We heard a lot about people starting to drink more during the pandemic, but how many people went the other way?

According to Drugabuse.com (the fact that it's a .com and not a .org makes me a little concerned about, not necessarily the validity, but the framing of the information. Anyways.)

According to Drugabuse.com, roughly 10% of the people in Illinois completely quit or drastically cut down their alcohol intake.

NOTE: I was not part of the survey. Complete disclosure, I would have been in the 90%. Didn't increase, but we kept the pace going.

Why did people give up the booze? Mostly the lack of socialization.

About 1 in 4, 26%, said that it was the lack of after-work get-togethers just didn't give them the environment to drink. You have to wonder if it isn't so much needing the environment to drink or that going to work 5 days a week just created the environment needed to blow off steam. Discuss amongst yourselves.

An even bigger percentage of that, 36%, said that it was just not being able to go out to the bar with their friends, a very reasonable excuse.

Now, I'd like to take a quick look at this study. Again, I'm dubious that they are a .com website and not a .org. That means that there is definitely a financial incentive in the site. Also, I'm usually pretty dubious of any email that I get that is pushing their infographic page a little too hard. You can check out theirs here. You can tell pretty quickly, that it is some sort of substance abuse counseling online warehouse. Not that there is anything wrong with substance abuse counseling, it's a woefully underused and underresearched subject. But when profits are involved, it's better to look closer.

A big part of my problem with the data is that it states that 10% of Illinoisans have stopped or drastically cut down their drinking. They never offer numbers from previous years. Is this a derivation from 2019? 2005? Maybe 10% of people "quit" every year. Did 20% of the population drastically INCREASE their drinking since the pandemic? There were a lot of unmatched numbers being thrown out and they did the study themselves with no supporting data.

It's kind of tough to take them seriously.

Either way, guys, watch your drinking. Think you have a problem? I think these drugabuse.com guys have someone you can talk to.

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