Drink: The Intimate Relationship Between Women and Alcohol

In Drink: The Intimate Relationship Between Women and Alcohol, award-winning journalist Anne Dowsett Johnston combines in-depth research with her own personal story of recovery, and delivers a groundbreaking examination of a shocking yet little recognized epidemic threatening society today: the precipitous rise in risky drinking among women and girls.

With the feminist revolution, women have closed the gender gap in their professional and educational lives. They have also achieved equality with men in more troubling areas as well. In the U.S. alone, the rates of alcohol abuse among women have skyrocketed in the past decade. DUIs, “drunkorexia” (choosing to limit eating to consume greater quantities of alcohol), and health problems connected to drinking are all rising—a problem exacerbated by the alcohol industry itself.

Battling for women’s dollars and leisure time, corporations have developed marketing strategies and products targeted exclusively to women. Equally alarming is a recent CDC report showing a sharp rise in binge drinking, putting women and girls at further risk.

As she brilliantly weaves in-depth research, interviews with leading researchers, and the moving story of her own struggle with alcohol abuse, Johnston illuminates this startling epidemic, dissecting the psychological, social, and industry factors that have contributed to its rise, and exploring its long-lasting impact on our society and individual lives.

Over the past few decades, the feminist revolution has had enormous ramifications. Women outnumber their male counterparts in postsecondary education in most of the developed world, and they are about to do the same in the workplace. But what has not been fully documented or explored is that while women have gained equality in many arenas, they also have begun to close the gender gap in terms of alcohol abuse. In the United States alone, more than twenty-three thousand women die from heavy drinking each year. Binge drinking and so-called drunkorexia are on the rise, contributing exponentially to an array of health conditions and cancers.

Combining in-depth research with her own personal story of recovery, Ann Dowsett Johnston delivers a groundbreaking examination of a shocking yet little-recognized epidemic threatening society today, what preeminent researcher Sharon Wilsnack believes is a "global epidemic" of women's drinking.

Dowsett Johnston's authority comes from a place of experience. Eight years ago she was an award-winning senior journalist with Canada's major newsweekly magazine Maclean's and popular on the speaking circuit. She seemed to have it all when she was named vice principal of McGill University. In private, the high-functioning professional knew she was wrestling with a demon that had undone her own mother: alcohol addiction. Dowsett Johnston took a very private exit from her professional life and went to rehab. She reentered professional life in 2010, winning the prestigious Atkinson Fellowship in Public Policy, charged with examining the closing gender gap in the world of risky drinking. Sober now for five years, she retells her struggles with brutal honesty, affording us an unprecedented look at women and drinking that is both moving and enlightening.

Dowsett Johnston dissects the psychological, social, and workplace factors that have contributed to this crisis, exploring their far-reaching impact on society at large and individual lives, including her own. Comprehensive and emotionally riveting, Drink is sure to become a modern classic on the topic of women and drinking, much as Andrew Solomon's The Noonday Demon was for depression. Drink is a brave and powerful story beautifully told and an important investigation into an epidemic that we can no longer afford to ignore.

“Ann Dowsett Johnston brilliantly captures how addiction stealthily invades lives. She courageously delves into the lure of alcohol-whether it comes from the culture around us, the false promises, or the pain we seek to numb. Drink is an important and timely call to attention for the rise of binge-drinking and alcohol addiction in women of all ages.” - David A. Kessler, M.D., Author of the NYT bestseller, The End of Overeating, and Former Commissioner of the FDA.

“In this comprehensively researched and insightful book, Ann Dowsett Johnston chronicles her own destructive dance with alcohol, her recovery and explores disturbing trends in contemporary women’s relationship to alcohol. A crucially important book for anyone interested in women’s health and addiction issues.” - Susan Juby, author of Nice Recovery

“Drink is a gift to women, to parents, and to all who want to understand the experience of alcoholism. The writing is gripping and vivid, the voice personal, the research exacting, the stories revealing if sometimes heartbreaking, the conclusions essential. A triumphant life, a triumphant book.” - Gabor Maté M.D., author of In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters With Addiction

“Part elegiac memoir and part synthetic journalism, this book tackles bluntly the silence and complicity about alcoholism in women. It traverses subjects from brain science to public policy, from trauma to culture, always with powerful stories of women for whom alcohol became an insidious and destructive force. Without soft-pedaling the damage and losses, it is also a story of love, triumph and hope.” - David Goldbloom, MD, FRCPC, Senior Medical Advisor, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health

“A powerful and important book about the increase in alcoholism and binge-drinking among women, and about our willful blindness to the damages of drinking in our culture.” - Susan Cheever, author of My Name Is Bill: Bill Wilson-His Life, and the Creation of Alcoholics Anonymous

“wallop of a book… full of riveting candor…Johnston brings the weight of her journalism and academic experience to build a convincing case that women are increasingly succumbing to the dark side of alcohol” - Washington Post

“A game-changing look at one of our culture’s hidden problems . . . honest, brave and inspirational.” - Margaret Trudeau, author of Changing My Mind