WOMAN AND ALCOHOL

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Alcohol does not help you find the answer, but it does help you forget the question.

It is believed that female alcoholism is incurable. At the same time, women suffer from alcohol dependence much less often than men. At least it was not so long ago. Now, we must admit the fact that women in megacities began to drink more, and the number of women alcoholics, according to the All-Russian Center for the Study of Public Opinion (VTsIOM), is slowly but surely catching up with the number of men alcoholics. The average age of alcohol addicts has also dropped from 40-45 to 23-27.

Many are already familiar with the typical picture: a "tyapnitsa" sets in, and many young women, drinking in bars and restaurants with their friends, return home very drunk, and in the morning they suffer from a real hangover. However, the "fun" continues the next evening - and this happens almost every week. Should this be considered the beginning of alcoholism? And what happened to women in terms of the use (or abuse) of alcoholic beverages?

I am a horse, I am a bull, I am a woman and a man.

The socio-historical situation is changing - and sex-role behavior is changing - a set of stereotyped functions expected from a male or female individual. Women are emancipated, financially independent, work hard and often support not only themselves but also the whole family. Having learned to behave in many ways like a man, they begin to relax in the same style - extreme sports, parties, gambling, striptease, and, of course, alcohol. Initiative groups of socially active and responsible citizens have already appeared in Britain, who come to pubs on Fridays with bags, in which they bring disposable slippers - so that the ladies who have drunk after a hard week of work can change their office shoes for them when they leave the pub and not break their legs. unable to resist on stilettos while intoxicated.

Women are more socially loyal than men, so there are fewer drug addicts among them, and the use of alcohol is allowed in our culture and even encouraged. Therefore, the choice of means for relaxation is obvious. Most girls believe that if they drink expensive alcohol or cocktails in good restaurants, then alcohol problems have nothing to do with them. However, many resort to such a means of "stress relieving" more and more often …

How does alcohol "work"? The most common answers are as follows:

-Quickly raises self-esteem - and now you are already a "goddess";

- Liberates a person ("dissolves" some moral norms and removes fears);

-Allows you to avoid an unwanted emotional state (relieve anxiety, concern, muscle tension);

-Causes the desired experiences (fun and joy, optimism, great love for humanity, and sometimes - for the first counter-transverse);

-Allows you to respond to the accumulated emotions and realize desires - everyone is familiar with "drunken tears", "drunken sex", declarations of love, calls from "ex" and mad scandals, reaching fights. “And after the fifth glass, I realized that he had been waiting for my call for a long time” - a situation familiar to many.

That is, as you can see, alcohol provides a kind of temporary "crutch" for solving psychological problems and problems, and if a person has his own resources to achieve relatively at least one of the above goals that are important for the psyche, then the risk of addiction to alcohol increases sharply … In addition, it must be taken into account that the female psyche is very different from the male one - the emotional system of a woman is more complex (due to the need to establish a multifaceted psychological connection with a child), women are more susceptible to the influence of feelings and mood changes, and they have more tasks for emotional self-regulation. …And while some ladies regularly struggle with overeating as a means of relieving stress, others believe that a couple of bottles of wine with a girlfriend is a completely innocent temptation. And as for self-esteem, with modern requirements for ladies' duties, look gorgeous, keep up with work, be an exemplary wife and run a house, not forgetting that the ideal mother is the main female destiny, rarely what woman can boast of a consistently good self-attitude. And alcohol as an option “to feel like a star” and to increase at least temporarily self-confidence is mentioned by every third client at a psychologist's appointment. What kind of relationship with alcohol should cause concern?

Stages of alcoholism formation

“My husband went to work in Europe, and I was left alone with my children in Moscow,” says Veronika, 36 years old. - He comes often, earns good money, and we do not need anything. But I suspect that there is someone there … I could not get used to living like a “straw widow” for a long time, and now I even like this freedom. Here, however, I love to kiss a glass of dry, almost every day I will miss a couple - without this, sometimes I can't sleep. Doctor, tell me, am I not an alcoholic yet? she laughs coquettishly.

What is the acceptable daily intake of alcohol?

A safe dose of alcohol for a woman's body is 2 units per day. For 1 unit, 125 ml of wine with a strength of 9% or 0.5 liters of light beer is taken. Therefore, if you drink two glasses of 12% ABV, then this is equal to about three units. A bottle of beer, even a low-alcohol one (containing about 5% alcohol), affects the body in the same way as 60 ml of vodka. A strong beer, such as Baltika No. 9, is equivalent to 100 ml of vodka.

It is worth noting that the modern market, following the appearance of “female” cars and phones, offers “female” alcohol in beautiful packaging and elegant glasses with low-calorie snacks and all the attributes of the “dolce vita” style so attractive at all times. And what is dolce vita without good alcohol?

Due to the peculiarities of the structure of the female body and hormonal regulation, female alcoholism develops faster than male alcoholism - in about 5 years, while the average man will "hold out" 7-10. In the second and third stages, a woman alcoholic no longer differs much from a man with the same diagnosis: the main meaning of life is now drinking, alcohol is consumed daily in high doses or in the form of binges, problems at work begin or is absent, self-criticism, intelligence decreases, but there is an abstinence syndrome and the need to constantly get drunk in the second stage and a complete loss of human appearance in the third - the details are well known to most. However, the first stage is often overlooked - when it is not too late to "kill in the bud" a problem with dire consequences. So, the first stage, or "everyday drunkenness" - what should alert you?

-A constant desire to drink, at least a little; anticipation of an upcoming drink;

-Daily consumption of alcohol in any dose;

-The desire to "wash down" any stress, with any problems and stresses, the first thought: "Or maybe a little drink?"

-Problems with edema, overweight, severe intoxication of the body and poor health after drinking alcohol - and all this does not induce a woman to stop regularly drinking in shock doses;

-Loss of control over the amount of alcohol consumed (which in itself can lead to severe alcohol poisoning up to a coma and death);

-Regular blackouts, inappropriate actions (scandals, fights, sex with the first comer);

-Self-destruction in a state of intoxication: a woman can drive in a deranged state, lose or donate a large amount of money or be robbed, invite people she met a few hours ago in a bar, or even be unable to get home.

If alcoholism is "caught" at the time of its formation, then intensive psychotherapy can help prevent its development by working on the problems described above, but if the stage is "advanced" further, then long-term treatment by a whole team of specialists will be required, since formed alcoholism is a disease bio-psycho-socio-spiritual and is healed at all four levels. The psychiatrist works on physical addiction, social workers, psychologists and the Alcoholics Anonymous community on social adjustment and psychological challenges. A person also has to resolve the issue on a spiritual level about a new meaning of life in the process of recovery. And it never ends, because living in sobriety will always become the main task for maintaining a satisfactory quality of life, and just survival. Treatment and the structure of addiction is a vast topic and will be covered in our future articles.