WATCH – TIME TO WINE DOWN –
April 2, 2021 – Between 2019 into 2020, reports of women binge drinking rose amid the COVID-19 pandemic — now many, particularly mothers, say they’re reevaluating their relationship with alcohol in hopes to put an end to a hazardous health trend. In 2019, Lainy Warnecke made it 47 days without having a drink after becoming “sober curious.” She said she eventually went back to consuming alcohol in moderation, though when the pandemic hit, the mother of two found herself pouring a drink every single day as she worked a full-time job remotely along with having her kids out of school. “It was a stress unlike any that I’d ever experienced before,” Warnecke of McKinney, Texas, told “Good Morning America.” “I used to tell my manager who I worked for at the time, ‘It’s not the kids and it’s not the work. It’s that everything is going on at the same time.’ You didn’t have, ‘It’s the end of the day.’ [Instead], you had everything coinciding.” In a study released in September by the RAND corporation and supported by the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), adults’ drinking habits were compared from 2019 to 2020. Surveying 1,540 adults, participants were asked about their shift in consumption between spring 2019 and spring 2020, during the virus’ first peak.
