Alcoholic beverages consumption in the City of Córdoba during the COVID 19 pandemic

Abstract

Summary:
Alcoholic beverages have become one of the main substances of legal consumption and early initiation of drug use in young people. Due to the 2020 ASPO (Spanish acronym for Preventive and Obligatory Social Isolation) in the COVID 19 pandemic, we have decided to survey citizens of more than 18 years old in the City of Córdoba investigating whether the variables about alcoholic beverages consumption had changed or if they were a reason behind the violation of rules established by the state agencies during isolation.
We carried on a random observational descriptive analysis on the social media Instagram, publishing a survey designed and validated for this purpose, retrospectively to 2020 ASPO in the month of April 2021 where 556 people from the City of Córdoba participated voluntarily between the ages of 18 and 62 years old. It consisted in questions such as: age of initiation in alcoholic beverages consumption, consumption before the pandemic, if it changed in the context of isolation or if it generated violations of the State rules, and risk associated with problematic consumption of alcoholic beverages with typical manifestations of drunkenness.
70.2% of the surveys were answered by women, 28.6% by men, and 1.2% did not specify gender. 90.6% of the surveyed population reported consuming alcoholic beverages; 83% of the total population with a starting age between 12 and 17 years old. 45.1% of the surveyed reported fewer alcoholic beverages consumption compared with before the pandemic in counterpart with the 11.8% that stated more consumption, 11% stopped consuming and the rest did not present changes. 56.1% suffered, in the last year, cerebellar ataxia, dysarthria, diplopia, emesis and or memory impairment related to ingestions. 24.7% of the consuming population reported that they attended clandestine parties to freely consume alcoholic beverages.
Even though the results were not conclusive, we infer that toxic habits related to alcohol consumption have decreased, which leads us to another investigation of the reason for such determination. In the same way, consumption begins in a susceptible stage of life, adolescence, and carries consequences associated with problematic alcoholic consumption