Gender Differences On Substance Abuse

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In this paper I will be addressing the gender difference on substance abuse; looking into what makes a specific gender more prevalent to alcohol and drug dependency. According to many of the scholarly articles I’ve read men are much more likely to have chemical dependency issues. Looking deeper in the issue I found that there may be a link between society and these dependencies as well as some genes in men that aren’t in women. According to The Psychiatric Clinics of North America the Epidemiologic Catchment Area study during the early 1980’s, they ran a one month test for substance abuse disorders based on gender. They had found the men had a five times greater chance of an alcohol dependency disorder and were two or three times more prevalent …show more content…
Obviously just because someone works in the business world doesn’t mean your subjected to becoming an alcoholic. I think that any high stress job with long hours and traveling could make someone want to come home at night and have a drink or two, which is categorized as being alcohol dependent. Besides societal roles there are many other reasons why someone may start becoming a substance abuser. Looking into how these types of patterns link back to the substance abusers as children we can look the effects of ADHD, Conduct Disorder, and Substance use and abuse starting in adolescence. According to an article I found produced by Am J Psychiatry in 1999, around 3-5% of school children have ADHD with majority of them being boys. There is supposedly a relation between adolescence with this disorder and future drug dependency. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that males are more likely to not only struggle with substance abuse but are also more likely to have a learning or conduct disorder. The differences in substance abuse and gender tend to take on many different forms on how they attack each individual. More than 30% of children with ADHD also have a form of a conduct disorder, an example would be Oppositional Defiance Disorder which make a child extremely non-compliant to authority. ODD then would also make it more likely for the person to …show more content…
From the article I’ve looked through so far there seems to be no significant amount of evidence leading proving which gender has great dependency problems. According to Frontiers in neuroendocrinology females take lower doses of licit and illicit drugs based on different genes that allows them to feel the substance more at a lower dose than a male. Females are at greater risk of relapse following abstinence though. In my opinion I definitely agree with the fact woman do have lower tolerance to drug and alcohol use. I also read a study from the University of Rochester that woman contain more of the enzyme that breaks down alcohol which makes the effects come on ten times faster than in men. I think that same receptors or enzyme would play a similar role in the breaking down of other mind altering substances. Now that I think about it, since woman need less of these substances to feel that same effects maybe the physical addictions and dependencies have more of an effect on men due to the enzyme not being at the same level as woman breaking it down slower. This being something that has to involve nature and genes that are passed down overtime maybe men do have a greater chance of having substance abuse issues do to nature and nurture. You’d also have to take into consideration whether you grown up in a low income household or

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