Study on city’s drinking habits during lockdowns

GLASGOW’S Health and Social Care Partnership is working to establish a link between lockdown and the use of alcohol as self-medication during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The organisation has been collecting data to see how many people have turned to drinking excessively at home as a way to combat stress and anxiety. The UK and Scottish governments are already conducting their own investigation into this.

Elaina Smith, health and improvement lead at the partnership, told the licensing forum recently that they needed to find a way to break the link and promote healthier ways to combat stress.

She said: “When lockdown happened all of our hospitality closed and that automatically switched everyone to consuming alcohol at home.

“It was relevant to say at this point that when people go out in Glasgow it is likely they will drink.

“Consuming alcohol at home has already been a concern for us particularly in Scotland where 73% of alcohol was already purchased to drink at home.

“Some people decided they didn’t want to have alcohol in their home and for others it was easier to get into habits that they might not have developed if it wasn’t for the fact that they could only drink at home.

“A lot of surveys which have gone on in this time have not just been about alcohol.

“The amount of data that has been collected through lockdown has been absolutely frightening and people are still working through it to see what it all means.”

Studies carried out so far show that practices have been very mixed.

Some people stopped drinking because they could no longer go out and socialise with their friends but for others it was a coping mechanism to deal with the chaos of what was going on around them.

Smith continued: “That in itself has given us a lot of concern.

“Before Covid-19 we knew our alcohol related deaths in Glasgow were actually decreasing.

“There are very few places for people to go where alcohol is not the main focus. They feel stigmatised because they feel that pressure to drink.”

The UK Government is currently discussing increasing the duty of off sale items in a bid to balance the consumption of alcohol.

The Scottish Government is also proposing to launch a marketing consultation, which the Health and Social Care Partnership is keen to see develop.

Smith went on: “We believe this will help us establish a link which we are currently seeing a lot of at the moment which is the use of alcohol to selfmedicate in relation to dealing with stress and anxiety.

“That we know is a big driver for harm and we need to figure out how best we break that link and promote other healthier ways of being able to alleviate that stress and anxiety.

“We are looking forward to getting to grips with that and we will bring it to the forum to share it.”

The data we have collected through lockdown has been absolutely frightening