Analyzing Blackout Drinking Culture During Quarantine Using Tweets

Humans are social creatures, so for many of us, self-isolation and living in quarantine can have a very negative impact on our mental health. Therefore we may turn to substances such as cannabis or alcohol to cope. To put it lightly, a Tweet by comedy writer Emily Murnane summed this up at the start of the quarantine stating "Days are now divided by coffee hours and alcohol hours." But jokes aside, we could see serious implications in society for our immediate and long-term health, both physically and mentally as a result of this new COVID-19 drinking culture. To better understand and observe this change in drinking culture, Rose Marie Ward, a psychology professor at Miami University, set out to analyze the prevalence of publicly available tweets in the USA referencing alcohol‐induced blackouts prior to and during the COVID‐19 outbreak. We invited her on the show to discuss how this study was conducted, what the research indicated, and the wider applications of this study. In this episode, you will learn how the quarantine could form alcoholic tendencies, which parts of the US drink the most, and the impact of alcohol use among healthcare works during previous SARS outbreaks.