Despite fears about people self-medicating with alcohol during the COVID-19 pandemic, a new study has found younger Australians actually drank less, while older people shifted their alcohol consumption to home | niltiac
Lead researcher Professor Alison Ritter said while we should be concerned about the one in three people who have increased their drinking, overall it was "a good news story".Credit:"Quite a few people stopped drinking altogether and in fact, talked about lockdown being a catalyst for changes to exercise to diet, to their alcohol consumption, and so on," Professor Ritter said. "We need to celebrate people's capacity and resilience and agency and self care.
Professor Ritter said the research, which included a survey of almost 600 people in NSW, asked about alcohol consumption in February and this was repeated in May during the lockdown and July, with further follow-ups planned. Couples without children or with adult children were the most likely to have kept their habits the same, far more than other household types including share houses and people living alone. A relatively large number of people in shared households said they were drinking less.
"There's been a lot of talk about females increasing their drinking but we probably should be talking more about men, especially older men," Professor Ritter said.Estimates published by alcohol lobby group Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education from 2019 found that of the top 10 per cent of drinkers, three out of four were male.
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