Has the Pandemic Fundamentally Changed the Way Women Think About Drinking?
“Do you want another round?” my friend shouted over the blasting music at a crowded outdoor bar last weekend. “Sure!” I screamed back, only to immediately chase her down to change my order from tequila to water. The thing is, I didn’t actually want another drink. After a year of infrequent drinking at home and no hangovers as a result, my relationship to alcohol had changed and I wasn’t ready to jump back into my old habits quite so easily.
Like the many women I spoke to for this article, nearly a year and a half at home made me reassess my alcohol consumption, which had been largely on autopilot since I drank my first Smirnoff Ice in high school. I’ve always been a social drinker, mimicking the ingestion level of those around me. In college, that meant binge-drinking on the weekends; afterwards it meant catching up with friends over a few rounds a couple of times a week. I’ve never been one to drink alone at home, and now that my hangovers reflect my age, I rarely see the point. In recent years, chronic migraines forced me to adjust my drinking habits significantly, but it took the pandemic pause for me to really cut back and see the subsequent reduction in my frequency of attacks. It’s only been in recent weeks, post-vaccination, that my boundaries have begun wavering as social temptations creep back.
Women’s drinking rates have undeniably risen during the pandemic. According to a recent study, between spring 2019 and spring 2020, women increased their heavy drinking days by 41% compared to before the pandemic. But for those who consume the majority of our alcohol in social situations, prolonged time at home during COVID-19 lockdowns may have pushed habits in the opposite direction.
Sarah Smith, a 23-year-old operations manager in New York City, says she barely drank while stuck at home last year but is now drinking four or more days a week. “During lockdowns, I had more energy, was healthier, lost weight, and found time for new hobbies. Drinking costs so much money and feels unhealthy, like I’m regressing and not prioritizing or making time for things I found and enjoyed during COVID.”
Trying to strike a balance as social activities return can be challenging. “If you have been trying to cut back on alcohol or have enjoyed not drinking, there is a pressure when all of your social activities involve drinking,” confirmed Jessi Gold, a psychiatrist at Washington University in St. Louis. “A lot of easy social activities, even ones that are seen as self-care, involve alcohol. With returning to work, there will be a lot of happy hours to catch up and suggestions to just meet up for a drink.”
Taylor Hodgkins, a 27-year-old freelance writer in Bowling Green, Kentucky, is also feeling the pressure since Anthony Fauci gave vaccinated folks the okay to gather inside. “The pandemic essentially made me realize how social my relationship with alcohol is,” she said. “It’s been so easy to get caught up in the whole experience of being out with friends and continuing to drink more than intended.”
Some are afraid that declining invitations for alcohol-focused activities will harm their friendships. “I stepped back from drinking during COVID, and it seems like I’m the only one in my friend group not itching to go back,” Melissa Guerrero, a 29-year-old H.R. assistant in Southern California, told me. “I’ve found that alcohol makes me anxious now and frankly have been considering going completely sober.” She fears that declaring herself sober would make “the invitations stop.” Ari Kill, a 29-year-old publicist in New York City, used to feel social pressure to drink but is advocating for a new, drier lifestyle as in-person events return. “Prior to the pandemic, I was a social drinker due to my job,” she told me. “But the pandemic has made me more aware of some of my habits, and now I don’t feel the need to socially drink.”
For those pre-pandemic social drinkers who have since chosen to reduce their alcohol consumption, dating, in particular, can pose a unique challenge these days. Jessica Camerata, a 34-year-old style blogger in Atlanta, is trying to navigate romantic life without alcohol for the first time. “I’m now finding myself hesitant to organize a first date because a cocktail was such an easy crutch,” she says.
Gold stresses the importance of advocating for your needs starting on the very first date. “If you can’t be your authentic self with someone, it isn’t an authentic relationship. If being sober is important to you, it needs to be something that is discussed with your date. If that is a deal breaker for the person, it is better to know at date one than date five.”
For many of the women, the pandemic helped illuminate the negative effect alcohol was having on their health. “Without the commute and big social aspects of our life, the minutiae of how I felt after I drank, ate those foods, slept poorly, worked out all became very linear,” said Lauren Nutter, a 32-year-old marketing director in Massachusetts. “My beloved cocktail was not worth the side effects the following day,” says Camerata. “The days of grabbing a drink just to grab a drink are over. It’s simply not worth it.”
For people who made the intentional decision to get sober during the pandemic, there are different challenges to navigate outside of lockdown. Naomi Hattaway, a 45-year-old nonprofit consultant in Omaha, just celebrated one year sober and says navigating the outside world has felt significantly harder than being sober in private. “With things opening up, the default is always (or so it seems) grabbing a drink or happy hour. It’s created loads of awkwardness as I navigate how to communicate my sobriety and my boundaries.” She makes the point that newly sober folks are navigating two challenging situations simultaneously: relearning how to be with other people in public and doing so without alcohol—“the traditional salve that lubricates our being in spaces together,” as she puts it.
For many of the women, the pandemic helped illuminate the negative effect alcohol was having on their health.
“If people have been able to maintain sobriety over COVID, they might simply be triggered to drink by people or places that they associate with drinking and that they haven’t seen or been to during the pandemic,” says Gold. She recommends that those maintaining new sobriety speak honestly with their friends: “You can share as much or as little as you want about your reasoning.” She stresses, “It is important that you are honest with them about the fact that you are not drinking and do not feel like you have to lie or repeatedly dodge their invitations.”
Many women I spoke with, regardless of if they’re planning to cut out alcohol completely, hope that life after COVID will pivot away from a social ecosystem centered on happy hours in favor of one in which taking a walk with a friend is the norm. Amalia Fowler, a 33-year-old marketing director in Vancouver, said her “hope for post-pandemic alcohol use is that we no longer see it as self-care. Seeing friends is the self-care, not the drink. And going out to eat and resting and all the things we couldn’t do for a while. Drink or don’t drink, what’s really shifted for me is alcohol is no longer synonymous with self-care.”
Extending positive pandemic-induced lifestyle changes beyond the front door looks different for everyone. For me, it means staying conscious about how alcohol affects my chronic migraines and advocating for myself when it comes to not partaking in activities that trigger them. For some, post-pandemic self-care might mean only drinking around certain people or cutting out alcohol altogether. The key is to hold on to what we learned about ourselves last year rather than returning to our lives before just because that’s where we started.
Originally Appeared on Vogue
