The Last Show with David Cooper
Yonah Budd: Year-End Addition And Mental Health Report - January 13, 2026
14 Jan 2026
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Prepare to have your mind blown as we delve into the complexities of relationships, explore the cutting edge of science, and celebrate the bizarre and beautiful absurdity of the world around us. This is The Last Show with David Cooper.
The Center for Addiction and Mental Health in Canada has released a report with some interesting troubling results pertaining to pandemic and post-pandemic drinking levels, mental health, addiction. We are here with Yonah Budd, a mental health and addiction specialist for Chorus Entertainment, who... You can find it at yonabud.com. Yonah, welcome to the show.
Hey, great to be here, David.
So I think for me, one of the most interesting results, and I think for you, there's some other interesting results, is during the pandemic, I feel like all these home delivery apps, like all the restaurant apps, Uber Eats, all of it. I don't know if it was like this in Toronto, but where I was, they completely unrestricted
at-home booze delivery this was something that was like very difficult to get uh all of a sudden restaurants could deliver cocktails with a little saran wrap on top of the plastic thing and we were all drinking at home all the rage was ordering at-home drinking cocktail kits everyone got into mixology i myself had just sobered up before the pandemic so i thought it was kind of lame but at-home drinking was something that really surged during the pandemic
which I guess is fine. We were stuck at home, but it looks like drinking levels, you know, six, five years later, they haven't really gone down the way you'd expect.
Yeah, well, I think we have to be cognizant of the fact that a lot of people were doing a lot of drinking pre-pandemic. And to be honest, a lot of the folks that were drinking more at home, some of, not all of, were those folks that on their way home would stop at their local, have a couple of beers, maybe a cocktail, a wing or two, some pretzels, and come home.
So we didn't really see the at-home drinking trend But one might argue that, you know, if John Doe was drinking more at home during the pandemic, I might suggest that John Doe may be drinking outside of the home pre-pandemic, not too distant from his levels of today, perhaps.
I'm not saying there weren't daily problem drinkers. I don't know what we're blaming John Doe, but let's use John Doe as the example. I'm saying the daily at home drinking increased during the pandemic and those levels haven't dropped according to this report. Like if we look at 2019 levels and look at levels today, it's gone up by about 40%.
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Chapter 2: What alarming trends does the 2025 mental health report reveal?
And when they perhaps wouldn't drink because they were at home and had to show up at the office or whatever reasons, a lot of people became much more anxious and felt a lot less good about themselves. during that period of the pandemic, especially during lockdown, a lot of uncertainty. So a lot of people turned to alcohol, drugs, eating, gambling, all kinds of different at-risk behaviors.
And I think a lot of people got locked in it. And I don't think we're doing a very good job. And I predicted it. If you go back to radio shows I did five, six years ago, I predicted that the true pandemic is going to come for a decade or two after the virus-related pandemic is over. And that's going to be the mental health pandemic with kids and with adults. And we're seeing that now.
So the results of how many kids don't like themselves today versus then, it's alarming. Same as the kind of statistics we're looking at here. Sure.
Sure. I think my focus on drinking is perhaps clouded by my own sobriety journey. But things like people reporting serious psychological distress, that's gone up by like two times. People who've had suicidal ideation on the regular, that's gone up by like, I don't know, 75%. It's kind of grim, the report.
The only positive thing, the only downtick is that drinking alcohol in the last year, people who report that has gone down. And I think that might have to do something with Gen Z not loving drinking as much as older people. It's just like a generation that doesn't report drinking as much.
But beyond that, every kind of negative societal like mental health addiction kind of thing has gone up by a certain percentage over the last six years.
Yeah. And it's a great point. And the sad reality is we haven't seen the tip of that iceberg.
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Chapter 3: How did pandemic drinking habits change over time?
Right. It's still going to it's still coming through because, you know, the people are you know, we were not set up and we are not set up, certainly in North America, to properly manage
people's mental health arising from, you know, simple things like tariff and taxes and high cost of living to, you know, uncertainty with unemployment to, you know, whether the whole world's going to blow up right now. And, you know, everyone has their own reasons for feeling anxious. There's also a lot of people using healthier outlets than alcohol, drugs, and such.
But for most of us, being able to find a substance, like you say, you're talking about free delivery or delivery right to your home with a piece of saran on the top of it. I mean, I have a lot of patients that are triggered just to go fill up gas here in Canada.
Just to fill up gas here in Ontario, because pretty much every gas station or C-store has a place that serves, you know, has a counter full of beer and alcohol. So, you know, it's more accessible and it's more available. And I think the whole at-home scenario is also, you know, tied together with we're isolating more. We've learned how to isolate during the pandemic.
So all of those, frankly, unhealthy behaviors we've learned or resulted as being tested through the pandemic, all of those unhealthy behaviors are now, for some, are being magnified and they're growing. And we haven't seen the surge of the younger people that are now going to start to behave like those early 20s, early 30s type people, right? Those generational switches. We haven't seen it.
It hasn't come up yet. Um, you know, we're going to be looking at these, you know, hopefully you and I together, we'll be looking at these studies a decade from now going, Holy smokes, 300%, you know, like it's ridiculous. Uh, that wouldn't surprise me.
When I was 33 pre pandemic, if the weekend was going to roll around and it was Friday night or Saturday night, I would get this like anxiety all week. If my calendar wasn't full and I didn't have something fun to do that would involve going out, whether it was a comedy club, I was doing standup at the time. whether it was a bar, whatever it was.
And it was just this profound discomfort of the potential of isolating at home. Now, I lived alone then. Now I live with a woman. But I'm approaching 40 this year. And this idea like, oh, if the weekend's free, if Saturday night's free, that's a great blessing. I'm happy to just be on my computer and be at home and watch TV and hang out with my girlfriend or cat.
Or if she goes out, hang out with the cat. The cat doesn't go out. Uh, is that like a, just a life change or is this something that I learned during the pandemic where I was sort of like, okay, it's fine to social isolate, uh, socially isolated. I'm okay with it. I've learned that skill.
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