PERSONAL HEALTH : Study Tracks Women Who Drink Too Much

What drives women to drink?

Not necessarily divorce or the empty-nest syndrome--two life changes traditionally linked with problem drinking--according to recent findings in the American Journal of Public Health.

To the researchers’ surprise, divorce or the departure of grown children from home was associated with lower use of alcohol by problem drinkers, says Sharon C. Wilsnack, a professor of neuroscience at the University of North Dakota School of Medicine and lead author of the study.

The researchers can’t explain all their findings, but they speculate that divorce may relieve stress and the need to use alcohol as an escape.

The five-year study--believed by researchers to be the first large-scale investigation of female problem drinkers--looked at 300 U.S. women, half of them problem drinkers.

According to the study, women who were most likely to develop a drinking problem were younger (21-34), used other drugs or cohabited.

Drinking problems were most likely to persist in women who were recently depressed, worked part time, never married or had sexual problems.

Women with sexual problems, Wilsnack says, may have a tendency to use alcohol to self-medicate their difficulties, erroneously believing that drinking facilitates sexual pleasure.

For purposes of the study, problem drinkers were defined as women who drink one or more ounces of alcohol a day and had drinking-related problems or symptoms in the last year.

A Santa Monica alcoholism counselor calls the study interesting but says it does not sufficiently take into account genetic predisposition to alcoholism.

“Studies suggest there is a huge genetic component. And this study treats it as a behavioral problem,” says James Fulton, director of the Chemical Dependency Center at St. John’s Hospital and Health Center, Santa Monica.

Wilsnack acknowledges that children of alcoholics may have higher risks of developing alcoholism. But she says other risk factors seem to play a role as well, as her study indicates.

“The more we know about risk factors, the better informed we are about our own individual risks,” she says. “The more accurate information we have, the better decisions women can make about alcohol use.”