Participants consumed alcoholic beverages in a simulated bar while experiencing stressful and non-stressful situations. Stress led women, but not men, to drink more than intended, a finding that demonstrates the importance of studying sex differences in alcohol consumption. The study was published in Psychology of Addictive Behaviors.
"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," said Julie Patock-Peckham, assistant research professor at ASU and lead author on the study.
The study took place in a research laboratory designed to simulate a bar, complete with a bartender, bar stools and lively conversations. The participants included 105 women and 105 men. They were randomized into different groups, with some either experiencing a stressful situation and others a non-stressful situation. Next, half the participants received an alcoholic drink that was equivalent to three cocktails, and the other half received three non-alcoholic drinks. After that, all participants had unrestricted access to alcoholic drinks from the bar for 90 minutes.
[...] The experimental set-up let the research team determine whether stress, the initial drink or the combination of the two caused how much alcohol the participants consumed. The team measured alcohol consumption in total number of drinks consumed and by using breath blood alcohol content (BAC).
Exposure to stress led to heavier drinking in all participants. Men who received a first drink with alcohol in it and experienced stress drank more than men who received the placebo.
Whether the first drink was alcoholic or not did not matter for women: Experiencing stress led to heavy drinking.
Journal Reference:
Julie A. Patock-Peckham, William R. Corbin, Heather Smyth, et al. Effects of stress, alcohol prime dose, and sex on ad libitum drinking.. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, 2021; DOI: 10.1037/adb0000801
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 21 2021, @09:39AM (13 children)
Totally doesn't happen in men.. I don't exist. Got it.
If you don't think I have alcohol problems driven by stress, ask my ex wife or the legal system. They seem to think otherwise.
Not drinking now, but damn, did it ever fuck up my life and others. For starters, I'd like to have never gotten in my car, and I'd like my friend to be alive. Stick to weed, folks.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 21 2021, @09:41AM
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 21 2021, @02:37PM (9 children)
sounds like you haven't learned anything
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Tuesday December 21 2021, @05:47PM (2 children)
Weed is only dangerous if the cops show up.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 21 2021, @06:47PM
The cops know I smoke. The courts know I smoke. I'm literally tested and they get positive test results for it.
I don't drink OR drive anymore, so it'd be pretty fucking hard to crash a car again.
I suspect that if weed were the issue, not my having gone and made irresponsible choices about what I did while intoxicated, then they'd be arresting me again.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday December 22 2021, @04:12PM
Not true - it still slows your reaction times and compromises your judgement. Not quite as badly as alcohol, but still quite significantly. Weed also tends to make you even more easily distracted than alcohol does.
The real-world consequences however tend to be mitigated by the fact that weed tends to make you feel impaired and promote caution/paranoia, whereas alcohol tends to make you overconfident and promote a sense of reckless invulnerability.
In practice that means a drunk driver is far more dangerous than a stoned one, but if you believe weed is harmless and try to drive while high like you do when you're sober you're still asking for trouble. And you *definitely* shouldn't operate heavy machinery under the influence of either.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 21 2021, @06:41PM
I don't drive. Who the fuck am I going to kill with a car now?
Asshole.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 21 2021, @06:44PM (4 children)
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 21 2021, @06:59PM
Aww poor victim.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 21 2021, @09:56PM
No, there's just assholes who want to feel better about themselves by putting someone down. Assholes gonna ass, I suppose.
(Score: 2) by http on Wednesday December 22 2021, @12:30AM (1 child)
Post explicitly stated having a car; not driving it (or not having one any more) is a fucking big deal to leave out. That's on your shit storytelling, not the readers making assumptions explicitly made reasonable by the presentation.
I browse at -1 when I have mod points. It's unsettling.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 22 2021, @01:55AM
Fuck you dick, common civility means no one should have to preface their stories with details just in case someone is going to make assumptions and respond like a totally assmunch. Typical assmunch behavior though, gaslight the other person for not enjoying mistreatment.
Happy x-mas assmuncher!
