Alcohol use has declined for the first time since Covid-19, with Gen Zers and millennials leading the charge

Nearly seven years after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, Dr. Brian P. Lee has seen signs that rates of alcohol use had finally begun to drop.

Lee, a hepatologist and liver transplant specialist with Keck Medicine of USC in Los Angeles, hopes the data is true of the general population.

The pandemic brought on a surge of alcohol consumption in 2020 that had not declined two years later. During that time, Lee watched his waiting rooms fill up with people who had liver-related diseases—even young people in their 20s needing liver transplants from alcohol use. That's something he hadn't seen before the pandemic.