Stuck at home, with alcohol and drugs easily available, subsance addicts have found lockdown hard-going

Pamela Roberts, psychotherapist and addictions programme manager at the Priory Hospital Woking, says: “Covid has accelerated a dependency that might have otherwise crept up on them over time. Social isolation, loss of control over the situation we fnd ourselves in, working from home, not connecting with support networks or structures — all are issues that contribute to drinking more.”

Most of the patients seen by consultant psychiatrist Dr Niall Campbell, an addictions expert based at the Priory Hospital Roehampton in London, are working from home. “As time went on, the novelty wore of,” he says, “and often relationships with partners and family members deteriorated, and people became stressed, or more bored, and began to drink earlier and the quantities they consumed increased . . . Some people became increasingly isolated, which is a feature of worsening alcohol abuse.