Drinking to Cope

A model poses with two 40-ounce beers taped to their hands. When classes turned to Zoom meetings and life at college meant masking up and avoiding other students, alcohol — the substance normally associated with social freedom — morphed into a remedy for the daily loneliness and stress of the pandemic.

As the new school year approaches, students’ relationships with alcohol may look different.

Written by Lily Sinkovitz I Photographed by Collin Bell I Illustrated by Maya Merrill

The night before his 9 a.m. business exam, Colton Bourne decided to have a drink with friends. He spent the day like most others — in and out of Zoom classes, finishing assignments and studying for his test. Recently, having a drink felt like a way to unwind and feel good after a monotonous, stressful day.

But what started as one drink soon turned into multiple. Bourne woke up the next morning, his head fuzzy and pounding, half an hour late to his exam.

He jumped out of bed, grabbed his computer and logged onto Zoom. His heart raced as he tried to make up for lost time. Bourne ended the exam with a 40% after only being able to complete half of the questions. His grade in the class dropped by almost a full letter as a result.

“It was absolutely a wake-up call,” Bourne says. “I was drinking so much on the weekdays, where I wasn’t in the past, and that would cause me to wake up the next day late in the afternoon and then realize that I missed Zoom classes.”

Bourne says that he only drank on the weekend with friends before the pandemic. But after almost a year of isolation, he found himself with a bottle in hand far more frequently. He had always prioritized school, but now, he says, that was growing increasingly difficult.

Bourne is one of many people around the nation facing what the American Psychological Association predicted would be a second pandemic — mental health. Just months into the spread of COVID-19 in 2020, it warned that the high levels of stress, feelings of depression, and loneliness of this era could have long-term health consequences.

A year into the pandemic, a 2021 American Psychological Association survey revealed that among reports of sleep disturbances, poor diets and a lack of exercise, many were turning to substances. Gen Z adults were the most likely to report that their mental health had deteriorated, and nearly one in four adults who were surveyed said they drank more to manage Covid-related stress.

In a year plagued by uncertainty and doubt, Bourne realized he began drinking more often to cope. Health experts at the University of Oregon say he wasn’t the only one.

“There was definitely concern about the escalation of use,” says UO health expert Dr. Toni Forbes Berg. “Whenever there are those strong shifts and stress, anxiety, depression and trauma, those of us in the AOD [Alcohol and Other Drugs] field know that quite a lot of folks will be looking for a way to cope. And substances are a method of coping for a lot of folks.”

Forbes Berg is the lead Alcohol and Other Drugs counselor at the University of Oregon counseling center and the director of the Collegiate Recovery Program. As the pandemic’s impacts grew increasingly grim, Forbes Berg says, counselors knew students would need their services.

Bourne says that before the pandemic, he never saw alcohol as a coping mechanism. Typically, after stressful days at school

"as the pandemic hit and we were stuck at home, I think it became more of a way to just deal with the stress"

or when he felt particularly restless, he would head to the gym, hang out with friends or get outside.

That changed when the University of Oregon transitioned to online classes in March 2020, and Bourne went home to southern California. He spent the initial months of lockdown isolated with his family, bored and often apprehensive. Having a few drinks became a way to ease stress and pass the time, he says.

“Prior to the pandemic, I viewed drinking as just part of being social,” Bourne says. “But as the pandemic hit and we were stuck at home, I think it became more of a way to just deal with the stress.”

After nearly seven months of lockdown at home, Bourne returned to Eugene in September 2020. He was thrilled to move to his first apartment off-campus and hopeful that returning would restore a sense of normalcy.

However, as UO moved forward with online classes and limited activities on campus, Bourne realized that a return to pre-pandemic life was far from reality. His feelings of uncertainty and stress never subsided — now they were compounded by schoolwork. Despite being back in his beloved college town, he often felt isolated.

“Drinking, you kind of just tend to forget about the chaos and the reality of the world that we’re living in right now, especially with the last year,” Bourne says. “As time went on and we realized that this is going to be a whole year of online classes, I think alcohol kind of became more of an outlet to just forget about the reality of that situation that we’re in.”

A return-to-campus survey conducted by Ohio State University found that many students were grappling with the same uncertainty Bourne was feeling. Even as pandemic restrictions began to ease and students from around the nation returned to college campuses, the mental health crisis not only persisted but may have worsened.

Conducted between August 2020 and April 2021, the survey found that 71% of the 1,072 Ohio students surveyed said they were experiencing burnout in the spring, up from 40% in 2020. The use of alcohol as a coping mechanism rose from 15% to 18%. A report by the National Alliance on Mental Illness indicates that this issue is relevant to universities around the country, not just Ohio State.

“We have to have a lot of grace and compassion for the coping aspect of it,” says Dr. Forbes Berg. “Even with folks that just seem to be partying more, there’s always that question in the back of my mind of how much of this is ‘I just want to party more because I have more free time,’ and how much of that is ‘everything that’s happening in the world is really weighing me down, and I am looking for relief from that.’”

