It is reported that alcohol consumption fell in Europe during the first wave of the Covid pandemic except for the UK. We were the only country where there was an increase across 21 countries. This analysis is based on surveying almost 32,000 people across Europe including 836 in the UK between April and July last year.
In Ireland average alcohol consumption stayed more or less the same while there were reductions in every other country. The biggest reduction was in Albania, Finland, Italy, Slovakia and Spain. The report concludes that drinking is a ‘maladaptive coping strategy’ used to deal with the psychological effects of social isolation, insecurity and money problems. Looks like our European friends are better at coping than we are.
Some more figures for you – on average we each consume, annually in the UK - 120 bottles of wine or 403 pints of beer. Britons get through a yearly average of 11.4 litres of pure alcohol, the EU average is 11.3. Top of the table is The Czech republic at 14.4 litres per annum and at the bottom is Saudi Arabia at just 0.2 litres. The UK comes out 16th in a table of 52 countries. A sobering thought is that the UK spends a greater proportion of its health budget treating alcohol-related diseases at 3% compared to an average elsewhere of 2.4%.
