More Women Hitting the Bottle in Spite of Dangers
By Hugh C. McBride
Despite continued high-profile anti-alcohol awareness efforts, and a number of studies that have documented the particular dangers that excessive drinking poses to the female body, statistics indicate that more women are drinking (and more are drinking heavily) than ever before.
The New Face of Alcohol Abuse?
“Usually, when you think of an alcoholic, you think of a man's face. But women now represent nearly a third of those who meet the criteria for alcohol abuse,” clinical psychologist Stephanie Gamble, PhD, told WebMD Health News writer Daniel J. DeNoon for a May 6, 2008 article on the increasing prevalence of heavy drinking among women.
DeNoon’s article reported findings from a study that was conducted by Richard A. Grucza, PhD, and colleagues at Washington University School of Medicine. Grucza’s team analyzed data collected on 86,000 men and women during two U.S. Census Bureau studies (one in 1991-1992, the other a decade later).
Though rates of alcohol use and alcoholism remained relatively constant among male subjects, the researchers found that women in most demographic groups were drinking considerably more often at the turn of the century than they had been 10 years earlier. DeNoon reported:
- Except in the very youngest age group, women reported significantly more alcohol use than they did a decade ago.
- Among white and Hispanic women born after 1953, alcoholism was up as much as 50 percent.
- No significant increase was seen among African-American women.
Learning to Overindulge
In a Dec. 7, 2008 New York magazine article, writer Alex Morris opines that increased levels of alcohol abuse and alcoholism among women may be at least partly due to a surprising cause: better access to education.
One-third of all women in the U.S. have their first alcoholic sip before they enter high school. Almost half of high-school girls drink, and more than a quarter binge drink. Then throw in college. For many women, heavy drinking might be only a blip on the radar, a youthful folly, if it weren’t for higher education. The transition from high school to college marks the greatest increase in substance abuse among women, and the more educated a woman is, the more likely she will be to drink throughout her life.
“College campuses are the place where drinking norms are set for educated individuals,” Jon Morgenstern, the vice president at the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, told Morris. “The rate of drinking is astronomical. College is really a training ground for becoming an alcoholic.”
Female students, Morris notes, now account for more than half (55 percent) of collegians whose behavior fits the clinical description of alcohol abuse.
More Drinking, Greater Damage
As is unfortunately to be expected of a demographic group that undergoes a significant increase in rates of heavy drinking, women are also experiencing a marked rise in alcohol-related deaths, diseases, and other forms of personal and social devastation:
- In the United Kingdom, the number of women aged 35 to 54 who died as a result of alcohol-related damage more than doubled in a 15-year period, increasing from 7.2 per hundred thousand in 1991, to 14.8 per hundred thousand in 2006. (Dennis Campbell, The Observer, Feb. 24, 2008)
- Women who consume more than two alcoholic drinks a day have a higher risk of developing atrial fibrillation, a type of heart rhythm disturbance that can increase their chances of suffering a stroke. (Will Dunham, ABC News, Dec. 2, 2008)
- Low to moderate alcohol consumption among women has been linked to a statistically significant increase in the odds of developing a number of types of cancer, and may account for nearly 13 percent of cases of women who develop cancers of the breast, liver, rectum, and upper aero-digestive tract. (ScienceDaily, Feb. 26, 2009)
- The suicide rate among alcohol-dependent women is 17 times higher than it is among women who do not have a problem with alcohol. (Daniel J. DeNoon, WebMD Health News, May 6, 2008)
In many cases, the relative rapidity with which women develop a dependence upon alcohol, and the severity with which the drug impacts their bodies, results in higher addiction rates and more significant damage to female drinkers than occurs in men who drink just as much or just as often.
“Young women can [experience] particularly detrimental health effects because they are more sensitive to some effects of alcohol,” Julia Chester, an assistant professor of psychological science at Purdue University, said in a Feb. 11, 2009 article in The Exponent, the school’s newspaper. “It also looks like women are more easily addicted to alcohol under certain conditions.”
Escaping the Downward Spiral
If there’s anything resembling good news when it comes to problem drinking among women, it’s that a number of residential rehabilitation and recovery programs have designed gender-specific tracks for women who are struggling with alcohol abuse and dependence.
By developing treatment techniques that address the unique needs of women who have been abusing alcohol, these programs are able to provide a high level of effective, personalized services to women who are at significant risk, and who have previously been unable to escape the devastation of alcohol dependence and abuse.
For example, The Rose of Newport Beach, a southern California program that caters exclusively to recovering women, provides a comprehensive residential rehabilitation treatment program that treats each client’s addiction while also addressing other issues such as trauma, grief and loss, depression, sex/love addiction, low self-esteem, co-dependency, and co-occurring disorders.
For more information about the effects of alcohol abuse on women, and about gender-specific programs that can help women overcome alcoholism and other addictions, consult with your primary care physician, contact a local recovery support organization, or educate yourself further at your local library or online.
