;Resize=(1200,627)&impolicy=perceptual&quality=mediumHigh&hash=9f73f3cdc155612a5611a8ee37f58ff80b75c6cfbbf93acb6c4231881852a7d1 "Young, successful – and addicted to alcohol? Why women are particularly at risk")
“When I was in my early 20s, I was already sitting with the university psychologist and asking him if it was a problem that I was drinking two glasses of wine every day,” says Eva Biringer. “So I’ve known for a long time that I have an alcohol problem.” At first she just didn’t want to admit it.
The two glasses became bottles, film tears and headache-ridden working days. Relationships broke. The great love – alcohol – remained. It was almost ten years before Biringer, who was already a successful journalist at the time, drew the line. She hasn’t had a sip of alcohol since she was 31. In her book “Independent – from drinking and letting go” she gives an insight.
Biringer is not alone in her experience. While more men than women still drink alcohol in risky amounts, among the youngest adults, women have now overtaken men for the first time.
Risk consumption: Young, educated women are particularly at risk
According to the current alcohol atlas of the German Cancer Research Center, 11.1 percent of women are high-risk drinkers. For women with a higher education, the figure is 15.9 percent. Young women between the ages of 18 and 24 with a high level of education register the highest value. Here, almost every fifth person drinks alcohol in risky amounts.
Another study found that women with college degrees were twice as likely to drink alcohol on a daily basis than those without. But why is it that women of all people are affected, who are given disproportionately high opportunities? Who, like Eva Biringer, are emancipated, well educated, health and body conscious?
Perfect career, perfect wife, perfect partner, perfect mother
Christina Schadt from Addiction Prevention Berlin has been observing the trend for some time. “These women are often under an enormous multiple burden,” she says. “They need relief, and unfortunately that’s often found in alcohol.” The pressure to do everything right is usually greater for women than for men. They want to have a perfect career and be the perfect wife, partner and mother. “They have very high expectations of themselves,” says Schadt. “But of course the expectations also come from society.”
Biringer also sees a kind of “counterbalance to perfection” in consumption. Because all areas of life such as job, sport or nutrition are strictly controlled, you can let go and relax with alcohol. “Social status drinking is actually expected,” she criticizes. For many, it is also part of a “successful life”. This is also suggested in films. An example is “Sex and the City”, where the cosmopolitan cocktail is just as much a part of successful life as the closet full of shoes.
Targeted advertising and social media then sell alcohol as earned me-time. As an example, she cites US actress Gwyneth Paltrow, whose feel-good ritual included a glass of whiskey in the bathtub. “That really blew my mind. A woman who banishes everything supposedly poisonous, pasta, bread, sugar. And then advises the daily consumption of a neurotoxin. That is absurd.”
The way out of addiction
“Many are functioning alcoholics,” says Schadt. Everything seems to be going smoothly. Unlike male drinkers, where alcohol consumption is “outside and loud,” women tend to be “inside and quiet,” says the addiction expert. This also makes it more difficult for those around you to recognize the risk. Nevertheless, she appeals: “If you notice something about a friend or acquaintance, it’s better to speak to them.”
As a first step, Schadt advises those affected: “Talk to someone about it. You don’t have to solve this on your own!” The contact person can be the family doctor, a psychotherapist, the family center or an alcohol advice center directly, there are also specific offers for women here. Then individual solutions are sought – where can the burden be relieved, how can the environment support it, and one’s own requirements are also reflected on again.
Per capita alcohol consumption: Germany ranks 4th worldwide
But both also see politics as a duty. Because not only young women have an alcohol problem, rather the whole country. Germany ranks fourth in the WHO comparison in terms of per capita consumption of pure alcohol. Alcohol is cheap and always available in this country. The small liquor bottles are lined up at the supermarket checkout – next to chewing gum and chocolate bars.
In other countries, alcohol consumption has been reduced, for example by raising the alcohol tax, advertising restrictions or bans and restricted availability. In Scandinavia, for example, there are special alcohol shops that are not open 24 hours a day.
Little has changed in Germany in the last 30 years. “Overall, however, legal regulations in the areas of pricing, advertising and availability are largely dispensed with. This makes Germany one of the European countries in which comparatively high alcohol consumption is associated with few legal restrictions,” says the RKI’s health monitoring from 2022.
The income from alcohol-related taxes amounted to 3.17 billion euros for the year 2022. For comparison: In a study, the health economist Tobias Effertz put the direct and indirect costs of alcohol consumption in Germany at around 57.04 billion euros. Of this, 16.59 billion euros are attributable to direct costs for the healthcare system and 40.44 billion euros to indirect costs, for example production losses due to incapacity to work due to illness, unemployment, early retirement and premature death.
And now the permanent renunciation? “On the contrary: I feel free”
Biringer also functioned, managed relationships and was professionally successful. She also didn’t have that one “aha” moment that made her stop drinking altogether. “Not the therapy session, unfortunately not even a sexual assault,” said Biringer. But shortly before her 31st birthday, she suddenly realized: That was it with the alcohol.
She experienced the decision as the separation from a beloved partner. Lots of tears, last encounters – and then suddenly you’re over it. “Of course, not everything was always easy and great, but it was doable.” She went to therapy again. Today she says the best thing is that the constant veil that has hung over her life has lifted. “I feel much healthier, freer, happier.”
She doesn’t like the term alcoholic, neither does she who is cured or who renounces. “Simply because the opposite is the case: I finally feel free.”