DRINKERS are being urged to stick with the healthy drinking habbits created during Sober October.
Drinking at ‘high risk’ levels doubling to almost 8.5million since February, a second lockdown amidst winter months is set to only exacerbate levels of dangerous drinking across the nation
In light of the latest news around a second national lockdown, Ruari Fairbarins, Co-founder and CEO of One Year No Beer is urging the nation try to stay on track with any positive drinking habits created during ‘Sober October’.
Instead of falling back into old habits which could lead to many overcompensating on alcohol consumption as they come off the back of a month of sobriety.
Ruari Fairbairns, Co-founder and CEO of One Year No Beer urges the nation so take control of their relationship with alcohol and work hard to avoid a ‘Can’t remember November’
More work needs to be done to communicate the POSITIVE implications of drinking less
Research has also shown that drinking alcohol is a habit that may take longer to disrupt than others because it is a strongly incentivised, reward-based behaviour – the brain has associated alcohol with pleasure at some point in time with the release of dopamine in the brain creating a craving to do it again.
Fairbairns comments, “If we’re not careful, we’re very quickly going to find ourselves in a situation where everyone is undoing all of the positive steps that they have taken to abstain from alcohol last month and we are going to end up a nation of people drinking even more than before, as they continue to turn to alcohol as a coping mechanism during these winter months.
“The mental impact of lockdown is so damaging and we know this from YouGov research that we conducted earlier in the year that directly linked lockdown to a decline in mental health with as many as one in four attributing loneliness as the main culprit.
“There is not nearly enough being done nationwide to communicate the POSITIVE implications of drinking less and this is something that needs to change.
