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Caroline Knapp poignantly and profoundly reflects the problem of alcoholism in the book Drinking, A Love Story. The author details how she started drinking when she was fourteen years old, and spent almost 20 years as an alcoholic in denial, managing much of the time to hide her disease even from herself. Knapp's very personal profile offers a glimpse not only into the world of alcohol addiction, its impact on families, potential treatments, but into the scope of the disease as it relates to women, as well. A 36 year old writer from the Boston area and a talented high achieving female professional, Knapp explains how very difficult it was for her to accept herself as an alcoholic, primarily because she did not fit the characteristics of the stereotypical drunk.
You know and you dont know, she writes. You know and you wont know, and as long as the outsides of your life remain intact-your job and your professional persona-its very hard to accept that the insides, the pieces of you that have to do with integrity and self-esteem, are slowing rotting away (Knapp, 1996). Yet, Knapp admits she spent 20 years driving under the influence of alcohol, suffering from blackouts, having sexual encounters with no memory of them, and even going through an abortion without knowing for certain who the father was. However, as Knapp aptly points out, she failed to fit the standard demographics for alcoholics; she paid her rent on time and arrived punctually at work as an editor and columnist for an alternative weekly news magazine. Because she did such a good job at hiding her disease from other people, she was long-delayed in accusing herself of it. Such is the nature of alcoholism, perhaps especially female alcoholism, as Knapp spends most of this book pointing out.
While Knapp's memoirs of her experience are personal and heart wrenching, they have much to say about the difficulty with facing the facts of alcoholism, especially for women in the United States. Knapp's memoirs of her long journey through alcoholism reflect part of the missing narrative for women alcoholics in todays social template, in general. Even in Knapp's case, the plot widens as she exposes not only her addictions but also the behaviour of her parents, the sexual abuse she has suffered, the conflict between her ambitiousness and societal expectations of her and her contrasting isolation from others. The conflicts that Knapp points to reflect a contemporary truism, despite the inroads that females have made professionally and personally. There are still powerful double standards, and unfortunately these standards can predispose some women to turn to alcohol. As Knapp notes, drinking had a lubricating effect that altered the dynamic.
It turned me into the person I was supposed to be: more confident, less shy, prettier (Knapp, 1996). Unfortunately, the fall out of alcohol abuse for women also reflects this double standard. Most men leave their alcoholic wives, whereas most women stay with their alcoholic husbands. This, of course, has more to do with sex roles than with alcohol. Women are still often economically dependent on men and therefore cannot leave even desperate situations. Women are also socialized to be self-sacrificing.
Men are much freer to leave, economically and psychologically, and leave they do (Brennan, Moos, Rudolf, 1996). As Knapp points out, by the end, drinking was the single most important relationship in my life (Knapp, 1996). A recent study conducted by the National Centre on Addiction and Substance Abuse reflects that Knapp's experience of alcoholism is not that isolated. There are an estimated 4. 5 million American women who are alcoholics today, according to the report. Study authors indicate that because of social stigma against female alcoholics is much sharper than the stigma associated with male alcoholics, only a small percentage of them ever seek treatment, as Knapp did (Carlin, Duffy, 1996). This is an unfortunate consequence for women, for recent research has found that women suffer greater psychological consequences from alcohol than do men.
Women do not metabolism alcohol as well as men. Male and female alcoholics do not metabolism alcohol as well as non-alcoholics. Among alcoholic women, gastric metabolism is almost nonexistent (Brennan, Moos, Rudolf, 1996). Moreover, most alcohol research has focused on white men. Women who become alcoholic are likely to be cross-addicted, usually to legal prescription drugs. Alcoholism in women is often misdiagnosed by physicians and therapists.
A 1997 article in Alcohol health and Research World observes that instead of accurate diagnoses, often female symptoms of alcohol problems such as depression, anxiety, mood swings and irritability are usually treated with tranquilizers. Fleming (1997) explains that these medications have a synergistic effect in combinations with alcohol and the underlying problem is neither diagnosed nor treated. He continues to explain that women consume two-thirds to three-quarters of all psychotropic drugs, and tend to take them for much longer periods of time than do men. Fleming suggests that alcohol-screening instruments should be used to identify alcoholism in patients evaluations. Had Knapp undergone such a screening it is likely she would have been confronted by a medial professional for her alcoholism, perhaps if she had sought professional help following her fathers diagnosis with brain cancer or because of her family training to suppress emotional closeness.
Knapp diagnosis herself instead as a high-strung child prone to obsessive behavior who manifested that finally in alcohol.
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