Why are addicts usually men?

[Hellin301]

Am I stereotyping here?

I know of a number of alcoholics who are female, but a larger number of men who are gambling addicts, alcoholics or addicted to porn?

Equally it seems to be mainly men who walk on their wives and children for another woman.

Makes me lose hope in men in general

I think MN gives this impression, you'd never get anyone come on here saying my DH is great would you?

I'd stay off MN if you're not able to understand that there are 1000000000s of decent men and 100000000s of not decent women.

MN is very skewed.

A lot of women are addicts and this can manifest in shopping addiction, overeating/ under-eating, workaholism, codependency and look no further than mn for examples galore.

There are as many female addicts as male, I'm sure. Women may be addicted to different things, like shopping, prescription painkillers, food, but the addictions are there.

"Am I stereotyping here?"

Yes.

I have worked in addiction ,there are plenty of female addicts .

I worked in addiction services, you're stereotyping. Plenty of female addicts, unfortunately.

I personally know more female addicts, I have no idea what the picture actually is if you look at statistics.

It's not mainly men OP.
Loadsa women are addicts.

Equally it seems to be mainly men who walk on their wives and children for another woman.
Where do these other women come from?

Would agree theres plenty of female addicts in the stereotypical stuff like alchol and drugs but also addiction can present differently for different people.

Things like alcohol addiction etc can be linked to how we are socialised as kids. In my family its the men who get taken to the bookies, taken to the pub with their dads etc. It can be a toxic mix when combined with a sometimes unhealthy attitude towards males being not historically encouraged to talk about their emotions or encouraged to use unhealthy coping mechanisms(eg. Angry at your partner? Go to the pub! Bad day at work? Have a couple in the pub!)

Have you any evidence to support that assertion, OP?

Statistically you are mostly right by the way, the majority of people engaged in substance misuse programs are men. This is true in alcohol, opiate and general stats.

However stats are always prone to being skewed. The stats are people with known issues. Is it that women are less likely to be seen as an addict ? Less likely to engage in programmes? More likely to hide addiction (which could be for a range of reasons rg. Fear of child services, stigma etc,)? More likely to engage in other addictions that arent captured by services eg. Shopping or sex?

Equally it seems to be mainly men who walk on their wives and children for another woman.

This isn’t comparable to addiction though. Addiction is an illness it’s nothing like walking out on your spouse and kids for another person.

I reckon it's pretty equal, but maybe less obvious with women?

Do more women have eating disorders?
Do men have more money to spend on alcohol/drugs?
Are they caught more by the police and ordered into rehab more often? (Or is this an American tv trope?)
Are women more likely to lie about their addictions because of fear of losing their kids?
Are female addicts better at lying about their addiction?

I'm a recovering addict and I'm female. Women often have more reason to keep their addictions hidden as they're often judged by society more harshly than men are.

@Bookworming

I think MN gives this impression, you'd never get anyone come on here saying my DH is great would you?

I'd stay off MN if you're not able to understand that there are 1000000000s of decent men and 100000000s of not decent women.

MN is very skewed.

My husband is the best man I know. I agree mumsnet is very skewed.

There are plenty of female addicts.

I do remember hearing from a friend who was in addiction research that there seem to be some genes related to alcohol addiction that make addiction more likely that seem to pass down on the male side. So in some families you will see a pattern of male addiction as a result of that. I am fuzzy on remembering the details of that however so I may not have it quite right.

There are more female smoking addicts I believe or at least util recently.

I also think there can be social reasons, for example if going out gambling is seen as a mainly male thing in a culture, you are likely to see more male gambling addicts.

As far as walking out, I think women are less likely to walk out and leave the kids than men. My own anecdotal observation is that where there are no kids, women are more likely to leave early in the marriage, and men later.

I would agree with the OP, i personally know men who are alcoholics, druggies and have walked out on their me wife. None of my female friends are like this. Who cares about being a shopaholic or trashtvaholic, it is insignificant and irrelevant

@GeidiPrimes

I'm a recovering addict and I'm female. Women often have more reason to keep their addictions hidden as they're often judged by society more harshly than men are.

In my family on one side there is a lot of male alcoholism. Not so much in the women - unless you watch what happens as they come into middle age and beyond. My feeling was they held it together when their children were young, once they weren't around, not so much.

i read somewhere that there tend to be more extremes of behaviour, more extremes generally among men.
that was some time ago, don't know if it has changed.
examples were serial killers, violent offenders, criminals, inventors,
millionaires, self-made;
creatives, writers, artists, well-known ones;
addicts,

@Ifailed

Equally it seems to be mainly men who walk on their wives and children for another woman. Where do these other women come from?

They are the single women who have been lied to and deceived into thinking the man was not married

A friend of mine is an addiction counsellor. He doesn't talk in great detail about what he does, and certainly not about any of his clients. But he does say that addiction is a human thing, not especially male or female.

My feeling is that there is greater (and different) stigma surrounding addiction with women, which stops many people coming forward and accessing help and treatment.

@thewoodfromthetrees

I guess what people were trying to say is that the same thought process might come out in different ways.

Addiction for me, is when you are facing negative consequences but cant stop the behaviour. A gambler who loses a 100 pound a day that they can afford might might not be as problematic as a gambler who loses 20 a day but is facing homelessness because of debt.

My mum is an alcoholic. She isnt physically dependent or a street drinker, however her drinking has cause lots of problems for my family. She wouldnt be captured in any statistics but her drinking was an issue to the extent that my childhood was mostly wrecked.

A shopping addiction that causes massive loads of debt is just the same as a gambling addiction. Someone with an eating disorder can be Just like a drinker will drink themselves to death ignoring the physical health issues.

I think women deal with their problems differently by talking so more often than not it does not lead to addiction. Men bottle things up inside and tend to deal with it by using drugs, alchohol and sleeping around