“… about alcohol from friends and acquaintances. Was two bottles of wine a night a bit over the top? How much was too much?… ‘No one is talking about glasses of wine anymore,’ said Ms. Duke, who works for a dog grooming app and lives in Manhattan with her two teenage sons. ‘People are measuring by the bottle,’ she continued. ‘That scares me. I know too many women who went from one or two glasses to two bottles of wine to vodka in your coffee cup.’…

‘Being inside all these months was extremely confining,’ said [Natalie Silverstein, a marketing manager in media who lives in the East Village]. ‘I needed something to relax. I looked forward to drinking because it broke the barrier.’ For her, a glass of wine signaled the end of the day. Anxious, tired and stressed, it helped her sleep. It also helped her socialize and connect. ‘In New York, drinking was an activity. In isolation it helped us gather,’ she said.

‘My team would do Zoom happy hours, and everyone had wine or a cocktail. That became habitual. It felt like drinking was the one thing holding us up.'”