Understanding drinking transitions during lockdown

Read the event report for Dr Emily Nicholls' webinar on drinking transitions during lockdown.

The ‘Drinking in Lockdown’ project consisted of 12 one-to-one, semi-structured interviews and four household focus groups undertaken online with 20 current UK drinkers between the first and second national lockdowns in England. Headline findings focussed on home drinking (the home as both an enabler of and a constraint on drinking; alcohol revitalising familiar home environments; wanting the home to be ‘alcohol-free’) and drinking transitions (the role of alcohol pre-lockdown, during lockdown and possible post-lockdown transitions).

We explored lockdown as an opportunity for ‘growth’ and self-development (as a possible 'teachable moment', a framing which is likely classed); precarity, stress and uncertainty as possible triggers for drinking; and how some people draw on notions of class, taste, and luxury to justify drinking.

Analysis is on-going, yet this project has already elicited a number of areas for future research:

• Is lockdown as a ‘teachable moment’ inherently classed?
• If drinking has increased due to stress/uncertainty, are those in more precarious circumstances disproportionately affected, facing (even more) harm, with an added health burden from drinking?
• How do issues of ‘class’ and ‘taste’ explain the rationalisation of drinking during lockdown?
• How have other social inequalities (such as gender and race) been experienced during the pandemic, and how has this impacted on drinking?