Table 5:

Presence of Parent and Subthemes Nested Within the Overarching Effect on General Life Theme

Parent Theme and Subthemes	%	Example Quotes
Impact on Daily Life	100
Adaptive Coping Mechanisms	100	P169 SM 446: “In terms of missing the gym, I ended up buying some workout equipment from my house and then doing Zoom workouts with my friends or going on runs with my neighbors and everything. And in terms of just hanging out with friends, once again, doing things over Zoom, like playing games online with my friends, and just switching everything from in-person to online, making that big step.” P71 AA 2073: “…Recovery literature. I do read a lot more of the program literature than I had before. It’s sort of like the big book. There’s some Hazelton books. There’s early sobriety things. And then I started taking advantage of a lot of autobiographies of women in recovery and things like that, so I do a lot more reading of resources and stuff.”
Routine	98.4	P132 (SM285): “What I’ve had has been either taken away or greatly limited. I go to soup kitchens all the time. Right now, we stand in line and get a meal and go. It used to be a sit-down thing in a hall. I used to go to the hospital cafeteria and get a meal. Nope. That’s still closed to the public.” P12-009: “Before COVID you had a structure of today I’m going to do this, tomorrow I’m doing this. And you were being held accountable for that. Are there--?Right. And you have self-accountability and third-party accountability. You know what I mean? Right. And I look in the mirror and say, “I’m not going to use.” Then COVID-19 like, “Well, who cares anyways.” Right? And this sort of thing-- the world’s-- it felt like an apocalypse that one part of the year.”
Technology Use	91.9	P133 (SM 286): “I’m just on there 24/7 … I’m on there a lot, a lot more than when I was out doing things and I had a social life and a life outside of COVID. And I feel stuck, I feel like everything is through the phone and if I don’t have my phone, I can’t find my phone, my phone’s not charged, then my hand is freaking out” P119 SM 182: “Oh my God, I’m on the phone all the time. I’m constantly on Facebook, Instagram, constantly reading all of my emails like crazy. I have a lot of news apps on my phone too. I read the news. I read the news through Facebook too to come to find out it’s fake news. …like I said, I’m always on the phone. I’m always looking up stuff. I’m always looking what’s on sale at Zulily, what’s on sale at Walmart, what’s on clearance at Groupon. I got them all.”
Poor Mental Health/Mood	85.5	P11-027: “COVID-19 affected my mood by-- because I have no immune system, I can’t go anywhere. So it gave me-- my anxiety levels, my depression levels, everything went skyrocketing through the roof. So I was not feeling myself or very good, at all.” P148 SM 348: “Oh, yeah. I’ve been pretty-- extremely depressed, but-- yeah. I tried reaching out and getting help a few times, but it didn’t really… Mental health resources are spread pretty thin right now, so yeah, I guess it has intensified my depression.”
Isolation	74.2	P13–052: “I just felt more isolated, more time to think. There wasn’t really anything to do or keep me active. I walked a bit, but it still doesn’t fill my days” P44 2045: “Well, I’ve basically been shut in. I stay in unless I have to go shopping with my wife. …And so we stay in the house. We cook. We watch movies. We watch television. We watch CNN.”
Employment	56.5	P11-027: Work is it all. I own my own business, so all my employees were out of work because of COVID. I was getting no money coming in. It was a huge, huge toll on me.” P95 SM84: “My work cut me from 40 hours to 20 hours during the COVID because of exposure and then the client went in the hospital and came back home on hospice. And like I said, she passed. So it was kind of very difficult financially and emotionally”
Negative Experiences with Societal Response to Virus	50	P58 AA 2060: “I didn’t run out and try to buy all the toilet paper and all the water out of the store, and a lot of people did that. And it was so frustrating because those people are really just looking out for themselves, and they don’t think that their neighbor needs toilet paper and water too. It was just kind of frustrating. You can see where people are really at when it comes to those kind of situations. And they’re just really only thinking about themselves.” P58 AA 2060: “Anger at people who don’t take it seriously and are having these-- they’re protesting having to wear masks. I mean, that affects my mood. That makes me both angry and sad… I wish they would regulate more, and enforce it when people aren’t wearing masks. There’s no ticket.”
Impact on Relationships and Social Life	100
Friend and Family Substance Use	93.5	P11-027: “I have talked to multiple of my girlfriends and people from AA that say COVID has also made them re-drink and they had two or three or four years sober. So it’s really affected the AA community for sure.” P50 AA 2051: “Most of the homeless people, they panhandle. They have to get change to get money to drink for a day. So there’s a lot of and most of my friends live in the train station. That’s where they stand and ask for some money or whatever. But people are not working, so they don’t get that money cause people don’t use transportation. So they’re drinking less I would say.”
Negative Impact on Relationships	82.3	P11-027: “I’m not as close with any of my friends as I was before COVID. Because of COVID, I haven’t seen my friends when I was living at my parent’s house because they don’t want me going anywhere to get something and come back here with it. And then, when I lived by myself, my parents didn’t really want me-- they didn’t want me in contact with anyone either coming back to their house too, so. Yeah. It really affected my family and friends. I felt very isolated.” P148 SM 348: “Yeah. I kind of fell out of touch with a lot of my friends, and a lot of them just-- their moods changed too, so it’s kind of hard to talk to them after this started. And. Yeah. I know a lot of my friends ended up going sober, not that I have that many friends. I guess, some of them took it as an opportunity to stop drinking.”
Positive Impact on Relationships	56.5	P13-044: “Like doing all my meetings. I feel really close with that group of ladies that I told you about in the morning meetings. I haven’t even met them and I feel really close with them. So yeah, it’s helped that way” P12-062: “Yes. It’s brought our family closer, and [my wife] and myself, …my closest relationship, my dearest friend, we’ve learned a lot. Lots of times to talk and not to talk, and this has kind of forced us to really take heat of that because we wouldn’t-- we’re long married people. …So I would say it was a good thing. It’s brought us closer, my family, my sisters.”

Note: %= percentage of total transcripts that the theme was applied in least once.