Have COVID-19 quarantines increase your alcohol consumption?

With all the stress and anxiety as well as the depression brought on by the pandemic and quarantines, Americans are consuming less alcohol. (Yes. That’s right!) Like you, I thought the opposite would be true.

So, here’s why: While many consumers are buying more booze from grocers and liquor stores to drink at home, it hasn’t been enough to make up the difference created by declines in beer, wine and liquor purchases by restaurants, bars and sporting venues that have been closed or running at half-speed to slow the spread of COVID-19 infections.

Checking with friends who regularly stock beer, wine or “the hard stuff,” most admit to buying a bit more at the grocery and/or liquor store. Some confess they may be drinking a little more since COVID -- and who would blame them?… as long as they’re not going off the deep end.

If you think about it, from the beginning of the pandemic, our routines and very lives have changed. I want to compare the emotional stress (and I’m not making excuses for selfmedicating with alcohol) to moving to a foreign country, one we didn’t choose to visit.

While the landscape is the same, our lifestyles have totally changed. We speak the same language, but we wear masks and gloves any time we leave the house.

We bank at the drive-in branch, pick-up our food rather than dine at our favorite restaurants, we only shop online and we attend church on Zoom. For entertainment, we have Netflix or read books.

Sometimes I feel like a foreign visitor, experiencing a new culture…right here in Dripping Springs.

Speaking of visiting foreign destinations, global alcohol consumption isn’t expected to return to pre-COVID-19 levels until 2024, and the recovery of U.S. beer, wine and liquor sales will take even longer, according to IWSR, the global benchmark for beverage alcohol data and intelligence.

But back to the topic of alcohol consumption in this country: The dietary guidelines for Americans are revised every five years, and 2020 marks a new revision.

But before any changes are made, a scientific review committee evaluates research on related topics and makes recommendations for what changes the new guidelines will include, if any.

Here’s what the science experts say about alcohol consumption for men and women:

In the 2015-2020 dietary guidelines, the recommendation for alcohol defined one drink as 12 fluid ounces of beer, 5 fluid ounces of wine or 1 1/2 fluid ounces of 80-proof liquor (like rum or vodka). And no, you can’t accrue your weekly drinks to have seven or 14 drinks on a Saturday night.

Research also has found, among people who do drink, men are more likely to drink more than women. In addition, among folks ages 20 to 64 years of age, alcohol contributes more than 20% of total calories from beverages.

With these findings in mind, the committee made the 2020-2025 recommendation to lower the guideline for men to a maximum of one drink per day. The recommendations for women of a maximum of one drink per day remained the same.

There’s also one more variable to add to the lower alcohol consumption equation: Even before Covid-19, a growing number of Americans, led by 20-somethings, increasingly strived to be healthier. They aren’t giving up all the indulgences of older generations, but many want to feel better about doing so.

It’s a dynamic that helped turn lower-calorie hard seltzers, into household names and made nonalcoholic beer much more than an option for recovering alcoholics.

We may see nonalcoholic beer bars replacing traditional taverns, (Last month, one of these bars opened in Japan, reflecting the popularity of the nonalcoholic beverage.)

Toss in the growth of legal cannabis -- and traditional beer, wine and spirits sales in the U.S. have been left searching for ways to bounce back.

Now, add an ongoing pandemic that’s already killed 150,000 Americans, and there’s increased concern that even when the virus fades, consumers will keep cutting back on booze.