Frank* was confronted with boredom and a lack of purpose when he finally retired from his job at a law firm in Melbourne.
“I found that you’ve got no responsibilities during the course of the day, so you have your lunch and open a bottle,” he told SBS News.
“I found I was drinking more and more, and it wasn’t just wine it was spirits, a fair bit of whiskey and I got to the stage where I was having black outs.
"I would drink in the night and wake up and couldn’t remember what was on the television, or what I’d been told,” he said.
For around three years he said the heavy drinking continued before he eventually sought help.
The 72-year-old said he initially turned to his local GP, who wasn’t particularly helpful, before eventually getting in touch with an age-specific program for drug and alcohol support on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsular.
“I look well, regularly exercise, no one picks this up. For a long time I had been alcohol dependent but highly functioning,” he said.
After getting help from a counsellor and a psychiatrist Frank got his drinking under control, but he is now concerned many other older Australians are not getting the help they need, particularly as the stress of the coronavirus pandemic takes its toll.
Sam Biondo from the Victorian Alcohol and Drug Association says research has shown mature Australians are 10 times more likely than people in their 20s to drink daily - and are more likely to suffer serious harm as a result.
Mr Biondo said he fears it is getting worse due to the coronavirus lockdown in the state.
“We are expecting there to be a blow out in demand during corona, it will be particularly impactful on older people because of their vulnerabilities, because of their associated pharmaceutical use and because they don’t access services in the same way that young people do,” he told SBS News.
The association is calling on the Victorian state government to urgently invest in dedicated drug and alcohol outreach and treatment services across the state for older Victorians, saying they are often overlooked in the conversation about problem drinking.
“It is a bit of a blind spot, it is generally not a target group that is focused on,” Mr Biondo said.
Victoria currently only has one dedicated mature aged drug and alcohol treatment program.
Mr Biondo said the impact of the ongoing lockdown in the state, with increased isolation and associated drinking, meant the need for the services were as pressing as ever.
A recent survey by the Alcohol and Drug Foundation found that, nationwide, one in eight Australians have been drinking every day since the pandemic began.
One in 10 people reported consuming more than 10 standard drinks per week, increasing the risk of alcohol-related injury and diseases like cancer, the survey found.
Professor Terry Bowles, a habit formation expert from the University of Melbourne, said many people have picked up new habits since the pandemic began.
"Routine behaviours, which can have a profound impact on our lives, do not take a long time to form," Professor Bowles said at the time.
"So, as restrictions are gradually lifted across Australia and we emerge from months of isolation, we have passed the threshold of time required to establish new habits."
Mental health experts have also raised the alarm about the stressful impact of communities in Melbourne living under an extended lockdown.
Professor Ian Hickie from the University of Sydney's Brain and Mind Centre said that lockdown was unlikely to get any easier the second time around.
"I haven't heard anyone say it's going to be easier," he told SBS News recently.
"Everyone was prepared at the start, because we didn't want to be like the US or the UK. But now to start all over again, with this hard lockdown in Melbourne, people are more aware of the economic impact and how other things will be disrupted."
*Name changed for privacy reasons.
