Stress can cause women to grab a drink more than men

By Tom Campbell via SWNS

Stress drives women to drink more than it does for men, a study suggests.

Men who start by ordering a drink after a stressful day are less likely to end up polishing off the bottle, unlike women, scientists have found.

While men are more likely to have a drinking problem, women are catching up, and are more likely to suffer from related health problems.

It's estimated that more than 6 percent of adults in the U.S. have an alcohol use disorder, about 1 in 12 men and 1 in 25 women.

Now researchers at Arizona State University have discovered stress could affect men and women's drinking habits in different ways.

Assistant professor Julie Patock-Peckham said: "Some people can intend to have one or two alcoholic beverages and stop drinking, but other people just keep going.

"This impaired control over drinking is one of the earliest indicators of alcohol use disorders, and we know stress contributes to both impaired control over drinking and dysregulated drinking.

"The role of stress in impaired control over drinking is understudied, especially in women."

The researcher invited 105 men and 105 women to visit their laboratory, which had been designed to look like a bar, with stools, a bartender and lively conversations.

Before raising their glasses, participants were divided into two groups, with some experiencing a stressful situation and others not.

Half the participants were then given an alcoholic drink equivalent to three cocktails, while others received three virgin drinks.

Next, they were then all given unrestricted access to alcoholic drinks from the bar for 90 minutes.

Dr. Patock-Peckham said: "We know that both genes and the environment play a role in problematic drinking.

"We can’t do anything about the genes, but we can intervene with the environment.

"Stress and impaired control over drinking are tightly connected, and because stress is something we can manipulate, we tested whether stressors cause dysregulated drinking."

Participants were then breathalyzed and the researchers tallied up how many drinks each person had consumed.

Overall, being exposed to stress led to heavier drinking among all participants, the researchers found.

But men who were stressed and given alcohol before the open bar, hit the booze harder than those who started with a soft drink.

Women who were stressed on the other hand, drank more regardless of whether their first drink was with or without alcohol.

Dr. Patock-Peckham said: "That women just needed the stress but men needed the push of already having alcohol on board, that shows how important this type of research is.

"The outcomes from alcohol use are not the same for men and women, and we cannot keep using models that were developed in men to help women.”

The findings were published in the journal Psychology of Addictive Behaviors.