Table 2.

Selected articles for substance abuse

Author/year/country	Journal	Methods		Main results
		Study design	Sample
Balhara1 et al./2020	Psychiatry Clin Neurosci	Cross-seccional	n=73 men	The average duration of alcohol use disorder was 8.66 (SD 6.20) years. Twenty percent (16) related to alcohol consumption during confinement. Ten of them (62.5%, n=16) managed to acquire the same at least once. Five patients (6.6%) reported abstinence from alcohol since the beginning of the block. In the binary logistic regression model, days since the last use of alcohol (OR 0.90 [0.84-0.97], P=0.007) was the only variable independently associated (inverse association) to the attempt to seek alcohol during the blocking period
Chodkiewicz, et al./2020/Poland	Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health	A longitudinal study	n=443 (78.6% women and 21.4% men)	Alcohol was the most commonly used psychoactive substance (73%) identified. More than 30% changed their drinking habits because of the pandemic, with 16% actually drinking less, whilst 14% did so more. The former group was significantly younger than the latter. Amongst the stress-related coping strategies, it was found that current alcohol drinkers were significantly less able to find anything positive about the pandemic situation (positive reframing) and were mentally less able to cope. Those drinking more now were found to have been drinking more intensively before the pandemic started
Yan Sun, et al./2020/Beijing, China	The American Journal on Addictions	Cross-sectional (survey/self-report questtionaire)	n=6416 (47% males and 53% females)	The overall rate of alcohol drinking and smoking among the 6416 participants increased only marginally during the COVID-19 pandemic from 31.3% (n=2006) to 32.7% (n=2098) for drinking and from 12.8% (n=822) to 13.6% (n=873) for smoking. However, addictive behaviors increased substantially in two areas: (a) 18.7% of 331 ex-drinkers and 25.3% of 190 ex-smokers had relapsed; (b) 32.1% of 137 regular drinkers and 19.7% of 412 regular smokers reported an increased amount of alcohol drinking or cigarette smoking

SD – Standard deviation; CI – Confidence interval