Category: Behavioral Health

Turning to Alcohol Use During COVID-19: Why It’s Harmful to the Body and Mind

Unwinding with a glass of wine or a beer might seem like an easy way to cope with the stress of the COVID-19 pandemic, but it might be doing you more harm than good. If you’ve been using alcohol to dampen the pandemic’s emotional weight, we recommend talking with a doctor or counselor and finding alternative ways to de-stress.

Turning to Alcohol Use During COVID-19: Why It's Harmful to the Body and Mind

With the lockdowns and quarantines that began in early 2020, a deluge of jokes appeared online about afternoon drinking and mixing “quarantinis.” However, these jokes and new drink recipes weren’t kidding.
People actually did significantly increase alcohol consumption. At the beginning of the Stop the Spread campaign in the U.S., alcohol sales skyrocketed. According to Nielsen, national alcohol sales increased 54% during the week that ended on March 20, 2020, and online alcohol sales were up 262% compared to 2019.
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What's So Bad About Alcohol Consumption?

Although unwinding with a glass of wine or a beer might seem like a simple way to cope with the unprecedented stress of the COVID-19 pandemic, it might actually be doing you more harm than good. Turning to alcohol to ease one’s worries can actually exacerbate feelings of anxiety, stress, and depression.
Additionally, consuming too much alcohol on a consistent basis increases a variety of health risks such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, liver disease, obesity, cancer, depression, suicide, and alcohol-related accidents. It can also lead to dangerous interactions with prescription medications and hinder a person’s overall brain function.
If that’s not enough to melt the ice in your margarita, alcohol consumption can also compromise your immune system, putting you at an increased risk of becoming seriously ill if you contract COVID-19 or any other contagious disease.

How Much Alcohol Is Too Much?

Everyone’s threshold varies depending on sex, weight, and unique metabolic factors. Federal health guidelines define moderate alcohol consumption as one drink per day for women and one or two drinks a day for men. These guidelines define heavy consumption or binge drinking as consuming five or more drinks for men and four or more drinks for women within a two-hour period.

Coping During a Pandemic

If you’ve been using alcohol to dampen the pandemic’s emotional weight, we recommend talking with a doctor or counselor and looking for other ways to de-stress. Cook yourself healthy meals and consider adding a daily walk, meditation, or alcohol-free living room dance party to your daily routine. Making a point to stay connected with the people you care about can help, too.

Counseling Services with Gulf Coast Health Center

You don’t have to struggle on your own. If you’re feeling lonely, stressed, or depressed and find yourself turning to alcohol for comfort, please reach out. We offer a variety of counseling services that can help you navigate the challenges of living during a pandemic. To learn more about counseling, telemedicine services, or to schedule an appointment, contact Gulf Coast Health Center.

Even Happy People Can Benefit from Seeing a Therapist

Talking with a therapist can be incredibly useful for people who consider themselves to be happy, content, and mentally healthy. Therapists can help you set, recalibrate, and strategize to achieve intelligent and lasting goals for yourself.

Even Happy People Can Benefit from Seeing a Therapist

When most people think about counseling, they associate the treatment with extreme situations like severe depression, abuse, and anxiety disorders. Everyone is right that therapy is essential to overcoming serious situations in life. The truth is, though, talking with a therapist can also be incredibly useful for people who consider themselves to be happy, content, and mentally healthy.

How Counseling Could Help You

Asking for advice in life is never off-limits; it’s also perfectly acceptable (and smart!) to seek life advice from a highly trained and experienced professional. Therapists can help you set, recalibrate, and strategize to achieve intelligent and lasting goals for yourself.
While it might seem like an easy task, figuring out what you actually want out of life can be tricky. Are your current life goals going to be fulfilling in the long run? Do you know what you need to do to achieve those goals? How will you react and adjust if your goals change over time? How will you handle and overcome potential failure?
A professional counselor can provide you with helpful strategies to determine your answers to all of these questions. In therapy, you’ll learn to identify patterns in your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors and determine whether these patterns hold you back or propel you toward your goals.
Whether you could use help with learning to develop your time management skills, being more assertive at work or at home, navigating your personal or professional relationships, or kicking a bad habit, counseling can help. Therapy can provide you with all the tools you need to maintain a balanced and well-rounded lifestyl, to avoid serious pitfalls in life, and to continue working toward become an ever-improving version of yourself.
No matter what (good or bad) life brings your way, therapy will prepare you to handle it in the best possible way.

Therapy as Preventative Care

In the same way that it’s better to catch physical ailments and begin treatment early on, it’s also helpful to detect potential emotional or mental problems early. If working with a therapist can help you detect a potential problem and address it before it has a chance to develop into a serious roadblock in your life, then more power to you!
Having a mental and emotional check-in with an unbiased professional about your life goals, career, relationships, health habits, and family before any real problems arise can be incredibly helpful with continuing to move in the right direction and staying on a successful life path.

Schedule a Check-In at Gulf Coast Health Center

At Gulf Coast Health Center, we encourage patients to take advantage of our counseling services. Contact a location near you to schedule an appointment with a professional therapist.