Posted on 03/23/2024 7:12:26 PM PDT by nickcarraway
When Karla Adkins looked in the rearview mirror of her car one morning nearly 10 years ago, she noticed the whites of her eyes had turned yellow.
She was 36 at the time and working as a physician liaison for a hospital system on the South Carolina coast, where she helped build relationships among doctors. Privately, she had struggled with heavy drinking since her early 20s, long believing that alcohol helped calm her anxieties. She understood that the yellowing of her eyes was evidence of jaundice. Even so, the prospect of being diagnosed with alcohol-related liver disease wasn't her first concern.
"Honestly, the No. 1 fear for me was someone telling me I could never drink again," said Adkins, who lives in Pawleys Island, a coastal town about 30 miles south of Myrtle Beach.
A smiling brown-haired woman sits on an outdoor staircase wearing a green sweater and jeans, her bare feet on the sand. Karla Adkins works as a coach to help people quit drinking alcohol. After she nearly died from liver failure 10 years ago, she thought her social life was over. "Honestly, the No. 1 fear for me was someone telling me I could never drink again." ALLISON DUFF But the drinking had caught up with her: Within 48 hours of that moment in front of the rearview mirror, she was hospitalized, facing liver failure. "It was super fast," Adkins said.
Historically, alcohol use disorder has disproportionately affected men. But recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on deaths from excessive drinking shows that rates among women are climbing faster than they are among men. The Biden administration considers this trend alarming, with one new estimate predicting women will account for close to half of alcohol-associated liver disease costs in the U.S. by 2040, a $66 billion total price tag.
It's a high-priority topic for the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Agriculture, which together will release updated national dietary guidelines next year. But with marketing for alcoholic beverages increasingly geared toward women, and social drinking already a huge part of American culture, change isn't something everyone may be ready to raise a glass to.
"This is a touchy topic," said Rachel Sayko Adams, a research associate professor at the Boston University School of Public Health. "There is no safe level of alcohol use," she said. "That's, like, new information that people didn't want to know."
Over the past 50 years, women have increasingly entered the workforce and delayed motherhood, which likely has contributed to the problem as women historically drank less when they became mothers.
"Parenthood tended to be this protective factor," but that's not always the case anymore, said Adams, who studies addiction.
More than 600,000 people in the U.S. died from causes related to alcohol from 1999 to 2020, according to research published in JAMA Network Open last year, positioning alcohol among the leading causes of preventable death in this country behind tobacco, poor diet and physical inactivity and illegal drugs.
The World Health Organization and various studies have found that no amount of alcohol is safe for human health. Even light drinking has been linked to health concerns, like hypertension and coronary artery disease and an increased risk of breast and other cancers.
More recently, the COVID-19 pandemic "significantly exacerbated" binge-drinking, said George Koob, director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism at the National Institutes of Health, as people used alcohol to cope with stress. That is particularly true of women, who are more likely to drink alcohol because of stress than men, he said.
chrissie-bonner-drinking-illustration.png Research indicates stress is one of the main reasons that people misuse alcohol. Experts also say unique burdens lead many mothers to rely on alcohol. "It's a vulnerable group," says Rachel Sayko Adams, a research associate professor at the Boston University School of PublicHealth. CHRISSIE BONNER But women are also frequently the focus of gender-targeted advertising for alcoholic beverages. The growth of rosé sales and low-calorie wines, for example, has exploded in recent years. New research published by the International Journal of Drug Policy in February found that the "pinking of products is a tactic commonly used by the alcohol industry to target the female market."
Also at play is the emergence of a phenomenon largely perpetuated by women on social media that makes light of drinking to deal with the difficulties of motherhood. The misperception of "mommy wine culture," said Adams, is that "if you can drink in a normal way, a moderate way, if you can handle your alcohol, you're fine."
