They have higher rates of cognitive impairment and brain damage. Mothers with alcohol addictions are more likely to be violent to their male children, establishing a cycle of abuse that increases the likelihood that those male children will go on and become abusive toward their wives and children in the future. When mothers are alcohol dependent, according to Miller, their daughters are significantly more likely to report sexual abuse, continuing a very different kind of cycle.
Gender alone can affect a system.
Women have less body water than men, which makes the alcohol and drugs more likely to be concentrated in women's bodies. Women also have fewer enzymes that metabolize alcohol and drugs than men do, which increases the amount of the drug or alcohol further still. Finally, according to Dr. McCaul, there may be an interaction between estrogen and alcohol-metabolizing enzymes, which may partially explain why the enzymes are reduced as well as why women who drink alcohol are at higher risk of breast cancer. Most medical knowledge and therapies were derived from and geared toward men. Still unexplained is why the discoveries took so long to reach the surface.