Thanksgiving, office parties, football weekends, and family gatherings all put alcohol in front of us more than usual. A new German study suggests that simply seeing it matters. For anyone trying to cut back, and for families who have a loved one in recovery, the findings make the coming holiday season easier to plan for. They are also useful context if you are weighing alcohol rehab in Panama City for yourself or someone you love.
Tracking Drinking in Real Life
Researchers from the Medical Faculty Mannheim at Heidelberg University, working with colleagues at Charité in Berlin, published the study in Translational Psychiatry on October 8. Most alcohol research relies on people remembering what they drank. This team used smartphone prompts several times a day instead. Each prompt asked whether the person was drinking right then, whether they had come across alcohol since the last prompt, who they were with, and how they felt.
The study followed 129 people, and none were seeking treatment. One group was 73 adults between 17 and 62, mostly with mild to moderate alcohol use disorder, tracked for six weeks. The second was 56 young adults between 19 and 35 who had been screened for risky drinking, tracked for four weeks. Together they produced 19,579 data points.
Everyday Reminders
An alcohol cue in this study did not mean a billboard or a commercial. It meant coming across drinks, or a place where alcohol was present, since the previous prompt. Think of a bottle on a table at a café, a pub doorway on the walk home, or a friend raising a glass.
The Numbers
When people reported seeing alcohol, their odds of drinking at that moment were about 16 times higher in the first group and about 29 times higher in the second.
Odds are not the same as probability, so this does not mean someone is 16 or 29 times more likely to drink. It means that cue exposure and drinking went together far more often than chance would predict. The link held after the researchers accounted for mood, company, energy, and recent events. It also held when they looked only at cues from the previous prompt, and in moments after a period of not drinking.
Company and Energy Matter
Being with other people, spending time with usual drinking partners, and having higher energy were each linked to more drinking in both groups. Feelings such as loneliness, guilt, anxiety, and irritation were not consistently linked to drinking.
That is worth sitting with. Many people assume they drink when they feel bad. In this study, low mood was not consistently linked to drinking, while the setting and the company were.
Two Kinds of Drinkers
The authors used a statistical method to sort participants into two rough profiles. One group was more reactive to alcohol cues. These people tended to be older, met more criteria for alcohol use disorder, scored higher on a standard drinking screen, and reported more stressful life events. The other group was more reactive to social settings. They tended to be younger and less severely affected.
The authors call these profiles exploratory and say other research teams need to confirm them.
Limits of this Study
This was an observational study, so it cannot show that seeing alcohol causes drinking. It also measured cues and drinking at the same prompt, rather than tracking a cue followed later by a drink. People answered about two-thirds of the prompts, and people who respond to frequent prompts may not behave the way they usually do. Because none of the participants were in treatment, the results may not carry over to someone in early recovery.
Planning Around the Holidays
We will talk about this topic more on the blog in coming weeks. The study did not test any strategies, but its findings point us in a direction. If seeing alcohol raises the odds of drinking, then fewer reminders can help. Common-sense steps include keeping alcohol out of sight at home, bringing a non-alcoholic drink you like to gatherings, standing away from the bar or the table with the bottles, and having a plan to leave. Telling a friend or sponsor ahead of time that you are not drinking also gives you someone to check in with, that is classic advice common in Alcoholics Anonymous, and it helps!
If you have tried these steps and still find that a drink is hard to pass up, our residential program for drug and alcohol rehab is in Panama City, and the first call is just an anonymous conversation about where you are and what might help.
