The spread of the COVID-19 virus around the world left us all mired in uncertainty. With governments urging people to stay at home to help control the spread of the disease and the prospect of different levels of “lockdown” in the coming months, most of us are constantly looking for ways to help us cope with this “new normal.” For some, that way of dealing with it came hand in hand with alcohol consumption. In the UK, for example, sales increased by 22% in March and in the US increased by 55% compared to the same period last year. Are we drinking too much?
At this point in quarantine I suspect that rather than a social drinker, she socialized to drink.—Gabriela. (@ohhmygaabs)
May 7, 2020
Beyond the jokes, there is a more worrying reason to explain this increase in consumption: we are in a period of collective anxiety, accompanied by fear, frustration and concern. Around the world, many people get sick and die, health services and frontline workers are under enormous pressure and many of us are separated from our loved ones. Spending isolation alone, working from home caring for children and maintaining household cleanliness at the same time, the inability to meet with our friends, the challenge of remote studying, and economic problems are some of the various reasons why people might resort to alcohol in an attempt to decompress. However, the truth is that both physiologically and psychologically, the calming effect, particularly when under stress, is short-lived.
Alcohol, on the one hand, affects some of the brain’s neurotransmitters: aminobutyric acid (GABA), which is an inhibitor, and glutamate, which is excitatory. By suppressing the release of glutamate, it usually increases neural activity, and increase GABA production, which normally reduces neuron activity; our bodies and brains slow down, leading to disorientation and lack of coordination.
On the other hand, alcohol also affects the brain’s pleasure and reward center, stimulating the release of dopamine, the neurotransmitter that makes us want more. That’s why it’s so hard to stop after a first glass. However, drinking to relieve anxiety in the short term, paradogially, rather than reducing it in the medium term, makes it worse. It’s like a rebound effect.
Another contributing factor is the change in our routines. Many work from home, no longer travel or don’t sit in an office, weekdays and weekends merge with each other without the social markers to differentiate them. With that, the usual rules that people set for themselves when it came to alcohol became less stringent. And while the health dangers of excessive alcohol consumption are well known, perhaps a more relevant effect in the midst of a health crisis is that it reduces our immune system’s ability to fight infections. Recent research even suggests that moderate alcohol consumption may increase the risk of becoming infected with COVID-19 and may also aggravate infection.
The World Health Organization, for its part, warns of the need to avoid alcohol so as not to weaken the immune system itself and health and not to risk the health of others, emphasizing that “Alcohol consumption is a risk factor for acute respiratory distress syndrome (SDRA), one of the most serious complications of COVID-19”. Hopefully, most of us will find other ways to deal with changes in our lives that don’t involve alcohol, but this may not be the case for some people. The good news is that help is still available for those who want it. Many of the more traditional recovery programs (such as Alcoholics Anonymous) offer virtual meetings in the wake of the health emergency. To learn more, enter this link. In this note:
