Addiction to drugs or alcohol can strike anyone for any number of reasons quite personalized to the individual. However, a study conducted by the Journal of Abnormal Psychology suggests that men are far more susceptible to drug and alcohol addiction than women, particularly in response to a mental illness. While this does not mean that the issues faced by all persons are necessarily gender-specific, it does speak to how likely each gender will manifest those issues in the form of drug or alcohol abuse.
The study conducted by the JoAP, which garnered information from over 43,000 adults who were not institutionalized, found that men had a tendency to externalize negative feelings and emotions, which more often than not manifested in abusing drugs and/or alcohol. Conversely, when women participating in the study were faced with similar circumstances, it was found that they less often turned to drugs or alcohol for comfort, and more often than not were diagnosed with anxiety and/or depression.
A separate study conducted by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) involving subjects who did seek help found that women would often seek generalized mental health care and treatment, rather than specialized treatment for addiction. "This could be a result of the male inclination to problem-solve or 'fix' things", says Tyler Knight, CEO and Co-Founder of North Bay Recovery Center, a men's addiction treatment center in San Rafael, CA. "In the case of developing drug or alcohol addiction, this could be a result of 'fixing' negative emotions by anesthetizing oneself with substances," says Knight.
In cases where addiction treatment was sought by men, subjects may have identified their "issues" and set off to "fix" them as a tangible goal. The JoAPstudy argues that women are geared more towards a tendency to "ruminate," as the lead author Nicholas R. Eaton MD of the University of Minnesota puts it. This means that women may be more likely to look inward and struggle with the overall reasons for how they feel rather than use substances to block those feelings, which leads to a higher likelihood of being dianosed with anxiety or depression.
"Of course, there are no absolutes," says North Bay's Knight. "Men and women experience similar emotions when faced with hardships or mental illness." Some women absolutely struggle with substance abuse that may or may not be symptomatic of overarching mental health issues. Similarly, many men battle anxiety and depression either independently of, or concurrently with, substance abuse or alcoholism. What these two studies do suggest, however, is that because of the different approaches with which men and women struggle, cope and seek treatment, men are more likely to turn to drugs or alcohol as a solution to their problems.