And while it's unclear to what extent memes and online videos influence women's drinking habits, the topic merits further study, said Adams, who with colleagues last year found that women without children at age 35 are still at the highest risk for binge-drinking and alcohol use disorder symptoms among all age groups of women. But over the past two decades, the research concluded, the risk is escalating for both childless women and mothers.
These factors at play, coupled with the pressure to fit in, can make excessive drinking a difficult conversation to broach. "It's a very taboo topic," Adams said.
And when it does come up, said Stephanie Garbarino, a transplant hepatologist at Duke Health, it's often surprising how many patients are unaware how their drinking affects their health.
"Often, they didn't know there was anything wrong with what they're doing," she said. She is more frequently seeing younger patients with liver disease, including men and women in their 20s and 30s.
And public health and addiction experts fear that alcohol-related liver disease among women will become a costly issue for the nation to address. Women accounted for 29% of all costs associated with the disease in the U.S. in 2022 and are expected to account for 43% by 2040, estimated a new analysis published in the American Journal of Gastroenterology in February.
National dietary guidelines advise women to drink no more than one alcoholic drink a day. Those guidelines are up for a five-year review next year by the USDA and HHS, which has called a special committee to examine, among other questions, the relationship between alcohol consumption and cancer risks. The report will be made public in 2025.
When Canada published guidance in 2023 advising that drinking any more than two alcoholic beverages a week carried health risks, Koob sparked backlash when his comments to the Daily Mail suggested that U.S. guidelines might move in the same direction. The CDC report published in February suggested that an increase in alcohol taxes could help reduce excessive alcohol use and deaths. Koob's office would not comment on such policies.
It's a topic close to Adkins' heart. She now works as a coach to help others — mostly women — stop drinking, and said the pandemic prompted her to publish a book about her near-death experience from liver failure. And while Adkins lives with cirrhosis, this September will mark 10 years since her last drink.
"The amazing thing is, you can't get much worse from where I got," said Adkins. "My hope is really to change the narrative."
The Biden Administration is worried these women will figure out why they are so depressed and drinking so much. And then stop voting for Democrats.
Your original comment was formulated in the Present Tense, as though your daughters were both still engaged in that questionable activity, hence our confusion.
Seriously: Are you trying to troll us? Informing us that your daughters now no longer sit at bars, simply waiting for strange men to buy them alcoholic drinks, but rather have now "professionalized" their activities, is hardly reassuring!
Regards,
Ri-ight! As their eggs dry up and their assets sag, their prospects for Dating and Long-Term Relationships actually increase!
Everyone knows this to be true!
Why on Earth would a 40-year-old man looking to finally settle down and begin establishing his legacy set his sights on a fresh, innocent 25-year-old woman at the height of her sexual appeal / fertility, when he could instead have a 40-year-old nag with, say, 15 years of soul-wrenching dating experience - incl. maybe a failed marriage or two - under her belt?
Regards,
I think that Don W was merely implying that, as a younger woman, AOC was somewhat less disgusting - not that she was a beauty pageant contestant.
I also know young moms with special needs kids...
I also know some people who have gone over Niagara Falls in a barrel, and survived. And people who have smoked three packs a day, and lived to a hundred.
Statistical anomalies and outliers. Citing them does not strengthen your argument.
...and some men do not want kids or more kids.
Yes, and there are probably also some women who don't care about financial security or professional success when seeking a husband. Who prefer the lay-about who dropped out of high school and wandered the streets for a few decades trying to "find himself."
Again, you are roiling the waters of this discussion with your references to tiny minorities and exceptions to the rule.
Even if a man doesn't want (more) children, when seeking a mate, he will (all other factors being equal) invariably prefer the woman who at least looks like she could still bear him (healthy) children, as opposed to a woman who is obviously far past her prime.
I also know older women in very happy long-term relationships with younger men.
Does that happen so frequently as to warrant advising young women to postpone finding a husband and founding a family until after they've spent decades partying and "riding the carousel?"
Are you seriously suggesting that that is sound advice?
