Gender Differences in the Psychosocial Determinants Underlying the Onset and Maintenance of Alcohol Use Disorder

We recommend the incorporation of sex and gender into clinical care guidelines and improved access to publicly available sex-stratified data from medication development investigations. While the majority of Africans (67.8%) abstain from drinking alcohol, many who do drink, consume levels and/or have patterns of use that are hazardous or harmful . Hazardous levels or patterns of drinking refer to use that increases the risk of harmful consequences for the drinker or other people . Hazardous levels can be measured in two ways—via total alcohol per capita consumption and total APC among drinkers. Both measures are assessed in terms of liters of pure alcohol per calendar year.

While addiction can happen to anyone, the article will discuss the unique ways substance use disorders affect people across a variety of demographic groups. While disparities were most pronounced in young adulthood for gay/lesbian individuals and mid-adulthood for bisexual men, bisexual women uniquely experienced disparities across all ages. Minority stress experiences may vary with respect to gender, age/cohort, and sexual identity, resulting in differential risk for substance use. They often deal with strong social pressure to abuse alcohol or other drugs. And men are at greater risk for certain health hazards related to drug and alcohol abuse.1 Knowing about these risks is the first step.

Drug Abuse Treatment & Prevention

These may be more helpful than mixed-gender programs for some women, such as those who have suffered sexual or physical abuse. Certainly, no one should feel obliged to start drinking for the health benefits. There are plenty of other ways to safeguard your health, such as regular exercise, a nutritious diet, keeping your weight under control, and not smoking.

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• Our gender-specific analysis of the mechanisms underlying AUD in adults revealed that lack of social support was causally linked to negative affect, mental health symptoms, and AUD symptom severity in women, but not men.
• In the same way, women are also less sensitive to the reinforcing effects of nicotine but more sensitive to social cues.
• While the inclusion of women increased in clinical trials , the majority of NIH-funded studies failed to analyze outcomes by sex .

There are important gender differences in terms of pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics. The small number of studies on gender differences in addictions is surprising when considering the modulatory role of estradiol in decision making and its interplay with dopamine in modulating reward, motivation, and cognitive processes. Using the same amount of alcohol as men, women usually have greater alcohol blood concentrations, which increases the risk for health problems. Men and women show equal rates of Marijuana treatment admissions, and both groups equally suffer from at least 1 other mental health issue (such as depression, anxiety, etc.). Men, however, are more likely to have co-occurring substance use disorders as well as antisocial personality disorder.

Drug Abuse by Sex or Gender

In one such study, Kenna et al. found that genetic polymorphisms interacted with sex on medication response. Women, but not men, who had LL genotype and equal or greater than 7 exon III repeats on dopamine receptor D4 gene, had significantly reduced alcohol intake when taking ondansetron. Substance use and non-medical prescription use is a leading cause of preventable morbidity . Recent estimates find that drug use costs men an average of 1.4 years of reduced life expectancy and 0.7 years for women . Both licit , and illicit drugs cost the U.S. economy $740 billion dollars per year due to lost work productivity, health care, and crime . In the chart we see the breakdown of deaths from substance use disorders by age.

In 2018, nearly 19 million people aged 12 and older needed substance abuse treatment. 964,000 perceived a need for treatment, 392,000 went on to seek treatment. 75% of deaths from drug use disorders among users aged 50 years https://ecosoberhouse.com/ and older are caused by opioids. 6.3 million LGBT+ adults had a substance or mental abuse disorder or both. 9.5 million or 3.8% of adults over the age of 18 have both a substance abuse disorder and a metal illness.

Investigation of sex-dependent effects of cannabis in daily cannabis smokers

Over the past 10 years, rates of AUDs have increased in women by 84%, relative to a 35% increase in men . Unfortunately, some people may think that drinking or drug use proves how much of a man you are. We see alcohol vs drugs much higher rates in the USA and across several countries in Eastern Europe. In the USA, this was dominated by illicit drug dependence, whereas alcoholism was much more common in Russia and Eastern Europe.