Aaaaaaaand another article about drinking rates increasing for women. My favorite line is from the end of the article "Women across the globe are now nearly as likely as men to drink and to engage in excessive drinking, according to researchers with the National Drug and Alcohol Research Center at the University of New South Wales in Australia." Additionally the article mentions that the drinking rates have also been going up for men (not as fast as it has for women albeit). To be fair, women tolerate alcohol less well than men. The fact remains that half the population (men) is drinking more and it's being ignored.

Walk away and focus on improving yourselves. Society is crumbling. We can always rebuild it later.

More older women are drinking hard http://www.cbsnews.com/news/more-older-women-baby-boomers-binge-drinking/

More older American women than ever are drinking — and drinking hard, a new study shows.

Most troubling was the finding that the prevalence of binge drinking among older women is increasing dramatically, far faster than it is among older men, the researchers noted.

The difference was striking: Among men, the average prevalence of binge drinking remained stable from 1997 to 2014, while it increased an average of nearly 4 percent per year among women, the researchers found.

Increased drinking and binge drinking can be a serious health problem for women, said study author Rosalind Breslow, an epidemiologist at the U.S. National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

Women don’t tolerate alcohol as well as men, and they start to have alcohol-related problems at lower drinking levels than men, Breslow explained.

She pointed out that on average, women weigh less than men, and have less water in their bodies than men do. (Alcohol dissolves in water).

“So, after a man and woman of the same weight drink the same amount of alcohol, the woman’s blood alcohol concentration will tend to be higher, putting her at greater risk for harm,” Breslow said.

For the study, Breslow and her colleagues collected data on more than 65,000 men and women aged 60 and older who were current drinkers. Among these, more than 6,500 men and 1,700 women were binge drinkers.

Older adults, in general, are at greater risk of the effects of alcohol than younger adults, Breslow noted. “They’re more sensitive to the effects of alcohol, which can contribute to falls and other injuries, a major problem in older people,” she said.

As the U.S. population ages, the number of men and women 60 and older who drink will likely increase further, bringing with it more alcohol-related problems.

In the study, said Breslow, “we found that between 1997 and 2014, the proportion of older male drinkers in the U.S. population increased about 1 percent per year, and female drinkers increased nearly 2 percent per year.”

It’s not clear why this is happening, Breslow added.