Recent years show a significant increase in drug and alcohol addiction in women

When you think of addiction, images of haggard men struggling to cope with drugs and alcohol may come to mind. However, recent years show a significant increase in drug and alcohol addiction in women living in the United States.

Women who have been raped, abused or harmed in some way are more likely to abuse drugs or alcohol than those who have not experienced these traumatic things. According to the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, almost 70 percent of addicted women have experienced some type of trauma.



What is Addiction and Abuse?



Drugs and alcohol are substances you ingest to make you feel a certain way. Though alcohol and drug abuse can eventually lead to addiction, there is a difference between substance abuse and substance addiction. When you abuse drugs and alcohol, you have some will power to stop or go a long time between episodes.



Addiction is something you cannot control in any situation. It, however, controls your feelings, actions and activities. Everything you do revolves around it. Women who abuse substances of any kind have a higher tendency to become addicted to those substances.



Continuous support during labor has clinically meaningful benefits for women and infants and no known harm

The Cochrane Collaboration conducted the study “Continuous Support for Women During Childbirth” in 2011 and concluded that:

“Continuous support during labor has clinically meaningful benefits for women and infants and no known harm.  All women should have support throughout labor and birth.”

This study clearly shows the emotional and mental benefits of having a close, intimate relationship with a professional before and during childbirth. The above study demonstrated that women receiving continuing support were most likely to give birth spontaneously and had a shorter labor. The role of mid-wife and doula in providing that extra human touch is therefore seen in easier pregnancies and births. Results for both mid-wife and doula successful labors are well-documented.

Additionally, according to the above study, women with continuous support used less pain medication and experienced slightly shorter labor. Their babies were also less likely to have low five-minute Apgar scores.

Sometimes I get scared or depressed and that’s the way it is. I’m not going to fake it to myself.

In the early 2000s a member of my family whom I love dearly (obviously) was diagnosed with stage III ovarian cancer. Everyone who knew her was devastated of course, particularly as her sister had died from the same affliction several years before. This family member, let’s call her ‘Eva’, was given a grave prognosis - a 20% she’d survive four years. We told ourselves, each other and friends or acquaintances that Eva was tough as nails and unquestionably, objectively, easily in the top 20% by pretty much any standard - she’d beat the odds. So far we’ve been right. It’s been ten-plus years and Eva’s doing great; traveling, enjoying life and dealing with the treatments in the same way she deals with everything else- tough as nails.

Honestly, I think Eva took the news better than the rest of us. She’s always tackled life with a cheerful but fervent pragmatism, trusting in logic and rationality above all else and this was no different. A number of friends and relatives were confounded by Eva’s perpetuation of an unshakably rational approach to and despite the diagnosis. Much to their bewilderment (and often dismay) she’d kindly decline invitations to religious functions meant to soothe her concerns through faith. Just as she’d pass on the endless series of folk remedies, teas, supplements, herbs, homeopathic solutions and cure-alls they’d heard or read about (all of which had been ignored or suppressed by Western Medicine).

Whenever someone would suggest to me some sure-fire panacea that had cured a friend of a friend, I’d ask Eva about it and she’d chuckle and quote the specific clinical studies done on said physic, determining its ineffectiveness. Regardless of whatever ritual they endorsed or medicant they promoted though, well-wishers would almost inevitably maintain that Eva “stay positive”. It became a sort of mantra.