WSJ: Alcohol Abuse is on the Rise Among Women

 Men are bigger boozers than women, but alcohol abuse is rising among women at a faster rate than men. Throughout history, women were often seen as a stabilizing influence on men’s drinking. My late mother told me about a slogan when she was young with women saying, “lips that touch alcohol will never touch mine.” Those days are long gone. Women are drinking more than ever before.

Drinking spiked during Covid. Indeed, even in my conservative state of Texas officials relaxed rigid laws and began to allow deliveries of alcohol. If you owned or worked in a furniture store, you were out of luck. But if you owned a liquor store, you could deliver liquor, beer and wine directly to customers. After drinking spiked during Covid it never really came down. Mommy wine culture is a modern phenomenon. Mothers stressed over kids in school and full-time work bond over wine. A mother who drinks a cheap bottle of Two Buck Chuck from Trader Joes is drinking the equivalent of a six-pack, or about six times their recommended maximum allowance.  A writer in the Wall Street Journal discussed her drinking journey.

I felt alone in my quiet drinking at home, but it turns out I had plenty of company. Various studies and surveys have shown that binge-drinking is on the rise among middle-aged women. Men are more likely than women to overdrink, at 36% to 18.8% in 2023, but the rate of women aged 35 to 50 consuming five or more drinks in a row in a two-week period increased almost twice as fast as that of men between 2012 and 2022, according to nationwide surveys by the University of Michigan.

Men are still more likely to hit the sauce and die from alcohol related health issues, but women are catching up. Moreover, women are more susceptible of alcohol-related health risks than men. Men are advised to drink no more than two drinks a day, whereas women are advised to drink no more than one.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, deaths from excessive alcohol use increased 26.8% between 2016 and 2021 among men, but 34.7% among women.

One reason making alcohol abuse worse is alcohol is both socially acceptable and legal. Flashy advertising makes it seem cool. A drink is nice but diminishing returns can turn the equation negative.

This is a particular problem for women as studies consistently show that they are more vulnerable to alcohol-related health risks than men, including cancer, stroke and liver damage. A study published in the journal Addictive Behaviors in 2021, for example, found that heavy-drinking women were up to two times more likely to have been diagnosed with a “significant medical condition,” including cancer, than heavy-drinking men.

Although alcohol is expensive, the cost is relative. It’s certainly cheaper than most illegal drugs. Many people think it’s a bargain:

Given the ways alcohol is often framed as a cheap and legal source of escapism—something that can be enjoyed while cooking or cleaning or wrangling the kids—many women don’t see their drinking is a problem. Others feel they lack the time or money to manage their stress another way. After all, drinking is cheaper than therapy and easier than yoga or meditation. The relief it offers may be temporary, but it is also immediate.

Alcohol-related hospital visits rose 56% amount women aged 40-64 during Covid.

Alcohol abuse among women is on the rise. Social media easily facilitates bonding over mommy wine culture. Perhaps social media can educate women (and men for that matter) than binge drinking is unhealthy no matter who you are.

Devon Herrick, Ph.D. is a health economist and former hospital accountant. Herrick has researched and written about health reform and health economics for many years. He concentrates on issues such as direct primary care, Internet-based medicine, telemedicine, medical tourism, emerging trends in retail medicine, and pharmaceutical economics. Dr. Herrick also studies health insurance issues, including state health care regulations, federal health reform, Medicare, Medicaid, and the uninsured. Herrick worked for the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) from 1996 until 2017, becoming a senior fellow in 2003.

https://www.goodmanhealthblog.org/wsj-alcohol-abuse-is-on-the-rise-among-women/