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday December 21 2021, @04:57PM (1 child)
I mean, this one study with how many participants? Selected how randomly as a cross section of the global population?
And, people will file this "factoid" and trot it out as "scientific knowledge" "proven" etc. in both conversation and possibly decision making, if they have any such role in life that would make a decision of any importance based on this information.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 21 2021, @07:02PM
Chances are it will be used to "protect" women from their craaaazy drinking habits. Perhaps they should be only allowed to drink when accompanied by a chaperone. Won't someone think of the laidieys?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 21 2021, @02:06PM
Women that deliberately use alcohol as a coping mechanism are just another example of female oppression by the patriarchy.
Never forget that 1 in 3 alcoholics are women.
And that 1 out of 5 homeless people are women.
/s
(Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 21 2021, @02:17PM
To protect the fair sex, I hereby ban all grocery store sales of alcopops, box wine, lite beer, and wine bearing labels with sea shells or flip flops.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Tuesday December 21 2021, @05:20PM (5 children)
Color me a skeptic, but if you leave a stressed person in a room, they won't start drinking ... unless you've provided a good supply of booze. And of course plenty of not-so-stressed people will also happily get plastered if there's an open bar.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 21 2021, @07:06PM
Is it considered "stress" when you have to sit through hours of face-to-face socializing with people you meet once a year perhaps, always in the same circumstance, and have to chuckle and smile politely at the same old boring ass monologues for the n-th year in a row? Because give me the fucking booooooooooze.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by crafoo on Tuesday December 21 2021, @07:09PM (1 child)
They're talking about statistics and you're talking about edge-cases.
The facts are that: men and women's brains are different, men and women have different brain-drugs and in different amounts. Men and women process stress differently because the hormones that regulate stress are created in different amounts (sometimes in different glands) between men and women. The largest factor is testosterone which comes into play in processing stress.
I understand that if Equality is a core value that you hold you may have great difficulty when trying to integrate these biological facts with your world-view.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Thexalon on Tuesday December 21 2021, @09:12PM
No, I'm talking about "You can't drink if you don't have booze available."
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday December 21 2021, @10:05PM
I was thinking along the same lines. They make it obvious that every person in the study was primed to drink, then allowed free reign in an alcohol rich environment. They found somewhat different results between men and women? Whoop-ti-do - whether male or female, if there's no booze around, neither will drink. Either group might have alcohol in the house, or easily within reach, but not bother to reach for that first drink. However, as participants in the study, they were required to have that first drink or two, so judgement deteriorates, THEN they decide to drink more.
I'm kinda failing to see a major gender difference here.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday December 22 2021, @04:23PM
That's what I was thinking. Lucky women - when I'm stressed I *also* need alcohol around before I can start drinking excessively. :-D
In all seriousness though it sounds like they're talking about a situation where the subjects were exposed to a stressful situation while already at a bar drinking either alcohol or something non-alcoholic. For women stress increased their alcohol consumption regardless of whether they started with an alcoholic or non-alcoholic drink, whereas men only increased their alcohol consumption if they had already started drinking alcohol beforehand.
from TFS:
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 21 2021, @07:41PM
You have to drink much more to get drunk, now add in bathroom wait lines
Problem solved!
(Score: 3, Informative) by Subsentient on Tuesday December 21 2021, @08:29PM (11 children)
I'm usually either stoned, drunk, or both during my free time as of late. It's been a really awful time the last few years and I just stopped giving a shit and wanted the pain to stop. As long as I'm sober for my job I guess.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 21 2021, @10:11PM
Nothing wrong with engaging in the pursuit of happiness, so long as you don't deny others the right in your doing so. Best of luck, enjoy responsibly..
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 22 2021, @12:42AM (2 children)
Forgive this coming from an AC but this genuinely triggered my concern that you might be going early MDC. Are you ok? I mean, obviously not “perfect”, you say as much. And I’m not offering Internet Hugs, ‘cause that’s not my thing either. Just worried….
(Score: 2) by Subsentient on Thursday December 23 2021, @07:29PM (1 child)
I'm pretty fucking far from okay, Ace, but I'm in no immediate danger of offing myself, too much to do, no time to die.
