I need a drink! Coping with COVID-19 stress

We’re answering questions people are asking about coping with home quarantine, with relationship problems at this time, with just managing their own anxiety. In this installment, we're talking about drinking.

This isn't actually a question that somebody asked, but I'm responding to some chatter I'm seeing online. I see people checking in on their friends—"How are you managing? What are you doing to take care of yourselves?” Many answers, which I recognize are jokes, are along the lines of “I'm coping with a gin and tonic” or “I'm not worried about toilet-paper, I'm worried about running out of wine!”

I don't want to be a total downer, and a little bit of alcohol is probably not a big deal, but there is something potentially serious lurking here, and that's developing an alcohol problem.

I’m not an alcoholic!

Nobody ever sets out to become an alcoholic. I know that. And if you’re feeling a little defensive because you’ve made some of those drinking jokes, take a deep breath. There’s no accusation or judgement here, just love.

In years of working in substance abuse treatment centers and then years in private practice working with couples, many of whom come to therapy because one of them has an alcohol problem, I can tell you that this is a very vulnerable time for a lot of people who drink!

In treatment for an alcohol problem we will look back at a person’s history of drinking. Many people point to a time of stress, crisis, grief, job loss, or some kind of major life change as being the time when their drinking went from casual or social to really becoming out of control. And right now (March 2020) people have those things just layered one on top of the other.

How does that happen?

I'm going to break it down for you.

• You're stressed. You're overwhelmed. Things are outside of your control. Your feelings are really intense, and you want a break from it.

• You want to be able to relax. You want to be able to feel good or just not quite so bad for just a little while.

• Alcohol helps accomplish some of that. For one day here and there, using alcohol to cope or to relax isn't healthy but is probably not too bad.

• When your stress is prolonged or you aren't using other healthy coping mechanisms instead of alcohol, real problems develop.

First is tolerance.

Your body gets used to alcohol and over time you have to consume more and more of it to get the same effect. So you're going from one drink to maybe three or four or six or sometimes twelve in a day.

Second, the feelings and circumstances that you were numbing or avoiding with the alcohol are still there when you sober up plus whatever repercussions you now have to deal with because of your drinking.

So you drink to stop feeling sad you sober up and you still feel sad, you might have a hangover, plus you probably also feel guilty because of how much you drank or what you said when you were drunk. And then people drink again to numb the sadness and the guilt and so on. It becomes a vicious cycle and people get stuck. When you combine that cycle with tolerance, you're now consuming large amounts of alcohol on a very regular basis.

Third, over time alcohol replaces other coping mechanisms.

It's quick and it's effective. Effective doesn't mean that it comes without consequences! That doesn't mean it's good or healthy. But it is effective in doing that numbing-relaxing-checking out thing. Alcohol starts to become your go-to. You might not even be consciously connecting that a bad day means you want a drink. You just feel like you want one. When substance use problems get really bad, people lose track of their other ways of coping with life.

Fourth, dependence can develop.

When a person is dependent on alcohol, they start to experience withdrawal symptoms if they aren't drinking. Then you're drinking just to feel normal. Dependence doesn't happen right away, but it's often not until this stage that people start looking for help or they end up in treatment centers.

All of that is a worst-case scenario. I've seen people on that end of it, wondering how they got here, which is why I'm talking about drinking right now. I recognize that this is a vulnerable time for people who drink.

Lots of people might be drinking more than normal as we’re making sense of the world turned upside down. I know nobody sets out to create a drinking problem, but for people who drink or numb or shop or gamble or eat to cope with your feelings, now is a really risky time.

What should you be doing instead?

First, feel your feelings.

They aren't going away and to the degree that you numb the negative feelings, you also numb the positive ones. You can't be selective about which feelings you're numbing. And we all need to be able to feel joy and love and connection right now. Even though it’s hard, and you don't want to feel the sadness and the stress and the worry, acknowledging that they're there is the way forward.

Second, practice other ways of coping.

We’re going to be putting out several more videos and blogs in the next few weeks where we'll going to talk about different coping skills.

Coping skills?

I want to pause here to say that when we talk about coping or coping skills, these things don't make the problem go away. Rather, they’re strategies you can use so that you can healthily deal with what's going on or so that you can deal with it in a way that doesn't bring you more problems later.

Third, reach out for help early.

Don’t wait for problems to become unmanageable for you to ask for help. There are many therapists available for online sessions. And to be perfectly honest, there are so many humans willing to help. We're all in this together, and there are many people who care about you and who would be available to “sit” with you to talk through the hard stuff, to just say “Yeah, I see you and I'm scared too,” and “You're not alone.”

Reach out for help. Practice other ways of coping. Feel your feelings.

If you’d like the help of our skilled and compassionate therapists, click below to set up a free phone consultation. We provide individual counseling and marriage counseling online. We’re located in Riverside, California and can see anyone for online counseling in California.