Young American Women Drinking Harder

More young American women are drinking to get drunk, and are putting themselves at risk by trying to "keep up with the boys" when it comes to alcohol use, Newsweek recently reported.

Part of the problem is that women generally get intoxicated more easily than men. "The impact of one drink on a girl is roughly equivalent to the impact of two drinks on a boy, so girls who are keeping up with the boys are actually subjecting themselves to far worse consequences," said Susan Foster, director of policy research at the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University.

Heavy female drinkers also can experience serious health problems at an early age, including liver disease and gastrointestinal illness; women are known to be at higher risk for developing liver inflammation and dying from alcohol-related cirrhosis than men.

Federal research indicates that more teen girls than boys began using alcohol in 2004, and two-thirds of 9th-grade girls say they have tried drinking at least once. Among 21- to 30-year-olds, a 2001 survey found that 63 percent said they had been drunk at least once during the previous year, compared to 48 percent in 1981.

"Some women may be drinking more deliberately to get drunk," said study author Sharon Wilsnack of the University of North Dakota.

Many girls get into trouble with alcohol when they go away to college and are beyond the supervision of their parents for the first time. And easy-to-drink "alcopops" marketed to a female audience add to the problem.