I genuinely appreciate the concern though.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 24 2021, @03:05PM
Same AC again. My own experience with depression doesn’t qualify me to hand out life-affirming solutions to you. “Cheer up!” and “It will get better!” are some of the more useless things people said to me. I don’t believe they’re wrong but if it was that easy to just cheer up I’d have already done it. When I think back to all the years of schooling, absolutely zero addressed anything like “How to dig your life out of a hole when you feel you have no options”. Even when anything good happened it was difficult to stop feeling trapped to try to grab onto it.
Anyway, for whatever it’s worth, thanks for writing back. If a toe-hold appears, do try.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 22 2021, @12:56AM (3 children)
If it lasts for years, the drugs are causing the pain, not covering it. Get a hold of yourself.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 22 2021, @02:24AM (1 child)
In case you have anyone in your life you actually care about, that response is the exact opposite of helpful and such "tough love" actually makes things worse. Yes drinking doesn't help mental health issues, yes a lot of people use alcohol to mask their pain, but most often there are underlying problems that need therapy or actual self reflection.
The best thing you can actually do is talk to them, hear their frustrations and do your absolute best to not offer suggestions. If someone is drinking a lot the most I ever say is that booze ultimately makes you more depressed so be careful and aware.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 22 2021, @03:41AM
Bullshit. Treating someone acting like a baby, like a baby, does not help them. Treating them harshly doesn't help them either, but don't act like you're doing something productive by having an "it's all right" positivity-fest when shit really sucks.
(Score: 2) by Subsentient on Thursday December 23 2021, @07:20PM
The pain started long before I started smoking weed and drinking, but it's been getting worse.
Look, I have no hope for my future, no hope for anyone else's, and I feel that I am consigned to watch the world self-destruct with only the horrors in my own mind and extremely severe OCD to keep me company.
I work for inadequate pay in a sinking ship of a company that was decimated by the pandemic, but I'm ethically bound to remain because others have far more to lose than me if I quit now, so I'm trying to stem the bleeding.
My best friend died of COVID-19 complications in November and my cat died shortly before. I care for a mother with severe paranoia and dementia and it seems often the only friends that reach out to me
anymore only want what I can do for them.
If you have faith, or even the general notion that things are going to be okay, I envy you. I have no hope at all. I expect that my ill mother will die in a couple years, and then I'll slowly fade into madness before taking my own life.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
(Score: 3, Insightful) by acid andy on Wednesday December 22 2021, @03:37AM (1 child)
Sorry to hear that man. I have some idea what it feels like though not to quite the same level. I haven't got any magical fixes but I'll just repeat what I said before that if you ever feel it would help to have someone to discuss things with off the site, even just to bitch about things, let me know. If you'd rather I stop these mostly useless gestures, that's fine too. I just don't like it when someone's left to feel like no-one gives a crap.
error count exceeds 100; stopping compilation
(Score: 3, Informative) by Subsentient on Thursday December 23 2021, @07:46PM
I appreciate the sentiment bud. I know there's a few who still care, and it's part of what keeps me going.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 22 2021, @04:59PM
Getting ripped is not sustainable. You need another way to cope: people you can talk to or see on a regular basis outside of a bar or drugging setting. Getting exercise in the outdoors helps too. Maybe a gym so you can see yourself improve and start setting some fitness goals and see yourself hitting them.
Drink and drugs are a quick "fix" that will drag you down in the long run. But you know that already. Please try any of the options I listed above, esp. finding some friends / family / acquaintances with healthy attitudes and healthy lifestyles. You need decent company.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 21 2021, @10:09PM
The findings could also suggest, that, given everyone is prone to drinking more under stress, generally; the women may have just been more stressed out than the men. I would think there are more interesting phenomena to study, eitherway...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 21 2021, @11:26PM
A man walks in to a bar, and they give him a free triple or jack shit; but it's all good because after that the drinks are free. That's the joke. They're experimental methodology is literally a joke.