“Many studies have now shown that solitary drinking has increased as a result of the pandemic,” possibly due to the closure of bars and social spaces during stay-at-home measures, Creswell said. “Studies have also shown that associations between loneliness and alcohol problems are stronger for young women compared to young men,” he said. “This is particularly concerning given that there have been recent increases in lone drinking among female teenagers in the US.” “The main reason young people drink alone is to cope with negative emotions, and developing such a relationship with alcohol during the pandemic may put lonely drinkers on a trajectory of increased alcohol use, possibly leading to more alcohol-related problems,” Creswell said. “Again this may be particularly true for young women.”
A study of 17 years
Creswell and a team from the University of Michigan analyzed data from the Monitoring the Future study, an ongoing survey of 4,500 teenagers who were asked about their drinking habits when they were high school seniors. Additional data were collected when participants were 22 to 23 years old and again when they were 35 years old. About 25 percent of teens and 40 percent of young adults reported drinking alone, according to the study published Monday in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence. Compared to people who only drank socially, the study found that drinking alone as a high school senior increased the risk of an alcohol use disorder by 35 percent by age 35. Alcohol use disorder, also called alcoholism, is defined as the inability to stop drinking even when it causes physical or emotional harm to the drinker or others. The link was especially strong for teenage girls, Creswell said. “The odds of developing alcohol use disorder symptoms at age 35 were 86% higher for teenage girls (high school students) who drank alone. “In contrast, the odds of developing alcohol use disorder symptoms at age 35 were only 8% higher for teens who drank alone,” she said. Drinking alone in the early 20s increased the risk of alcohol use disorder by 60% compared to social drinkers, but this time there was no difference between men and women. The results held true even after controlling for other common risk factors, Creswell said. “Lone drinking at younger ages is a unique risk for future alcohol problems over and above previous heavy drinking and frequency of alcohol use, which are (both) known risk factors,” he said. “This suggests that we should not only ask young people about how much they drink and how often they drink in order to identify at-risk youth, but that we should also ask whether or not they drink alone,” Creswell said. . “Drinking alone tells us a lot about our future risk of developing alcohol problems.”
Pandemic drink
Previous research has shown a 41% increase in heavy drinking days among women since the start of the pandemic. Part of the reason may be the “blurring” of the boundaries between home and work for many women. “Studies have shown that the complexities of balancing home, work, and caregiving responsibilities during the pandemic have fallen disproportionately on women,” Dr. Leena Mittal said in an earlier CNN interview. Mittal is chief of women’s mental health in the department of psychiatry at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. It was not linked to a new study. A higher level of alcohol consumption among women is worrying because of the known link between alcohol and a woman’s risk of breast cancer, experts say. “There really is no safe level of alcohol consumption when it comes to breast cancer,” Dr. Sarah Wakeman, medical director of the Substance Use Disorders Initiative at Massachusetts General Hospital, told CNN. If you (or a loved one) seem to be struggling with alcohol, don’t hesitate to get help, experts say. There are many different support groups that can help, such as 12-step programs and individual therapy.
