[aerojoe23]

What about the whole correlation does not equal causation thing?

Given: They're saying they drink to deal with their symptoms. The symptoms get worse when they drink.

The study concludes: Drinking makes it worse.

But the other option is: Their symptoms would have been even worse without the drinking.

I'm not saying hypothesis is correct, just that the article didn't mention the study addressing it. Unless I missed it.

[ksaj]

It could be that drinking delays eventually handling the problem. Many problems grow when ignored, which is to say that delay is the actual problem. In this case, it is perhaps encouraged and even exacerbated by chronic drunkenness, versus something else like ADHD or cognitive decline.

Debt is a good example of that, because of interest and potential fines that increase the longer payments get delayed.