HITTING THE GLASS…FLOOR –

May 14, 2021 – When it comes to addiction, gender matters. Women often get addicted for different reasons than men, they go into treatment for different reasons, and they get and stay sober for different reasons.

The good news about all that is that the addiction treatment women receive is evolving to account for those differences, and women are the better for it.  Research and anecdotal evidence have identified at least three paths to addiction that may be more prevalent among women than men. The first and most troubling involves past or ongoing trauma.

In the treatment center where I work, we find that around 75 percent of our women patients have had at least one traumatic event in the past that may be contributing to their addiction. Among men, both at our center and nationally, the incidence of trauma is also high, but it looks to be more like 50 percent.

A second path women often take to addiction more often than men is by way of their mental health-related medical care. The path often goes like this: Women are more likely than men to see their doctors for anxiety, panic attacks, depression, and the like. When they do, they are often prescribed medication for those conditions—some of which can lead to addiction. When that occurs, many women may then gravitate to opioids, which deepens their addiction.  A third path to addiction that women tend toward: They may be more likely to follow their male partners, rather than the other way around, toward harder and more addictive drugs. Unfortunately, women also tend to have a lower tolerance than men to these drugs. This means they often get addicted more quickly, and end up in treatment.

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