Can You Drink Alcohol After Your COVID-19 Vaccine?

The COVID-19 connection

Although clinical trials of the various COVID-19 vaccines didn't look specifically at the impact of alcohol on immunity, researchers think the same principle applies. “We know from other studies that chronic alcohol consumption can lead to weak vaccine responses and reduce protection,” says Ilhem Messaoudi, director of the Center for Virus Research at the University of California, Irvine. “The same most likely applies to the COVID-19 vaccine. Those who drink in excess are likely to generate dampened immune responses and also be at higher risk of having severe COVID-19.”

"When we consume alcohol outside of the moderate zone, we see a significant increase in susceptibility to infection — especially respiratory pathogens — decreased wound-healing capacity and increased risk of cancer,” adds Messaoudi, who has studied the effects of alcohol on the immune response. Chronic heavy alcohol consumption, she says, gives you all of the inflammation with few of its benefits, since it “increases the production of inflammatory factors by immune cells while reducing their ability to fight infection. “

Researchers believe that's especially true among people over 50, since the immune system starts to slow down in its ability to fight infection and respond to vaccination around midlife.

Less is more

"Alcohol may have the ability to blunt immunity when people drink in large quantities, and a lot of that has to do with chronic use of alcohol versus acute use,” says Adalja, echoing the findings of a large review of studies published in Alcohol Research Current Reviews. “It's not as if you have one binge episode and that shatters your immunity. It's more that chronic drinkers do not respond as robustly to vaccines, or they're at risk of certain infections because of the effects that alcohol in high doses has had on their immune system.” In general, experts say, it isn't the occasional one (or two) too many that affects immunity but more the one glass too many nightly or the several too many weekly.

As for drinking the night before or after you get vaccinated? “Mild to moderate alcohol intake is fine before and after the vaccine,” says Adalja, who adds they've seen no clinically significant impact on the vaccine with that type of drinking's immediate effect on the immune response (unlike the effect of chronic drinking).

But if you are pouring a glass around the time of your shot, keep in mind the issue of alcohol and vaccine side effects. If you're hung over the day you get vaccinated, for instance, you could be hard-pressed to separate out the responses caused by the shot from those caused by the night before. “It's important to keep distinct what's caused by the vaccine and what isn't,” Adalja adds. “I don't worry about the response to the vaccine so much as the mistaking the effects of alcohol intoxication for vaccine-related side effects.”