Coping with COVID: COVID-19 experiences and drinking to cope

ABSTRACT

Background

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a source of stress that may have increased drinking level overall and, more specifically, drinking to cope motivation. The current study tests whether specific domains of pandemic-related experiences are related to drinking to cope motivation and drinking level and whether drinking to cope motivation moderates the association between pandemic experiences and alcohol consumption.

Method

Participants (N = 292, 57% women) reported on their positive and negative experiences during the pandemic, their drinking to cope motivation, and their typical weekly alcohol consumption.

Results

Regression analyses revealed that negative emotional health and well-being experiences were related to higher levels of drinking to cope motivation. Negative social activity experiences were related to higher weekly alcohol consumption. In addition, negative home life experiences were related to higher consumption among individuals with high drinking to cope motivation and positive experiences were related to lower consumption among individuals with high drinking to cope motivation.

Conclusions

These findings underscore the importance of considering the domain of experiences during the current pandemic and future mass crisis events and may provide insight for designing interventions to prevent drinking to cope.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19
• alcohol
• drinking to cope

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Hypotheses and analyses were preregistered at https://osf.io/y8mns/?view_only=207aad9846ec43128536e98154ef1b49

2. We re-estimated all models excluding participants who had received a positive diagnosis. The pattern of results remained the same except that the negative association between positive experiences and alcohol consumption was no longer moderated by drinking to cope motivation.

3. Regression analyses revealed that both negative home life experiences, B = 0.22, SE = 0.07, 95% CI B [0.09, 0.35], ΔR² = .03, t(282) = 3.27, p = .001, and negative physical health experiences, B = 0.39, SE = 0.06, 95% CI B [0.27, 0.50], ΔR² = .12, t(282) = 6.75, p < .001, were uniquely related to negative emotional and health well-being experiences.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism [5P60-AA003510]. NIAAA had no role in the study design, collection, analysis or interpretation of the data, writing the manuscript, or the decision to submit the paper for publication.