Happy Hours: Alcohol in a Woman's Life

Did You Know

• Female alcoholics are twice as likely to die as male alcoholics in the same age group
• Women metabolize alcohol differently from men, more quickly developing such physical complications as liver disease, high blood pressure, and hepatitis.
• A female alcoholic is more likely to suffer from depression, anxiety, and eating disorders, which may not go away even if she stops drinking.
• An astonishing four million women in the U.S. meet the diagnostic criteria for abuse or dependence.
• When a woman drinks, she is five times more likely to be raped.

These are just a few of the alarming facts you will learn from this book -- facts every woman needs to know. Mixing cutting-edge research with affecting stories of women who struggle with alcohol problems, Happy Hours challenges our assumptions and expands our awareness of the role alcohol plays in women's lives.

When her sister lay in an emergency ward in an alcoholic stupor, author Devon Jersild was advised to cut herself off from her sister and prepare for her death. Unwilling to give up contact or hope, she set out to learn more about the ways women drink, and what they need to recover. In this important book, she not only explores the forces that influence a woman's drinking but also delivers a wake-up call to women who are in the dark about the effects of drinking. And the facts are startling:

• Women get addicted to alcohol more quickly than men
• At one drink a day, a woman's risk of breast cancer increases by 10%. At four drinks a day, her risk increases by as much as 40%
• Female alcoholics are twice as likely to die as male alcoholics in the same age group—and male alcoholics die at three times the rate of the general population
• Women alcoholics are more likely than male alcoholics to have a mental health disorder
• The rate of alcoholics among girls and young women is rising.

Robin Morgan

Female alcoholics endure greater censure than male alcoholics but receive less help; most treatments are structured for men, though women inhabit a different reality and their addictions can have markedly different causes (and cures. By adding sociocultural contexts of gender and race to psychological and physiological frameworks, Happy Hours is the most thorough exploration of this subject to date. These women's stories are profoundly moving, and Devon Jersild writes in a style at once scholarly yet accessible, unflinching yet compassionate, objective yet courageously personal. The result is a major contribution to our understanding of women, addictions, and the interaction between them.

Devon Jersild's essays and stories have appeared in such publications as the New York Times, USA Today, Redbook, and Glamour. She won an O.Henry Award in 1991. She has taught courses in women's studies and creative writing at Middlebury College and is administrative director of the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference.