I drank to drown my pain but the damned pain learned how to swim – Frida Kahlo

It’s hard to write a blog on women and alcohol misuse.  There is so much information out there – some of it good and some of it not.  And, on top of it, each woman’s experience is so different but there seems to be a constant among young, stay at home mothers…isolation.

I’ve seen a lot of women abuse alcohol over the years, particularly women in their 30s and early 40s.  They are generally educated and mothers of young kids. Typically, they are married with husbands who work long hours. The alcohol use was benign when it started. A glass with dinner when your husband came home. Then you added a glass while making dinner and with dinner.  Then there were the playdates where there were two glasses, and then the glass making dinner, during dinner and then after the kids went to bed.  At the highest, it became 1-2 bottles of wine a night.  And then the real problems started. You started oversleeping, yelling at the kids more and forgetting school events and appointments…or maybe you just started “checking out.” It becomes necessary to lie to your friends, family and doctors about why you don’t feel well or aren’t acting the same.  Does this sound like you?

Alcohol Therapy can Help. 

If it does, I encourage you to reach out for help. There are many different options for treatment available to you.  It often helps to start with an in-patient detox. Depending on your insurance or plan of paying for the next steps in recovery, you can consider some of the options below:

  • Long term residential treatment program.
  • An intensive out-patient treatment program which is usually three half days per week of intensive psychotherapy and group work. The groups are usually subject focused and structured around developing your coping skills.  An on-site psychiatrist or clinician will assess you to see if medication assisted treatment would be useful to help maintain sobriety.
  • Seeing a therapist for psychotherapy. The therapist will often incorporate addiction principles into therapy.  You will work on developing different coping skills and strategies to avoid returning to alcohol use. Often, underneath the alcohol misuse, is an underlying anxiety or depression that needs to be treated.  Therapy is often very helpful in helping you to forgive yourself.
  • Going to Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). Peer support groups can be very helpful in addiction and AA is probably the best known. AA is a fellowship program where recovering alcoholics mentor those new to recovery.  There are meetings everywhere at all times of day.  You will obtain a sponsor who will guide you through the recovery process.

Unfortunately, there seems to be more stigma attached to women, particularly mothers, who abuse alcohol.    With this stigma comes overwhelming shame that prevents women from acknowledging that they have a problem and seeking help.  There are many different types of treatment out there that can work for you. If you find one not working, it’s ok to try something else.  By working with a therapist, you can come up with a plan that may incorporate multiple options above.