As the Pandemic Deepened, Americans Kept Drinking More

As the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) pandemic began to take hold, Americans started drinking more alcohol. They were stressed, isolated, and anxious. The world they knew had changed overnight.

Two years after the disaster, this trend has not abated, researchers reported on Monday.

The percentage of Americans consuming alcohol had already increased from 2018 to 2020, but it increased slightly further in 2021 and 2022. And more people reported binge drinking or binge drinking.

“Early in the pandemic, we saw a sharp increase in the number of people presenting to our clinics and hospitals with alcohol-related problems,” said Dr. Brian P. Lee, a hepatologist at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California. Principal Investigator of This study was published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

“People thought this was caused by acute stress, like we saw with 9/11 and Katrina, but things usually return to normal after these stressful events,” he said. added. “But that’s not what we’re seeing.”

Alcohol can be addictive, and “we know that addiction doesn’t go away, even if the initial trigger that caused it is gone,” Dr. Lee said.

For decades before the pandemic, rates of binge drinking and alcohol-related liver disease had been steadily rising. But alcohol-related deaths spiked in 2020, with one study reporting a 25% increase in one year, said Christian Hendershot, director of clinical research at the University of Southern California’s Institute of Addiction Science. Ta.