You are grasping at straws.
Regards,
“Well I am a woman that never thought AOC was hot.”
There has been a long-running debate here at FR over AOC’s looks. Everyone dislikes here politics and personality, of course, but there’s a small cohort that has expressed the opinion that she’s “hot” or “attractive.”
I’m with you in that I don’t think that AOC is or has ever been “hot” or “attractive.” Her looks are not hideous, but if I were in her age range, and I knew nothing of her politics, and we were both single, would I ask her out? No, I would not. She just doesn’t have it going on, for me at least.
The Romans used to say, “De gustibus, non disputandum est.” (”Concerning tastes, there is not a dispute.”), And that’s what it boils down to. Some look at AOC and see a “hot” or “pretty” or “attractive” young woman. Others look at the same woman and are like, “Meh.”
Her and Jack Benny.
After the ripe age of 24, statistically, a woman’s chances of having a healthy baby go down every year. So marry that 21 year old who thinks you are gross! Personally, I would rather not take the chance with old sperm, even if it was rich. Also according to some here they All hit the wall so then you will not be happy no matter how young you marry as you are basing relationships on youth, which is fleeting.
Yes, according to men.
“...[the] ‘pinking’ of products is a tactic commonly used by the alcohol industry to target the female market.”
I blame the Susan G. Komen Foundation for my drinking problem!
I remember one October when I was buying Chicken Chow and the bag was PINK! That didn’t make me want to eat Chicken Chow, though. All of my ‘camo clothes’ are a pink and camo blend - so there’s that. :)
In all seriousness though, I had to ‘break up’ with a dear friend of 30 years over her drinking problem. It was a hard thing to do, but it was me or the booze, Girlfriend.
So tragic. I’ve watched a number of these videos and I can’t watch any more. Such broken women, and men too. Women at their peak beauty from about 16 to 29. They learn very quickly how much influence they can have. They are deceived into thinking everyone is nice to them because they are so wonderful.
Many are dangerously and sometimes willing naive and are taken advantage of by males. They get run through multiple dozens of times, maybe have a child or two out of wedlock and then are in misery in their 30s, alone and basically unwanted in their 40s, outside of giving themselves away for random hook-ups.
As I said, I can’t watch the misery of how broken and desperate people have become. Too sad and pathetic. But yeah, women completely believed all the feminist lies from Hell about being a strong and independent woman and it destroyed them.
So these women are required to marry young so their husbands can leave them for someone younger when they are past their peak beauty? A tale as old as time. If possibly they do not want to have children or have children yet and they are self made and very well off due to their own hard work is that a crime? It scares you that a woman could be more successful than men? It is possible to freeze eggs before age 24. Girls are now going boy sober and not having sex with anyone until they are ready so maybe they are figuring out how to rely on themselves and better themselves. Young people are not drinking like previous generations. It used to be soley a man’s world. Women will own nothing and be happy barefoot and pregnant?
My dad came from a long line of town drunks. He could get falling down drunk on two 3.2 Oklahoma beers.
His kids have not fallen into the alcohol trap.
“Skutt Farcus! He had YELLOW EYES! YELLOW EYES!”-A Christmas Story
We’ve 6 point beer now and I started drinking it.
Preach it, Brother!
BTW: I learned that expression only a few months ago; you are officially the first person I've seen use it and properly conjugate it. In every other instance I've ever seen, people write, "get ran through."
Regards,
Bingo!!!
DEAR JANE: My wife gave up drinking - and it’s RUINED our marriage... can I divorce her over her sobriety?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-13232811/DEAR-JANE-wife-drinking-RUINED-marriage-divorce-sobriety.html
By all accounts then you don’t seem to have a problem.
Nothing wrong with a nip now and then. For me I had to part ways with John Barelycorn many moons ago.
The freight was getting to heavy to bear.
Yeah, alcohol can be your slave or your master and it’s usually your master unless you’re disciplined.
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