Women, Addiction And Psychological Distress

Mother Nature Has Made You Very Fragile! Don't Abuse Your Fragility.
It's been proven: amongst the two genders, women are the more vulnerable when it comes to succumbing to addiction. Ladies, if you are in the child-bearing age - especially between 18 and 44 -, then you are sensitive to becoming addicted to stuff like drugs and alcohol, even nicotine. More sensitive than your male friends.



So you become intoxicated with just a fraction of the quantity that men take without batting their eyelids. And while the macho hunks can ingest any amount of marijuana and opioids and cocaine and heroin - and flush them out of their system without much ado, you tend to hold the stuff within you till they begin to gel and mesh and merge with the exotic and unique chemicals in your innards; till a stage comes when you become addicted to them. And while it takes a lot of practice and effort for the male to get addicted, you, delicate girl, slide into addiction so fast that you don't realize it until it's too late. The researchers call it "telescoping effect" - this stage from simply "trying it out" for fun or to impress or yielding to peer pressure "telescopes" into dependence so fast! ...that the next thing you know, you begin hanging out with people who supply you such stuff.


This telescopic effect has got something do with the gonad-centric hormones that come out of those glands, ladies, which somehow cannot resist coupling with the swaggering psychomotor-stimulant drugs once they enter your bloodstream. Why the hormones cannot resist, nobody knows, but that's not the entire story, because gonadectomized (read castrated) females too have exhibited the same behavior. Going beyond these trifle chemicals, therefore, it is how you are constructed as a whole - your essence - which is making the difference. It is what makes a woman, woman, which is making the difference.


Determination to abstain helps but tenuously; for relapse is more the order of the day. One reason for this relapse, especially in the child-bearing age, is the menstrual cycle. You will have to guard against relapsing especially in the post-luteal days, when you will find it difficult to abstain, and will more likely give into the craving for the next shot.


Findings from research after research also point to structural damage in women taking place at a more accelerated clip than in men. So get ready to being told that the heart, muscle, liver and the brain has begun atrophying, earlier than they will tell your male counterpart.

Another observation is that women who face psychological distress at any point in their life, and who doesn't?, tend to binge on alcohol more than do men, which is more freely available than drugs (I am referring to the alcohol, not the men). Why? But whether it is alcohol or drugs, addiction to either has the same effect on the body.


Here are two research papers that talk about these interesting phenomena: here is one, this is another. (Subscription required to read the papers in full.)



The conclusion is: In whichever areas you might want to compete with men, ladies, don't ever think of competing with them on drug / alcohol intake. Mother Nature has the stack loaded against you on this score. Sounds pretty grim, doesn't it? It is.


So, for your own sake, ladies, stay away from such stuff. Nature has given you a certain fragility that you should celebrate, not abuse.