The alcohol looks the same, smells the same, and goes down the same for alcoholic women and men.  However, alcohol does things differently inside women’s and men’s bodies.   And depression is said to be the “common cold” of mental illnesses - not as mild as a cold, but certainly common.  It’s quite likely that a significant number of alcoholic women also have depression.  When a woman gets a one-two punch like this, it can feel impossible to ever stand up straight again.  The answer is specialized alcohol rehab for women.  This is nothing to try handling on your own. 

Alcohol and Depression Bad Duo For Women

Alcohol and Women

When you drink alcohol, it gives you a relaxing effect.  You might feel slowed down, or like your reflexes are off, and that you don’t care so much about problems.  This effect happens because alcohol is a depressant drug - it depresses and dulls the entire nervous system, including the brain. 

A woman with depression already has a slowed and dulled nervous system.  They may drink to escape worrisome thoughts or emotional pain, but they are actually making their entire situation worse over time.   Women usually begin an addiction through an emotional pathway, such as feelings of depression or anxiety.  These feelings could range anywhere from mild anxiety to a prolonged clinical depression.  Whether a woman turns to an addiction depends on many factors.

When a woman drinks alcohol to escape emotional pain, she is likely to develop a tolerance and drink even more to get the same strong effect they started with.  Eventually, this brings on more emptiness and disconnection with the world.  This often deepens the woman’s emotional pain, especially if they had a diagnosable level of depression to start with.  

Women at Risk for Depression

It may seem cliche, but women are generally more driven by emotion for good reason.  Their brains are set up with many more connections in the emotional centers.  This doesn’t mean that women are “weak” or unable to use logic.  It simply means that emotions generally take a larger importance in daily decisions and communication for women. 

This emotional atunement has its advantages - greater ability to pick up on subtle emotional clues, consideration for others’ feelings, good sense about status of relationships.  However, it can also make women more open to depression.  Emotions are amplified during depression, and more connections means this can overload a woman’s senses more easily. 

Women Take Stronger Effects and More Damage From Alcohol

The double-whammy part of this is that alcohol is quite unfair to women.  It takes less alcohol to get a woman intoxicated, and the same amount will do more damage in a woman’s body than in a man’s.  Because of relative smaller size, she has a smaller amount of the enzyme that breaks down alcohol in the body.  Birth control medication can affect the rate that alcohol is processed and eliminated from the body.  As compared wtih men, women really get the short stick with risk for alcoholism.  

Give Yourself a Chance at Alcohol Rehab For Women

You may be seeing yourself in this article - depressed, drinking to escape, and now drowing in a sea of despair with no lifeboat.  Give yourself a chance by going to alcohol rehab for women.

The overuse and misuse of alcohol is rampant today in the United States.  People of all ages are drinking in risky ways, leading to family problems, injuries, addictions, and even death.  Certainly, not every person who drinks alcohol abuses it or develops alcoholism.  However, alcohol has the potential to do serious damage to both women and men, girls and boys.

Alcoholism or Alcohol Abuse

You can tell alcohol abuse from alcoholism in a few clear ways.  Alcohol abuse is harmful but generally not life devastating, or can be more limited to events rather than established destructive patterns.  This can include being irresponsible with commitments, putting oneself or others at risk (such as driving while intoxicated), and legal problems.

Alcoholism involves drug seeking behavior (rearranging activities and money in order to constantly get an alcohol supply), and preoccupation with drinking or drinking activities, harmful changes to many areas of a person’s life, an ever increasing need for more alcohol to feel drunk or “wasted”, and a very high tolerance to the effects of alcohol.

For the moment, I’ll use the term “women” to include the millions of girls who begin drinking in their childhood or teen years.  It is known that alcohol affects women differently than men.  Unfortunately, alcohol does damage to women more easily and with smaller amounts than for men.  Women are also more at risk for health problems resulting from heavy drinking such as high blood pressure, cirrhosis of the liver, poor nutrition, and a much higher risk for breast cancer. (more…)