Health experts around UO started offering teletherapy, made arrangements for in-person visits when possible and set up virtual self-help resources to adjust for students shortly after the pandemic started. But Forbes Berg says maintaining strong coping mechanisms was difficult for many. Substances were easily accessible when other coping tools were not. She says that would be especially challenging for a particular group: her students in recovery.

“It was an absolute disruption to the community,” says B. Scott, whose name is a pseudonym to protect his identity. “It was really, really hard for a lot of people in recovery, regardless of how long they’ve been around.”

Scott is a recent UO graduate student and a recovering alcoholic. He’s a current member of Alcoholics Anonymous and was affiliated with UO’s Collegiate Recovery Center.

Scott’s journey to recovery began over a decade ago at a different university. There, he says, he struggled in silence for years until meeting others who were also working through addiction at an Alcoholic Anonymous meeting.

Scott arrived at the University of Oregon as a graduate student dedicated to sobriety. He formed a community with other students in recovery when he began attending weekly AA meetings held on campus.

When COVID-19 hit, Scott says, those in recovery were faced with an all-too-familiar feeling of loneliness. The typical AA meetings held on campus moved online, and Scott says this was exemplary of just one aspect that made recovery more difficult for many. Zoom had removed a critical interpersonal connection he found essential to his own sobriety.

“A lot of people just disappeared,” Scott says. “The person who used to come every week started coming every two weeks and then every month. You just didn’t really see them anymore, and then it’s like six months go by.”

Without the typical in-person presence on campus, Scott says, these meetings and other resources were more difficult for students to find and access, particularly for those new to asking for help. From his own experience, Scott knows that talking about struggles with substances can already be difficult.

Alexis Drakatos, the coordinator of Substance Abuse Prevention at UO’s Office of the Dean of Students, hopes to change that narrative. In the wake of students returning to campus this fall, Drakatos, Dr. Forbes Berg and others involved with substance abuse prevention have been determined to normalize a conversation about substances.

Drakatos says her team looks for ways they can spread helpful information about substances through talking with students. During the pandemic, her team tried their best to support the UO community by inviting students to send in their concerns over social media and offering remote workshops to help students identify healthy coping mechanisms.

“One of the challenging things about this work, even aside from the pandemic, is that substance use, especially really chronic or heavy use, is seen as so normalized in college students,” Drakatos says. “It can be really tough to help students identify what problematic use is.”

Drakatos says these long-held norms were a concern over the past year, especially once many students returned to Eugene while doing remote learning. While the prevention team’s support is vital, Drakatos says that it can only go so far. She has to rely on students themselves to implement a standard of a healthy relationship with substances.

A model poses with two 40-ounce beers taped to their hands. This image is based on the college drinking game “Edward 40 Hands:” a game where participants have two 40-ounce beers taped to their hands, which can only be removed after they finish drinking both.

"After the initial shock and sorrow of isolation began to wane, Mcelyea discovered that her newfound free time might be good for her"

She says that’s already happening for many students.

Inrecent years, Drakatos has noticed that students have become more open about mental health and conversations around sustainable habits. She predicts it may have had a positive impact on some students’ drinking habits.

This was true for Anne Mcelyea, a senior at UO, who says that quarantine was a pause she didn’t realize she truly needed.

For her first two years on campus, Mcelyea thought her drinking habits were a part of the normal college culture. She studied hard throughout the week and was involved in various extracurriculars. But while school was a priority, the weekdays truthfully seemed to feel like a drag. What Mcelyea really looked forward to began on Fridays.

“It felt like we had all this stress of school, and the whole point of the week was making it to the weekend,” she says. And more often than not, she says, those weekends revolved around drinking.

Mcelyea says that her pre-pandemic lifestyle halted when she left campus in March of 2020 to live with her family. Spring term continued virtually, and she got her retail job back in the coming months. But the weekends, as she knew them, were gone.

After the initial shock and sorrow of isolation began to wane, Mcelyea discovered that her newfound free time might be good for her. She wanted to develop a routine to prioritize her health. One of the first things to go was alcohol.

“I think that the binge drinking that we do in college really isn’t normal. And I don’t think that it should be normalized,” Mcelyea says. “My mentality around drinking has changed a lot, and I also think that happened for my friends too.”

She started getting into healthy habits, like exercising every day and eating healthy. Mcelyea says that by the time she decided to move back to Eugene last July, social gatherings became more prevalent and that she saw an all-too-familiar drinking culture reemerging in Eugene.

While Mcelyea hasn’t completely quit drinking, she says her habits have changed significantly. Now, she says she redefined the importance of alcohol in her social life and can discern for herself when enough is enough.

Bourne says he’s trying to do the same. In the wake of returning to campus for in-person classes this fall, Bourne says he’s determined to rediscover his healthy habits.

“Right now is the most normal life’s been in a while,” Bourne says. “I’ve been prioritizing having a schedule, waking up early, going to the gym and getting my priorities done on time. I can push alcohol to the side to a time where it’s actually appropriate.”

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