Women Often Experience Drug Abuse and Addiction Differently Than Men Do

Drug addiction is an intensely personal, highly complex experience that follows certain patterns, but evades easy analysis or “one-size fits all” types of treatment. Within the disorder’s complexities, experts have been able to identify certain characteristics that have been essential to treatment professionals and others who work with addicted individuals – yet for a long period of time, little attention was paid to the differing ways that drug abuse and addiction affect men and women.

In recent years, this scientific oversight has begun to be corrected, with several studies documenting significant differences in the ways that addictions progress, affect, and can be treated in men and women. For example, researchers have discovered that with many illicit substances, women progress from initial use to addiction much more rapidly than men do.

The following information addresses various areas in which researchers have made inroads in their attempts to understand how drug addiction affects women differently than it does men.

The Biology of Addiction
The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) has reported significant differences in the manner in which drugs such as nicotine, caffeine, and cocaine affect women and men:
A study examining gender and menstrual cycle difference in response to acute intranasal cocaine reported that mean peak cocaine plasma levels in females were higher in the follicular phase than in the luteal, whereas, overall, male subjects achieved the highest mean peak plasma cocaine levels, detected cocaine effects significantly faster than females and experienced a greater number of episodes of intense good effects. Further, research on the thermogenic effects of nicotine and caffeine in male and female smokers has indicated a significant increase in energy expenditure during activity compared with rest, but only in males.

From First Use to Addiction
Experts have long been aware that addiction often follows a relatively standard path of progression, but recent research has revealed degrees of difference in how the disorder progresses in men and women.
For example, NIDA has noted that cigarettes play a more significant role in the development of addiction in women, while alcohol has greater influence in the development of addiction in men. In cases of cocaine use, women are more likely to begin using the drug in the course of an intimate relationship, while men often start using cocaine with friends.

The path from first use to abuse and addiction often follows a more complex and circuitous path in women than it does men. Within women, these problems are more likely to be accompanied by – or exacerbated by – co-occurring psychiatric disorders, depression, anxiety, and relationship failures than is often the case with men.

Cocaine & Heroin
In studies of animals that were provided with the opportunity to self-administer cocaine and heroin, researchers noted that female subjects took the drugs more quickly and in larger amounts than did their male counterparts.
Studies on humans have revealed that among women and men who ingested similar amounts of cocaine, the level of cocaine in the blood system was higher in women than it was in men, yet women experienced the same level of cardiovascular response to the drug.

Abuse, Trauma, & Addiction
Many studies of drug abuse and addiction among women have noted that the majority of female drug abusers have experienced physical or sexual abuse. The NIDA website reports that as many as seven in 10 women who have entered drug abuse treatment have histories of physical or sexual abuse, while more than 30 percent of drug users who became pregnant before turning 18 had been raped at least once in their lives.
Physical and sexual abuse has been associated with lowered self-esteem, higher levels of delinquency, and increased drug use and abuse among young women.
In addition to preceding drug use and abuse, physical violence and sexual assault are also common aftereffects of these behaviors. Women who use drugs are victimized at a considerably higher rate than are men who use drugs or women who abstain from drug and alcohol use.

Drug Abuse & Pregnancy
It’s no secret that using drugs during pregnancy can be bad for both mother and child, and research has documented the degree of damage that drug use can inflict on a pregnant woman and her baby. Drug use during pregnancy has been associated with an increased likelihood of experiencing tubal pregnancy, stillbirth, miscarriage, anemia, hypertension, and a rage of other negative health effects. Children who are born to mothers who used drugs during pregnancy are more likely to have lower birth weight and smaller head sizes than are babies who were born to women who abstained from drug use when they were pregnant.

Co-occurring Conditions
Women are more likely than men to experience co-occurring substance abuse and mental health disorders. For example, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and eating disorders are significantly more common among female drug users than among male drug users. NIDA has reported that more than half of patients with bulimia have also experienced problems related to the abuse of drug and alcohol, while female crime victims who suffer from PTSD are 17 times more likely to abuse drugs than are non victims.

Treatment
NIDA discovered that women who receive treatment for drug and alcohol abuse are less likely to experience relapse than are men who are treated for similar problems. A NIDA Notes report on the organization’s website reports the following:

• The researchers followed 182 women and 148 men in 26 public outpatient drug abuse treatment programs in Los Angeles County. The programs provided group, individual, and family counseling; educational activities; and referrals to other health and social services. The treatment lasted 6 months.
  
  
• About half the patients regularly used just one drug - primarily crack cocaine, marijuana, or powder cocaine, and about half used more than one drug. Regular use was defined as three or more times per week. The patients were interviewed while in treatment and approximately 6 months after the first interview.
  
  
• The scientists found that the women in their sample were less likely than the men to relapse: only 22 percent of the women compared to 32 percent of the men relapsed to drug use in the 6 months between interviews.

Unfortunately, women who are abusing or addicted to alcohol or other drugs face a number of barriers to receiving effective treatment. These obstacles include financial insecurity, a lack of programs that are designed to treat female clients, and difficulties arranging for childcare while they are in treatment.