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3.1 Why are men more likely to drink alcohol than women?​

User Eddie Yang
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11 votes

Answer:

One of the top contributors is severe mental health complications.

men tend to have much less outlets for outreach, and are not socially accepted unless they meet ideal societal male standards.

Your loved one may be struggling with a mental health disorder like depression or anxiety. He may have lost a loved one or friend, been struggling with unreasonable expectations at work or maybe depression has been a life-long struggle. Whatever the trigger, your husband, father or son may be using alcohol to relieve their depression symptoms, leading to a dual diagnosis disorder.

This isn’t an all-encompassing list of reasons why men drink heavily, but it does give you somewhere to start as you try to understand what your loved one is going through. While this information may be able to help you put yourself in his shoes and talk to him about what he’s going through, it takes an alcohol addiction treatment program like the one offered at The Raleigh House to truly get to the bottom of his addiction and help him achieve lasting recovery.

In a 2010 study examining gender differences in alcohol consumption, researchers found that drinking and high-volume alcohol consumption was more prevalent in men than women. What the study didn’t dive into was the reasons why men seem to drink more than women do.

Part of the answer is the physiological differences between men and women. Put simply, men’s bodies are more tolerant of higher amounts of alcohol. This is because:

Men tend to have lower body fat ratios than women. Since alcohol is stored in body fat, men need to drink more in order to feel the substance’s effects.

Men’s bodies produce more of the alcohol dehydrogenase enzyme. This enzyme breaks down alcohol before it reaches the bloodstream, so men need to drink more in order to feel the effects.

For better or worse, men’s bodies are able to handle higher doses of alcohol. This may not explain why your husband, father or son started drinking so much in the first place, but it does provide some insight into why he drinks so heavily on a regular basis.

5 Common Motivations that Make Men Drink Heavily

So, why did your loved one begin drinking so much in the first place? And besides the biological factors mentioned above, why has he continued to drink heavily instead of quitting?

Realistically, there are many reasons why your loved one is struggling with alcohol abuse. It’s possible your husband, father or son doesn’t really know why they’re drinking. That’s why it takes an experienced and personalized addiction treatment program to truly get to the bottom of why your loved one is drinking.

Step-by-step explanation:

User Jacob Stoner
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