Women and Alcohol Alcohol can be a health issue for women just like smoking and drugs. It can be a serious disease and an addiction. Alcohol is a disease that affects numerous numbers of people from all over the world from different ages. It has the power to destroy lives break up families and to kill many victims of it as well. It is the third leading cause of preventable death in the United States behind tobacco and it kills about 100, 000 deaths a year. The effects of alcohol are stronger in women than in men and women’s bodies react differently to alcohol than men’s bodies. Alcohol has many risk factors, consequences against women, although there are many treatment centers that are available that can help women who are alcoholics. There has been an increase in the number of women who drink alcohol as well as in the amount of alcohol they consume since the past years. There has been a rise in heavy drinking particularly among young women has been reported from a number of countries. “It is estimated that of the 15.1 million alcohol-abusing or alcohol-dependent individuals in the United States, approximately 4.6 million (nearly one-third) are women.” (Alcohol Alert).Not just older women drink but also young girls start drinking at a young age before they are legally allowed to. For example, younger women report higher rates of drinking-related problems than do older women. The most common age for drinking with women is between the ages of 26 and 34 and for those women who are divorced or separated. There are many young girls who attend parties and binge drink. They drink more than five drinks to try to get drunk in a short period of time, because they feel that is the only way they will feel confident and have fun. There are many women who are so irresponsible and are addicted to alcohol and others become addicted because of personal problems in their lives. There are also women who drink while they are pregnant and that is very irresponsible and can have serious harmful consequences on the unborn child. No amount of alcohol consumption is safe during pregnancy. The child can be born with fetal alcohol syndrome which is a set of birth defects that includes growth and mental impairment mentioned in Alcohol a Women’s Health Issue. Women start abusing alcohol when they feel really stressed, sad, lonely, or when going through a divorce. Also Women whose husbands have alcohol problems are more likely to drink themselves and women who have been sexually abused are more likely to drink to excess.
There are many risk factors when consuming too much alcohol that woman may not be aware of. Also women metabolize alcohol differently than men. Research shows that, “women start to have alcohol-related problems at lower drinking levels than men do. One reason is that, on average, women weigh less than men. In addition, alcohol disperses in body water, and pound for pound, women have less water in their bodies than men do. So after a man and woman of the same weight drink the same amount of alcohol, the woman’s blood alcohol concentration will tend to be higher, putting her at greater risk for harm.”(Women and alcohol). That said women get drunk much faster than men do because women and men have different bodies which each metabolize alcohol differently. Hormone levels in women may also make them more at risk to alcohol’s effects. Women may be at risk of alcohol problems if they have been sexually abused in their childhood, or started drinking before age 15. “Results of a large nationwide survey show that more than 40 percent of persons who initiated drinking before age 15 were diagnosed as alcohol dependent at some point in their lives.” (Alcohol Alert) Alcohol abuse and alcoholism are serious for