DR MAX PEMBERTON: Why working from home is causing an explosion in problem drinking By Dr Max Pemberton Published: 02:00, 24 June 2024 | Updated: 02:00, 24 June 2024 e-mail View comments Deaths from drugs and alcohol are soaring in England and Wales, according to latest figures from the Office for National Statistics. In 2022, fatalities from substance abuse rose to almost 13,000 in England and in excess of 800 in Wales. Both figures represent significant rises compared with pre-pandemic figures, when the numbers were 10,511 and 667 respectively.
The reason? Covid. Or, rather, lockdown . Many doctors, including myself, warned that the effects of banning us all from meeting and mingling would stretch out years into the future, and this is one of them.
The whole pandemic nightmare seems a million years ago now. I think many of us have consciously tried to put it behind us and out of our minds. But when you think back, it was an extraordinary and stressful time.
Many people struggled mentally, and rates of drug and alcohol use soared. I remember working in A&E in central London and seeing patient after patient come in with drug overdoses, many of them students who were stuck in halls, away from home, lonely and isolated. For some it was the first time they had taken anything, and they were only experimenting because they were bored.
Others were regular users but had significantly increased their intake. The legacy of lockdown is a working-from-home culture which Dr Max believes .
