While Americans with higher socioeconomic status use alcohol at similar rates or even more often than those with fewer financial resources, people with lower socioeconomic status often face greater consequences for drinking, including loss of employment, health complications, arrests, and convictions. One noticeable problem with the genre is that it ignores the socioeconomic and racial realities of alcohol dependency among women in the U.S.
A close look at more than a dozen books in this genre, all of which I initially read in my first sober year, reveals themes of work and family stress, eating disorders, childhood trauma, sorrow, anger, and, in many cases, success in recovery. If you go to your local library or bookstore and peruse the psychology sections, you are likely to come across at least a couple of books about addiction written by women who have journeyed through sobriety. Sexual minority women face even greater risks they are seven times more likely to meet the criteria for alcohol dependence compared to heterosexual women. Alcohol presents even more serious problems for women of color and of lower socioeconomic status, as these women are far less likely to receive treatment and experience greater stigmatization and discrimination for substance abuse issues. In recent years, beverage corporations have aggressively pursued women by linking alcohol with breast cancer awareness pink ribbons (also known as “pink washing”), promoting “skinny” drinks, and posting social media content that conflates drinking with female empowerment. Approximately 1 out of every 20 pregnant women binge drinks while pregnant. In 2019, 4 percent of women in the United States had an alcohol use disorder, and 13 percent of adult women binge drank several times each month. Alcohol poses an ever-increasing threat to women’s health and the quality of their lives.
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