Alcohol, drug use in Covid surges

Victorian alcohol and drug experts are bracing themselves for a surge in addiction and substance abuse in response to the trauma of the pandemic.

It is understood the state government has not commissioned any research or modelling on drug and alcohol use in the ­pandemic.

Victorian alcohol and drug experts are bracing themselves for a surge in addiction and substance abuse in response to the trauma of the pandemic as they call on the state government to bolster the state’s services.

Sector leaders are expecting the fallout from the past six months to continue for years, pointing to increased substance abuse following tragedies such as the Black Saturday bushfires and the Queensland floods.

Victorian Alcohol and Drug Association executive officer Sam Biondo said the stress of the pandemic had created new users and pushed functioning addicts over the edge. “We also know during times of catastrophe, be it bushfires, floods …. the level of consumption increases as the legacy to deal with that trauma lives on with people,” he said.

“They turn to alcohol and other substances … and sometimes into trouble.”

About one-in-four residents in communities worst affected by the Black Saturday bush fires began drinking heavily after the 2009 tragedy, according to a Melbourne University study.

Similarly, Brisbane residents affected by the Queensland floods in 2011 were 4.5 times more likely to have increase alcohol consumption compared to those not impacted, Australia and New Zealand Journal of Public Health research found.

Director of the Phoenix Institute Centre for Post-traumatic Mental Health at Melbourne University David Forbes said the pandemic and lockdown had brought multiple stressors, including risk of infection, social isolation, financial hardship and the loss of structure.

“These stresses often hit those with existing difficulties the hardest,” he said. “This is definitely true for people with addiction problems, particularly as the addictions are often what is used to cope with the stress.”

Director of the Department of Addiction Medicine at Melbourne’s St Vincent’s Yvonne Bonomo said the number of people presenting for treatment had steadily increased over the course of the pandemic, particularly for alcohol, cannabis and the party drug Gamma Hydroxy­butyrate (GHB).

“So what we have seen is some of our clients who were quite stable have destabilised over this period of time,” she said.

“We’ve also got new presentations … COVID has kind of unmasked problems that were just bubbling along.”

Harm Reduction Victoria chief Sione Crawford said public health laws introduced under lockdown had deterred users from seeking help and pushed people into riskier behaviours.

“Having an unstable marketplace like COVID has brought in basically introduces all sorts of different opportunities for harm, including overdose for some people,” he said.

“We definitely found during the lockdown that people who were accessing ­needle-syringe programs were being fined at quite a high rate for being out and about.”

He said it was not realistic to expect people to go cold turkey as withdrawal symptoms made people get very sick, and in the case of alcohol and benzodiazepine, could even result in death.

Mr Biondo said services needed to be integrated and boosted in recognition many people had delayed seeking treatment because of the pandemic while others had developed problems in the lockdown.

It is understood the state government has not commissioned any research or modelling on drug and alcohol use in the ­pandemic.