Sex Differences in Substance Use National Institute on Drug Abuse NIDA

Cross-sectional indirect effects of stress on binge drinking and negative consequences of drinking through drinking motives. As predicted, women reported greater subjective sadness and anxiety following the stress induction than men. Our measure of behavioral/bodily arousal largely tapped anxiety (e.g., restlessness) or sadness (e.g., crying) behaviors and bodily sensations and thus may best be considered a behavioral or bodily indicator of anxiety/sadness.

Very few existing studies manipulating stress as a causal mechanism have studied this large of a group of women in a social drinking context prior to our study,” Patock-Peckham says. This week, her team published a study in the journal Psychology of Addictive Behaviors specifically looking at differences in who men and women use alcohol when they are under stress. Her findings suggest a key difference in how men and women consume alcohol — at least under certain conditions. Participants completed an imagery script development session and were then admitted to a hospital research unit for a 3-night inpatient stay for participation in the 3 laboratory sessions. Given the importance of imagery ability for imagining the stress, alcohol cue, and neutral scenes, all subjects (both men and women) were given the Questionnaire of Mental Imagery (QMI; Sheehan, 1967) before enrolling in the study. Participants were included only if they scored an average of 3 or lower on the QMI across scenes, indicating that they saw the images at least “moderately clearly and vividly”.

Women’s strengths often lie in their emotional intelligence, ability to multitask, and willingness to seek help. Men may benefit from their tendency to compartmentalize problems and their generally higher levels of self-confidence in stressful situations. Men, on the other hand, may experience stress related to societal expectations of being the primary provider or embodying traditional masculine traits such as strength and emotional stoicism. These expectations can create barriers to seeking help or expressing vulnerability when faced with stress.

Reactivity to social influences and stressors.

• When exploring the potential bidirectional effects of alcohol misuse longitudinally from adolescence to early adulthood, differences again emerged between men and women.
• Men and women were comparable to one another in their levels of exposure to financial or legal problems and to health problems.
• First, the community sample was composed of mostly white, Non-Hispanic young adults in a rural environment, so replication with more diverse samples is needed to determine if the findings generalize to other populations.
• We recently launched our in-app chatbot, Melody, powered by the world’s most powerful AI technology.
• The Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D; Radloff, 1977) was used to evaluate depressive symptoms.

One might dismiss the spike as attributable to the stresses of the pandemic, except that women’s high-risk drinking was increasing rapidly before then, too. Men born in the early 1900s were three times as likely as women to drink in problematic ways; today, women are almost as likely as men to do so. While alcohol increases the risk of developing mental health conditions for men and women, the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) notes that women are more susceptible to mental health conditions such as anxiety and depression, due to both biological and psychosocial factors. A study on stress-related alcohol use also found that women are more likely to drink in times of stress than men. With these factors added up, alcohol can cause greater mental health impacts in women vs men.

Health Implications of Gender-Specific Stress Responses

Women tend to report higher levels of stress, engage in more emotion-focused coping, and are more likely to seek social support. Men, influenced by societal expectations, often internalize stress, adopt problem-focused coping strategies, and may be less likely to seek help. Support systems play a crucial role in stress management, and there are notable gender differences in how these systems are utilized. Women tend to have more extensive and diverse social support networks, which they actively engage during times of stress. Men, however, often have smaller support networks and may be less likely to seek emotional support from friends or family, relying more on their partners for emotional needs.

One of the most notable biological factors is the difference in alcohol metabolism between men and women. Women generally have a higher percentage of body fat and lower percentage of body water compared to men. This means that alcohol is less diluted in a woman’s body, leading to higher blood alcohol concentrations even when consuming the same amount as a man of similar weight. Make the most of your health, relationships, fitness and nutrition with our Live Well newsletter. They’re ‘grey area’ drinkers, meaning they drink too much but aren’t alcohol-dependent,” says Victoria Vanstone, the Sober Awkward podcaster who started Cuppa, an online community for anyone keen to quit alcohol.

Longitudinal Effects of Adolescent Drunkenness

The findings illustrate the conceptual and methodological importance of distinguishing between individuals’ exposure to, and their reactivity to, social influences and stressors. stress drinking has a gender divide This study highlights the broad utility of using life history of drinking information to obtain insights into factors that may help explain differences in men’s and women’s paths to drinking problems. It may guide future prospective research designed to clarify causal pathways to problem drinking. For example, the findings suggest that differential reactivity to stressors may help explain the development and stabilization of drinking problems in adulthood. In sum, exposure to social influences to drink and to stressors provides an opportunity for elicitation of drinking reactivity.

Participants

• The holiday season is in full swing, and for many, getting into the holiday spirit means consuming plenty of spirits.
• Within this framework, men would be expected to show greater drinking reactivity in response to a variety of stressors.
• With a rise in female drinking trends and alcohol-related harms, we’re urged to take a closer look at how alcohol affects men and women differently.
• For men, greater occupational stress was significantly related to stronger endorsement of coping and social motives, partially supporting Hypothesis 1 (see Figure 1).
• And, treatment of men might focus on encouraging men to cope with stress and negative emotions in ways other than substance use.

This heightened activation can lead to a more intense and prolonged stress response in women. Conversely, testosterone in men can have a stress-buffering effect, potentially explaining why men might appear less reactive to stress in certain situations. Women who experienced stress drank heavily regardless of if their first drink contained alcohol or not. Men whose first drink contained alcohol and who then experienced stress drank more than men who received the alcohol-free drink. After that, all participants were allowed to drink however much they wanted (up to a certain BAC limit) for 90 minutes. Participants were encouraged to moderate their drinking to only one alcoholic drink per hour, buttressed by financial incentives (participants who stuck to one alcoholic drink per hour would get more money at the end than those who didn’t).

Unpacking the Gender Biases of Alcohol

Most research investigating the importance of stress for alcohol misuse has focused on extreme stressors or major life events, with less attention to chronic stressors, particularly those related to normative developmental challenges. Moreover, relatively little work has focused on the mechanisms involved in these relations. Considering normative developmental stress and understanding the underlying processes linking normative stress with alcohol use for young men and women can inform tailored interventions aimed at preventing the negative impacts of stress on alcohol misuse in early adulthood. The current study focused on one underlying process, the mediating role of drinking motives, in the relations between two different normative stressors (occupational stress and relationship stress) and alcohol misuse, with close attention paid to the role of gender. Additionally, the possibility of bidirectional relations between normative stress and alcohol misuse was explored. Despite the potential for drinking motives to mediate the stress–alcohol misuse association, tests of this mediational model in normal young adult samples are limited.

Tears in your beer: Gender differences in coping drinking motives, depressive symptoms and drinking

Additionally, for women, two effects (one direct and one indirect) were now significant that were not significant in the cross-sectional model. Greater endorsement of coping motives was directly related to more negative consequences, and more relationship stress was indirectly related to more negative consequences from alcohol use through greater endorsement of coping motives. In conclusion, addressing the gender divide in stress drinking requires a multifaceted approach that takes into account biological, psychological, and sociocultural factors. By recognizing and addressing these differences, we can work towards developing more effective strategies to combat stress-related alcohol use and promote healthier coping mechanisms for all individuals, regardless of gender. The gender divide in stress drinking is a complex issue rooted in biological, psychological, and sociocultural factors.