Moreover, studies that looked beyond the amount of alcohol consumed during the COVID-19 pandemic found an increase in specific drinking patterns, such as higher drinking frequency (Wardell et al., 2020, White et al., 2020, Niedzwiedz et al., 2021, Thompson et al., 2021), binge drinking (Grigoletto et al., 2020, Niedzwiedz et al., 2021) and solitary drinking (Panagiotidis et al., 2020, Ramalho, 2020, Wardell et al., 2020). The latter has been shown to lead to the development of alcohol-related problems, such as alcohol abuse and dependence (Skrzynski and Creswell, 2020), especially when drinking is used as a coping mechanism against stress (Dawson et al., 2005, Corbin et al., 2013), anxiety (Rehm et al., 2010), or loneliness (Corbin et al., 2020, Niedzwiedz et al., 2021, Oksanen et al., 2021).
