New Women Alcoholics: 'Looking at Red Wine Like It's Chocolate'

Oct. 22, 2013— -- Ann Dowsett Johnston vowed she would never be like her mother, a "poster girl" for alcoholism, who drank during the day and mixed her cocktails with Valium.

"I had no trouble in my 20s, 30s and 40s," she told ABCNews.com. "I was an award-winning journalist with a child at home and I drank a glass or two of wine when I came home from work, then I chopped vegetables and helped with the homework."

But when she hit menopause and took on a high-pressure job as vice-president of McGill University, working around the clock, her happy hour turned into "three, into four and five drinks a night."

Johnston, who is 60 and now lives in Toronto, said growing numbers of well-educated women are struggling with alcoholism and, in many parts of the world, particularly Britain, their rates of abuse equal that of men.

In her new book "Drink," she draws on personal experience and research to look at the rising number of women who abuse alcohol.

"I call myself, for better or worse, the poster girl of modern alcoholic female," said Johnston. "I didn't look like my mother's drunk."

"We have normalized drinking," she said. "We look at red wine like it's dark chocolate. We know the downsides of the tanning bed and trans fats, but not the downside of our favorite drug."

Several factors feed this trend, according to Johnston.

Women feel a "sense of entitlement that we can do everything a man can do," and the sociological revolution that tells women "they have to be perfect in every role, including perfectly thin, perfect parents and perfect at work."

Unlike men, who tend to abuse alcohol in social settings, women "uncork the bottle at home alone" and self-medicate their anxiety and depression, she said.

An analysis of national surveys shows that 47 percent of white women were regular drinkers in 2002, up from 37 percent a decade earlier. Among black women, the rate rose from 21 percent to 30 percent; among Hispanic women, from 24 percent to 32 percent.

"Our latest epidemiological surveys show that more than 5 percent of women in the United States have alcohol use disorders," said Dr. Deidra Roach, a health science administrator in the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism division of treatment and recovery research.

"The gap overall between women and men who have alcohol problems seems to be narrowing," she said. "Typically, we know from our population surveys that the people who consume the most are highly educated women with high incomes."

Though it is still speculative, the norms around drinking have changed "dramatically" in the last 40 years, Roach said.

"In the past, drinking to intoxication was looked at as unusual and you were a bad person," she said. "Now, heavy drinking among women is accepted -- and expected in some settings. Women go out for a night on the town with the intention of drinking to intoxication."

Alcohol is more available and more affordable, according to Roach, and advertisers are more "sophisticated," marketing alcohol pops and berry flavored vodka to women.

Drunk driving arrests are on the rise among women as are emergency room visits for alcohol-related accidents, according to traffic surveys.

Binge drinking is up among all age groups, and not just the college set. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 10 percent of women between 45 and 64 say they binge drink; and so do 3 percent of those over 65.