How do women become addicted? Let’s start with history. For over a hundred years in this country, women and girls have been encouraged to self-medicate for emotional and physical symptoms of the hormonal cycle, which were labeled “hysteria” in the nineteenth century. In fact, physicians regularly prescribed opiates for moodiness, pain or fatigue, and Coca-Cola, then containing cocaine and served at soda fountains, was promoted in consumer advertising as an afternoon pick-me-up for ladies. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, today’s women receive twice as many more psychotropic medications from their doctors than men do, and these may be prescribed for decades. But a woman cannot take a psychotropic medication for years that that was originally prescribed for a temporary anxiety problem without a risk for physical addiction. As many a woman has said, “How can I be addicted to this? After all, my doctor prescribed it.” We call this accidental addiction, but it can escalate to a conscious self-medication effort on the part of the addict, as she elicits multiple prescriptions from multiple doctors and pharmacies.
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