More than 500,000 middle-aged Australian women are engaging in high-risk drinking and there is insufficient help available, researchers have warned.
Dubbed the “sandwich generation”, researchers described a cohort of women aged 35 to 59 drowning under the pressures of teenage children, ageing parents, work responsibilities and demanding partners.
They were identified in a University of Western Sydney study which was the first to investigate the increase in baby boomer women drinking at problem levels.
Lead researcher Dr Janice Withnall said among those sandwich generation women there were those who had limited coping abilities or nowhere else to turn and took solace in alcohol.
For 16 per cent of these baby boomer women, the drinking was high-risk leading to dependence.
This equated to 624,000 women aged between 35 and 59 struggling with risky drinking or alcohol problems.
Dr Withnall said when women in this generation acknowledged they had a problem, they were often condescended to or ignored.
She called for the next national alcohol strategy to include more acknowledgment of the challenges of this demographic and support.
Her study showed such women could be helped if their anxiety-based triggers were identified early and they were given a multi-faceted treatment program.
Breast cancer and drinking
Dr Withnall started the Women In Recovery study after witnessing women trying to cope through drinking after friends and relatives had been diagnosed with breast cancer.
“We had not realised that 35 to 59-year-old women were high-risk drinking in Australia,” she said.
“What we saw as anxiety or depression or mental collapse or physical collapse was actually due to consumption of alcohol and it was quite a shock.”
The worst affected women often had limited coping abilities and past trauma.
“They explained how they just didn’t have one trauma in life, they had multiple traumas but they kept getting up,” Dr Withnall said.
“But it just kept getting harder and harder to stay in everyday life with the amount of stress they were under without using alcohol.”
The seven-year study specifically looked at how women could overcome problem drinking.
Dr Withnall spoke with 970 women and found it was a chronic illness that was not helped by short-term hospital stays or detox programs.
The main success stories came through abstinence and peer support programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous.
She developed a three-point plan that health practitioners could use to help patients recover based on what worked.
It included identifying anxiety-based triggers early, peer support programs, finding new ways to relax and new routines.
“You need counsellors, you need psychologists, you need social welfare people because alcoholism touches every part of your life,” Dr Withnall said.
She said it was important to help women because excess drinking put them at risk of alcohol-related disorders as well as other conditions like breast cancer and dementia.
“They just think they’re getting old – ‘I’ve got so many things in my head’ – when it’s actually the opposite, there’s less and less cognitive function actually happening,” she said.
“People drinking over two drinks [a day] are robbing themselves, they’re robbing themselves of their life.
“They could be doing a lot more than sitting in the kitchen drinking and crying.”
Mother of three reached turning point
Glenda Clementson was drinking almost a bottle of vodka a day at the height of her alcoholism.
The mother of three even raided her children’s pocket money to buy drinks.
After three drink-driving charges, two apprehended violence orders and numerous court appearances, she reached a turning point.
“I had a moment of deja vu in the police cell,” she said.
“I had been here before doing the exact same thing, yelling and carrying on. I was just so hopeless. I had no choice.”
Now sober for more than a decade, she dedicated her life to helping others and works as a counsellor.
“I had so much blame, fear, panic despair, shame. The shame was horrendous,” she said.
“When I had a feeling I just had to have a drink. I didn’t know what to do with those feelings.”
A key part of her recovery was identifying when she was hungry, angry, lonely or tired (HALT) and managing those feelings.
Her long-term abstinence was studied as part of the University of Western Sydney research.
“I can be there for my kids now,” she said.
“There’s help out there. You just have to ask for it.”