike in the number of young people waiting.

Meanwhile, there’s been a 41% increase in heavy drinking among women, and a 14% increase in the number of drinking days per month among people, with women now seemingly at a high risk.

Women are more susceptible to brain damage due to alcohol in comparison with men, while the risk of breast cancer is also increased by up to 10% compared to those that don’t drink.

Treatment centres are becoming busier and busier as the effects of COVID now start to have an impact on people and more and more are at breaking point where they need to battle their addiction to get back on track. However, the number of people turning to alcohol isn’t slowing down.

We’re amidst a cost of living crisis and political uncertainty, and as we know from history, that sees more people turn to the substance as a coping mechanism.