In a recent article, The Washington Post asked, “Are women increasingly at risk of addiction?” Based on the facts they offered in response, the answer may be “yes.” A variety of factors converging has led to a decline in the size of the gender gap between men’s and women’s drinking habits, and women are also more susceptible than men to food addiction and a number of other addictive behaviors. We invite you to read the excerpt from The Washington Post’s article below, and if you live in Northeast Ohio and recognize yourself or someone you love, we hope you’ll reach out.
Last year, American novelist Joyce Maynard faced a harsh realization: Her habit of reaching for a glass of wine whenever she felt stressed had crossed the line into an addiction.
“It kind of crept up on me,” said Maynard, 63, whose novel about a single mother with a wine dependence, “Under the Influence,” came out in paperback in November. “The way I was drinking is the way a lot of women drink and don’t see it as any kind of problem. And for a lot of them, it may not be a problem. It wasn’t the quantity; it was the space wine occupied in my life. I could tell it was occupying an unhealthy one. I was using it increasingly as a comfort and a reliever of stress. I would say, ‘I’m not going to drink,’ and then I would.”
Maynard is part of an increasing cohort of women who have been drinking (or abusing) alcohol more than women did only a few decades ago, and in patterns increasingly similar to men’s. Health officials are watching the situation with concern, and some addiction specialists are making comparisons to other dependencies to which women may be more vulnerable, such as food addictions.
Recent research makes the pattern with women and alcohol clear. Analyzing 68 alcohol-use studies from around the world dating to the mid-1900s, Australian researchers found a remarkably steady “gender convergence.” Their review and analysis, published in October, showed that men born in the early 20th century were more than twice as likely as women to drink and three times as likely to have an alcohol problem — but for those born closer to the end of the century, those ratios were 1.1 and 1.2 to 1, respectively. In other words, the difference between male and female drinking had all but disappeared.