Abstract
To “flatten the curve” of COVID-19 contagion, several countries ordered lockdowns amid the pandemic along with indications on social distancing. These social isolation measures could potentially bring alterations to healthy behavior, including to alcohol consumption. However, there is hardly any scientific evidence of the impact of such measures on alcohol consumption and binge drinking (BD) among young adults, and how they relate to alcohol craving, stress, anxiety, and depression levels. We addressed these questions by conducting a longitudinal study with 146 Portuguese college students—regular binge drinkers (regular BDs), infrequent binge drinkers (infrequent BDs) and non-binge drinkers (non-BDs)—in three moments: before the pandemic (Pre-Lockdown), during lockdown (Lockdown) and 6 months after (Post-Lockdown). Results revealed that regular BDs decreased alcohol use during Lockdown, a change in behavior that was even greater during Post-Lockdown, when regular BDs displayed similar levels of consumption to infrequent/non-BDs. Additionally, alcohol craving and living with friends were predictive of alcohol use during Lockdown, whereas stress, anxiety, and depression symptoms did not contribute to explain changes in drinking behavior. Collectively, the results suggest that BD in young Portuguese college students can be stopped when the contexts in which alcohol intake usually takes place are suppressed, which may have important implications for future prevention and intervention strategies.
Highlights
In late 2019, the world came to know of a cluster of cases of the Coronavirus disease2019 (COVID-19) that quickly spread around the globe
It is relevant to highlight that the initial purpose of data collection was not to conduct a longitudinal study evaluating the effects of COVID-19 mitigation measures on alcohol consumption; that fact precluded us to recruit a bigger sample of college students at the Pre-Lockdown assessment and to have additional inclusion criteria
The assessment protocol consisted of a battery of questions about socio-demographics, behavior and lifestyle changes associated with the pandemics, and alcohol consumption and craving, and included the Portuguese versions of the Alcohol Use Disorder Identification Test (AUDIT) [49,50], the Penn Alcohol Craving Scale (PACS) [51] and the Depression
Summary
In late 2019, the world came to know of a cluster of cases of the Coronavirus disease. We further investigated how personal characteristics (i.e., gender, age of drinking onset, etc.), as well as situational aspects such as affective mood (i.e., stress, anxiety, and depression levels), craving levels, lifestyle and social contextual factors (e.g., being quarantined, the presence of housemates) contributed to individuals’ engagement in alcohol consumption and BD Considering both the restrictions on alcohol availability and social gatherings, and the influence of social and environmental factors on BD behavior, we postulated that, in the immediate term (i.e., Lockdown), college students would diminish their alcohol consumption and binge episodes, a reduction we predicted would be overturned by the lifting of restrictions during the Post-Lockdown period.
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