Therefore it stays in their body for a longer period of time. Women also produce less enzymes to break down the alcohol. The health risks for women are grave. While it is an equal opportunity drug, he said even certain differences exist between the sexes in what brings them to treatment. Men are often referred from DWIs or municipal citations.
Women tend to have a lot more anxiety, depression, feelings of loneliness, and eating disorders.
According to Gammon, female alcoholics keenly feel a double standard which can inhibit their recovery. Society still tolerates a man who can't handle his liquor, but the woman who drinks too much in public is seen as socially unacceptable. This tends to have women hide their drinking a lot more. Gammon identified major signals displayed by both sexes. Lying about their drinking, making promises about stopping or slowing down their drinking that they don't keep, minimizing the number of drinks that they say they're actually consuming, pre-drinking so that they don't have to drink so much in front of people, feeling the necessity of having drinks at regular times, like the 'cocktail hour,' drinking so they can forget their problems or worries for awhile.