If you found yourself drinking more alcohol when the COVID-19 shutdown began, you’re not alone.

A national representative survey of 993 US adults aged 21 and older in May of 2020 found that 29% percent of respondents reported consuming more drinks after COVID-related stay-at–home orders were issued in the spring of 2020, and this trend continued throughout the summer and fall.

A greater proportion of respondents also reported exceeding recommended drinking limits and binge drinking. (Binge drinking is defined as drinking four or more alcoholic beverages per occasion for women or five or more drinks per occasion for men).

Is having a few more beers or another glass of wine each night really that big of a deal? It can be, especially if this increase is sustained over time.

By simulating the trajectory of drinking and its impact on the liver, researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital, the Georgia Institute of Technology and colleagues found that a year-long increase in alcohol consumption could have significant short- and long-term effects on the health of the US population. The team’s findings were recently published in the journal Hepatology.

In the long-term, the one-year increase in alcohol consumption could result in an additional 8,000 deaths from alcohol-related liver disease (ALD), 18,700 additional cases of liver failure and 1,000 additional cases of liver cancer by 2040, the researchers found.

In the short-term, the increase in alcohol consumption is expected to cause 100 additional deaths and 2,800 additional cases of liver failure by 2023.

“Our findings highlight the need for individuals and policymakers to make informed decisions to mitigate the impact of high-risk alcohol drinking during the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S.,” says senior author Jagpreet Chhatwal, PhD, associate director of MGH’s Institute for Technology Assessment and an assistant professor of radiology at Harvard Medical School.

ALD already poses a significant disease burden in the United States, accounting for more than $5 billion in direct health care costs. Even without COVID-19 related increases in alcohol consumption, ALD is expected to claim the lives of 260,000 Americans in the next decade.

If the higher rates of risky alcohol consumption continue, this burden will further rise, the researchers say. Their modeling found that a sustained increase in drinking for three years would lead to 9,500 additional deaths, and a five-year increase would cause 10,800 deaths.

While these projections may be grim, the modeling does not account for interventions that may help to reduce drinking rates and lower the risk of ALD. At the individual level, this can include treatment for alcohol use disorder.

At the population level, instituting public health policies that reduce access to alcohol (by limiting the number of places in a given area where it can may be legally sold) or reduce demand for alcohol (by instituting minimum unit pricing for alcoholic beverages) may be the most effective ways to reduce these risks, the researchers say.

Ireland recently instituted minimum unit pricing in an effort to reduce alcohol consumption.

“We have projected the expected impact of societal drinking changes associated with the COVID-19 pandemic without any interventions,” notes lead author Jovan Julien, MS, a data analyst at the MGH Institute for Technology Assessment and a PhD candidate at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

“We hope that our research can help jumpstart needed conversations at every level of society about how we can respond to the many behavioral changes, coping mechanisms, and choices that have short- and long-term implications for the health of individuals, families and communities in America.”

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