The body doesn’t have a way to store alcohol like it does with carbohydrates and fats, so it has to immediately send it to the liver, where it’s metabolized. Alcohol has been flying off the shelves as people try to combat boredom during lockdown, with some reports estimating that alcoholic beverage sales surged by 55 percent toward the end of March. Alcohol use might also cause or worsen certain mental health conditions during the pandemic. For example, beta-blockers can help control the physical responses to anxiety, such as increased heart rate. Excessive alcohol use can lead to or worsen existing mental health problems. According to a 2015 article in the journal Alcohol Research, alcohol can prevent immune cells from working properly.

How alcohol affects medications

To cope, many people turned to alcohol despite the risk of developing alcohol-related problems, including problem drinking and alcohol use disorder (AUD). While hand sanitizer containing alcohol may kill the virus on surfaces, drinking alcohol doesn’t cure or prevent a COVID-19 infection. A surge of stress-related drinking and alcohol-related deaths brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic in the US has not tapered off the way Dr. Brian Lee, a transplant hepatologist at Keck Medicine of the University of Southern California, had hoped. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) were alerted to the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in the U.S. on 22 January 2020; the first reported death occurred on 29 February 2020 in Washington state 12,13. Due to concern over the contagiousness of COVID-19 and the harm suffered if contracted, the Washington governor declared a state of emergency that same day (29 February 2020) 14.

GLOBAL NEWS: Busting myths on alcohol and COVID-19

Lee believes that research findings alone are no longer enough to deter people from overconsuming. All three authors (E.R.G., S.E.B.-N., and S.S.) were involved in the conceptualization, methodology, formal analysis, investigation, resources, and data curation, but the exact amount of their contributions for each part varied. Funding acquisition, E.R.G.; writing—original draft preparation, E.R.G.; writing—review and editing, S.E.B.-N.

Although the increases in alcohol sales did not remain at these levels, overall data for that time period showed that in-store purchases were up by 21% and online alcohol sales by 234% compared to 2019. It is unclear, however, whether individuals had been increasing their alcohol consumption or only stockpiling alcoholic beverages. We’ve also seen more people end up in hospitals due to alcohol misuse and its consequences, including withdrawal symptoms and liver disease. People seeking liver transplants because of alcohol misuse are younger than ever, with many transplant centers reporting that some of their patients haven’t even reached the age of 30. Unfortunately, deaths due to alcohol-linked liver disease increased by more than 22% during the pandemic.

1. All three authors (E.R.G., S.E.B.-N., and S.S.) were involved in the conceptualization, methodology, formal analysis, investigation, resources, and data curation, but the exact amount of their contributions for each part varied.
2. In sum, alcohol use in the U.S. is a public health problem that appears to have worsened since the onset of COVID-19.
3. AUD is a clinical diagnosis that indicates someone’s drinking is causing distress and harm.
4. Data from the week ending 21 March indicated that alcohol sales for off-premise locations (e.g., liquor stores) had increased by 54% and online alcohol sales had increased by 262% compared to sales data from the same week in 2019.
5. NIH-funded study identifies managing maternal stress as a possible way to lessen impacts of prenatal infection on infant socioemotional and cognitive development.
6. She’s passionate about empowering readers to take care of their mental and physical health through science-based, empathetically delivered information.

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Because drinking alcohol and being hungover can lead to digestive upset, headaches, mood changes, and difficulty thinking clearly — all symptoms of long COVID — it may worsen these symptoms. For example, some research suggests that poor sleep can make long COVID worse, and difficulty sleeping is a common side effect of drinking alcohol. At the same time, people with active alcohol use disorder shouldn’t suddenly stop drinking without medical supervision, as alcohol withdrawal can be dangerous.

3. Participants

National Pandemic Emotional Impact Report, compared to men, women reported higher rates of pandemic-related changes in productivity, sleep, mood, health-related worries, and frustrations with not being able to do enjoyable activities. Women with children under age 18 had higher rates of clinically significant anxiety, compared to men with children under age 18 and to women with no minor children. Women are more likely to shoulder the burden of household tasks, caregiving, and child-rearing than men. Stay-at-home orders to stop transmission of COVID-19 led to decreased childcare support and the additional burden of remote schooling. Past research shows alcohol consumption leads to more severe lung diseases, like adult respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) and other pulmonary diseases, including pneumonia, tuberculosis, and respiratory syncytial virus.

According to a study in JAMA Internal Medicine, out of 201 people with COVID-19-induced pneumonia, 41.8% developed ARDS. It is possible for high concentrations of alcohol, such as 60–90%, to kill some forms of bacteria and viruses. Learn how NIH has improved basic understanding what drug makes you foam out the mouth of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and sped up the development of COVID-19 vaccines, treatments, and testing. This review looks at alcohol-related policies during the COVID-19 pandemic across all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Common antiviral medications used for COVID-19 include remdesivir (Veklury), nirmatrelvir with ritonavir (Paxlovid), and molnupiravir (Lagevrio). There’s no consensus on whether alcohol affects the antiviral medications used to treat COVID-19.

You can take a couple of steps to avoid contracting or transmitting the COVID-19 virus while drinking. Alcohol can cause digestive upset, difficulty sleeping, trouble with concentration, and other unpleasant side effects that may worsen your symptoms. To account for attrition, small replenishment samples have been added over time using a random probability sampling design. The most recent replenishment, in September 2024, added 360 respondents to the sample. Lee and Chhatwal also suggest that more and better messaging on the risks of overconsumption could help counter these effects.

In an unadjusted analysis, almost two-thirds of 2020 participants (60.1%) reported that their drinking had increased compared to before COVID-19 (Table 3). Almost two-thirds of the participants (63.7%) listed some combination of these three reasons. The remainder either gave no reason (1.7%) or some other reason (4.0%), such as “It gives me the feeling of going out”, “I feel safer because I am at home”, “It’s a tasty distraction”, or “It feels permissible”. This study used a cross-sectional design to survey a convenience sample of U.S. adults over the age of 21 in May 2020. The questions on alcohol use were taken from the 2018 National Survey on Drug Use and Health–NSDUH 19 and some of the questions on stress or lifestyle changes during COVID-19 were adapted from The Pandemic Stress Index 20. The spike in alcohol sales has alarmed health experts and officials around the world, who are concerned that increased drinking could make people even more vulnerable to the respiratory disease.