Drank a bit too many quarantinis? This is what alcohol does to you during the lockdown.

‘I hear all those women in the supermarket in Blaricum saying how wonderful they find it to be together with the children.’ Honest M is letting loose for a moment. ’Well, I found it hell. How many times can you hear ‘mom’ in a day? And then the food that was being made all day long. I drank every day. Every day.’ Pause. ‘And I started at half past four.’

I understand M well. I also poured myself a glass every day. It was my only little party. I had four bottles of white open and chose each day what I felt like. It wasn't that I was lying under the carpet like Betty Ford, because I could also keep it to a neat two glasses spread over a long evening, but it was my little escape. The conclusion of the workday.

It seems to occur with more people. The consumption routine creeps in quite nicely. We need a moment to forget the anxious times, because that’s probably what it’s all about. Just erasing the sharp edge of the day. Yet it has a counterproductive effect, say scientists.

What we do with that glass of wine is comparable to a child cleaning its room by sweeping the mess under the bed. The problems remain, we don’t solve them by drinking alcohol. On the contrary, alcohol use makes us more anxious. A test with two groups of mice has shown this. One half of the mice was not given alcohol, the other group was. For a month. What turned out? The drunks were more anxious and could also handle stressful situations much worse than the sober group. So we solve nothing by drinking and only make ourselves weaker, which makes us crave alcohol even more, and voilà, the vicious circle is a fact. And the downward spiral too.

So what should we do? According to experts, you shouldn’t torment yourself by drinking on the weekends and then stopping during the week. That keeps you constantly in a ‘withdrawal process’ because the first days of stopping are the hardest. So you just need to not drink for a longer period. I think back to my pregnancies. Back then, I found not drinking really easy. And my beloved has been drinking moderately to nothing for a few months and never complains about it. It’s not that difficult in the end. I once quit smoking because of Allen Carr who said: ‘How can one thing have so many contradictory functions? A cigarette perks you up, relaxes you, is good for stimulating appetite, gives you a full feeling, and so on. That can’t be. It’s what you project onto that cigarette.’ And it’s the same with alcohol.

Now let’s hope that I, and all my girlfriends, think the same way when the clock strikes five.