Drinking alone when you’re younger is associated with alcoholism in your mid-30s

Add that finding to the documented increase in alcohol consumption among Americans during the pandemic, and you have a worrying situation, said the study’s lead author Kasey Creswell, associate professor of psychology at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

“Multiple studies have now shown that drinking alone has increased as a result of the pandemic,” Creswell said, likely due to the closure of bars and social facilities during the stay-at-home measures.

“Studies have also shown that the associations between drinking alone and alcohol problems are stronger in young women than in young men,” she said. “This is of particular concern given the recent increase in solitary drinking among female adolescents in the United States.”

“The main reason young people drink alone is to cope with negative emotions, and developing such a relationship with alcohol during the pandemic could put single drinkers on a trajectory of increased drinking, potentially leading to more alcohol-related problems,” he said Creswell. “And again, this could be the case, especially for young women.”

A 17-year study

Creswell and a team from the University of Michigan analyzed data from the Monitoring the Future study, an ongoing study of 4,500 teenagers who were asked about their drinking habits as high school seniors. Additional data were collected when participants were 22 to 23 years old old and again at 35.

Alcohol manufacturers earned an estimated $17.5 billion from underage drinking in 2016, according to a study

About 25% of teens and 40% of young adults who drink alcohol reported drinking alone, according to the study published Monday in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence.

Compared to people who only drank socially, the study found that drinking alone as a high school senior increased your risk of alcohol use disorder by 35% by age 35. Alcohol use disorder, also known as alcoholism, is defined as the inability to stop drinking, even if it causes physical or mental harm to the drinker or others.

The connection was particularly strong for teenage girls, Creswell said.

“The likelihood of alcohol use disorder symptoms by age 35 was 86% higher for adolescent women (high school seniors) who drank alone. In contrast, the likelihood of alcohol use disorder symptoms by age 35 was only 8% higher in adolescent males who drank alcohol alone,” she said.

Drinking alone in your early 20s increased the risk of alcohol use disorder by 60% compared to social drinkers, but this time there was no difference between men and women. The results held even after accounting for other common risk factors, Creswell said.

“Solitary drinking at a young age poses a unique risk for future alcohol problems that goes beyond previous binge drinking and frequency of drinking, which are (both) known risk factors,” she said.

“This suggests that we should not only ask young people how much they drink and how often they drink to identify at-risk youth, but that we also need to ask whether or not they drink alone,” Creswell said. “Drinking alone tells us something about the future risk of developing drinking problems.”

drink pandemic

Previous research showed a 41% increase in heavy drinking days among women since the start of the pandemic. One reason for this may be the “blurring” of the boundaries between home and work for many women.

“Studies have shown that the complexity of balancing household, work and care responsibilities during the pandemic weighs disproportionately on women,” said Dr. Leena Mittal told CNN in a previous interview. Mittal is the Chief of Women’s Mental Health in the Department of Psychiatry at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. She was not linked to a new study.

Higher alcohol consumption among women is of concern because of the known link between alcohol and breast cancer risk in women, experts say.

“There really is no safe level of alcohol consumption when it comes to breast cancer,” said Dr. Sarah Wakeman, medical director of the Substance Use Disorders Initiative at Massachusetts General Hospital, previously told CNN.

If you (or a loved one) seem to be struggling with alcohol, don’t hesitate to ask for help, experts say. There are many different support groups that can help, such as: B. 12-step programs and individual therapy.