Alcohol consumption rising sharply during pandemic, especially among women - ABC News

Now, new data shows that during the COVID-19 crisis, American adults have sharply increased their consumption of alcohol, drinking on more days per month, and to greater excess.

Heavy drinking among women especially has soared.

Between 2019 and now during the pandemic, men and women both reported increasing the frequency of their binge drinking episodes, defined as five or more drinks for men and four or more drinks for women within a couple of hours.

"To move the average up by that much means that some people are really increasing their binge drinking," Pollard said.

The study shows that not only has consumption spiked, but respondents also say they've experienced more adverse impacts as a result of their drinking.

"Even when we're doing well, for someone in recovery who's been doing really well, our demons return with stress, and can trigger relapse," Koob said.

"It's a perfect drug for women in particular, in a lot of ways," Hepolah said.

"Makes you feel braver, empowered, strong, it's a pain management system -- and it's a forgetting drug, and a lot of us are in a place where we just don't want to think a lot right now.

But with that unprecedented demand, Drizly's Liz Paquette said, comes a responsibility to wield their product mindfully.

"At a time when we're frightfully socially distancing, retaining connection with our loved ones is important for a lot of people," Paquette said.

When they began seeing their sales snowball, Paquette said, they put a pause on their paid media spending -- making sure they had both supplies and safe messaging in place to meet the influx of demand.

"It's important to us both as humans at this company, and as an organization, that we understand our role within this space and make sure we're acting in a way that's as responsible as possible," Paquette said.

"It's one way to deal with this stress," Koob said, "but when you start drinking to fix something or to not feel something, the alcohol makes it worse.

"Chronic alcohol consumption has historically been shown to increase the risk for acute respiratory distress syndrome," Koob said.

"At a moment when we're supposed to be extra careful, this seems a particularly bad time for impaired judgment when we're supposed to be paying close attention to our behaviors," Pollard said

"People may not want to quit drinking because they don't want to change their world," Hepolah said