Why has the coronavirus pandemic fueled addiction cases?

The coronavirus pandemic has brought with it not only a major medical health crisis proportions, but also an increase in mental health problems, especially depression and anxiety.

In turn, these two psychological problems have contributed to the fact that, combined with the confinement measures and the economic and social uncertainty that lived during the hardest moments of the pandemic, what could well be called a second pandemic has occurred: that of the addictions. In this article We will see what has caused drug addiction cases to increase so much during the health crisis.

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Appearance and consolidation of addictions during the coronavirus pandemic

The stress and uncertainty caused by COVID-19 has resulted in an increase in the demand for mental health services. The anxiety and the depression They have been two psychological problems that have grown strongly since the health crisis began in March 2020, but they are not the only problems that have increased their number of cases, being in fact risk factors for presenting various mental disorders, including substance addiction.

Psychotherapists and other mental health professionals have seen how the use and abuse of substances, such as opioids and psychostimulants, has grown enormously. Many people have fallen into addictions, consolidated in the pandemic due to various factors, including loneliness, boredom, stress and fear of get infected with the virus, conditions that all of them combined have created the perfect storm for us not only to talk about a viral pandemic, but also about addictions.

Added to the health risks that substance use disorder alone brings, drug addicts have been found to be more prone to develop the worst symptoms of COVID-19 disease, have more sequelae once the disease is over and there is a significant increase in the chances of ending up hospitalized and dying from coronavirus.

Based on data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of the United States, in the month of June 2020 reported that about 13% of the country's citizens began and increased the consumption of addictive substances, both legal and illicit. The main explanation behind this increase was that the population used drugs as a method of coping with stress and negative emotions produced by the health crisis.

Although the population began to take more drugs does not mean that all people fell into addictions, it does mean that this phenomenon It turns out to be very worrying since, derived from it, the cases of overdose also increased, triggered already from the beginning of the pandemic. The ODMAP system, an application to monitor cases of overdose in the United States, indicated that in In the first months of the pandemic there was an 18% increase in these cases compared to the same months of 2019.

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The COVID crisis and substance use disorders

Based on research and clinical observation carried out during the pandemic, experts consider that one of the main causes of the increase in substance use is directly related to see with financial uncertainty, feelings of loneliness and fear caused by the fear of contracting the disease.

All of them occurred in a combined way at the beginning of the pandemic, times when all people were felt more stressed and lonely, predisposing them to make unhealthy decisions, including drinking and take drugs.

As people feel more stress, they feel they have less effective ways of handling this emotion., and more if we take into account the nature of the anti-COVID-19 measures of most of the world's governments. For example, activities that can be seen as promoting resilience, such as exercising outdoors or stay with friends, were not possible due to the prohibition of any activity not essential or duly justified.

Faced with these prohibitions, people who before the pandemic already had anxiety problems but who controlled them by doing sports, walking or meeting with their friends they saw that overnight they had to manage to learn a new method to manage their emotions. It was because of this that many people resorted to unhealthy strategies as their main coping method, including the overeating of food, the consumption of pornography in an abusive way and, also, the abuse of substances, being the stars the alcohol and the tobacco.

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The impact of the COVID-19 crisis on drug use patterns

The increase in substance use has occurred both in terms of quantity and frequency, and in some cases they have switched to more dangerous drugs.

There are people who already abused substances before the pandemic who replaced them with new ones, easier to obtain from home but also less secure, because due to restrictions and confinement measures they did not have access to suppliers usual.

This change to a new drug is considered one of the reasons why mortality associated with substance use has increased during the pandemic. For example, a person who used heroin before, when the pandemic began and they stopped having supplies of this drug, may have been replaced by fentanyl, a synthetic opioid similar to morphine but 100 times more powerful. By not having as much experience with this drug as with cocaine, the user can underestimate its effects and cause an overdose with fatal effects.

There is also a practical explanation for the increase in overdose cases, and not only because of the increase in substance use. People have been more likely to die from substance abuse during the pandemic because in many cases they were alone. This means that there was no one to stop or convince them to reduce consumption and, moreover, in In case of complications there was no one who could call the emergency services or manage naloxone, an agent that reverses the effects of opiates.

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The importance of proper care in psychotherapy

The stressors that have increased substance use are still in place and, even when the COVID-19 pandemic is over, It will take many people months, maybe years to reduce their use of tobacco, alcohol, coffee, illicit drugs, or stop eating abusively.

The stress and anxiety behind these truly addictive behaviors will not magically vanish and there will remain a lot of uncertainty even when there is no health crisis, a concern that if not properly treated can manifest itself in an overdose of drugs to the long.

If a patient recognizes that he has been consuming any substance, either directly or indirectly due to the pandemic, psychotherapy focuses on help the patient understand what stressors have predisposed him to use substances. Added to this, healthier and more adequate alternative ways to cope with stress are being sought, both by that causes a health crisis such as a humanitarian disaster or daily problems in the life of the patient.

The patient is helped to perform a functional analysis of the role of drugs in your life And, thus, look for something to replace it without posing risks to your health.

It should be noted that, taking into account how the pandemic has increased substance use, it should become a habit among professionals to ask their patient if she uses any type of drug, no matter how uncomfortable the question may be, and know what you consume, in what quantity and how often. While this is part of the clinical interview phase, it is sometimes overlooked.

Also, it should not be assumed that a patient does not have a substance use disorder does not mean that he is not using drugs abusively or feels that he has lost control.