COVID-19 thought to be cause of increase in alcohol abuse problems

Salt Lake City residential substance abuse treatment center Odyssey House has seen a 78 percent increase in the number of clients coming into the program during COVID-19. From May 1 through June 15, nearly half of all clients (49.7 percent) listed alcohol as a reason for seeking treatment, according to Odyssey chief operating officer Christina Zidow. During that same time period in 2019, only 28 percent said they had a drinking problem.

“This is really quite astonishing,” said Zidow. “For many years we have hovered around 25 percent in this category, mostly for those seeking outpatient services. Eighty percent of our clients have sought treatment for opiates or methamphetamine. It has been that way for the last 15 years that I have been with the agency. This jump in rates constitutes a clinically significant increase that I’ve never seen before. We don’t have enough information yet to know if this trend will continue, or to suggest a causal relationship between COVID and Alcohol Use Disorder but this change really is significant, even if it does turn out to be a blip.”

Zidow doesn’t discount the fact that this could be related to the pandemic. “We do know that the rates of mental illness and substance use increase in response to natural disasters and we may be at the beginning of that curve. It is something everyone in healthcare needs to attend to.”