Women's Health
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I was a female alcoholic — my warning to other women as a survivor
Grace Adams spent her first sixꦗ months of living in Manhattan drinking it all in — literally.
Fresh out o🅷f the COVID-19 lockdown and a newcomer to NYC, the 25-year-old brunette was soon guzzling cocktails and downing glasses𒊎 of wine with friends every weekend.
She assumed it was a🗹 necessary evil of 🌌big-city life when she moved from her hometown of Baltimore into her Gramercy Park apartment in February 2022.
It’s what every fun, single, and carefree NYC woman appeared on social me𒁃dia to be doing.
“I was in the city, in my early 20s, partying and drinking,” Adams, who had a penchant for gin and🤡 tonics, told The Post. “New York🐎 is a nightlife, party environment. I thought I wouldn’t have any fun if I wasn’t drinking — I loved it.”
Adams is sharing her personal story after a new study revealed the rising number of women are suffering a🐻lcohol-related deaths,&✅nbsp;according to research pub꧋lished in JAMA Network this week.
Researchers from NY’s Hofstra University, Harvard Medical School, and the University of South Carolina analyzed nearly 606,000 deaths linked to alcohol between 1999 and 2020, based on Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data.
While men historically have been more than twice as likely to die🌟 from alcohol-related conditions compared to women, the gap is narrowing, researchers reported.
The male mortality rate increased by 12.5% betw🅺een 2018 and 2020, while the rate among females spiked by 14.7%, the researchers found.
Social media inspiration
Adams — a self-proclaimed “party girl” who failed to give up binging after graduating from Southern Methodist University in 202💙0 — relocated to NYC for a job in client services at a major advertising a🔥gency in Midtown.
Every Friday, she would anxiously watch the clock, waiting for it to strike 3 p.m. That’s when h🌳er drinking comm♈enced.
She’d rush home to knock back some spirits before meeting up 𒀰with her pals to sip a little more, and then booze the night away at bars and clubs. Her liquid indulgence spilled into her Saturdays and Sundays, when she’d suck d♒own at least 10 servings of hard alcohol each day, rendering her blackout drunk until Monday morning.
“Drinking is what we’re told we are sup💞posed to do on social media and [the movies] when you have no responsibilities,” said Adams.
And she’s not wrong.
TikTok happy hours
Beneath buzzy TikTok hashtags like #NYCDrinks and #NYCParty, which have garnered 71.7 million and 55.6 million views, respectively, high-spirited Gen Z and millennial women are c൩linking glasses filled with colorful mixed drinks at happy hour, popping bottles of champagne at posh lounges and chugg⛦ing beers during summertime outings.
Hitting the bottle after a hard day of do༺minating the Big Apple is a common theme in flicks like “How to be Single” an♍d in the “Sex and the City” franchise.
Ho🃏wever, heavy drinking among ladies in their 20s and early 30s is becoming less of a cathartic life hack and more of ﷽a life-threatening problem.
In fact, a June 2023 study on women’s binge drinking habits in the US, conducted by researchers at Boston University, found that childless women age 35 are at the highest risk of 🔴binge drinking and Alcohol Use Disorder — namely due to the recent uptick in women who’ve chosen to postpone par✱enthood until their late 30s and beyond.
“Alcoho𝓡l industry messages around drinking for stress relief and enjoyment have always been part of the industry’s advertising strategy, and we’ve seen this emerge on social media platforms,” said study senior author Katherine Keyes, professor of epidemiology at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.
“Stress plays a major role in the development and maintenance of disordered drinking,” added Dr. Shana Johnson, a physical medicine and rehabilitation physician in Scottsdale, Arizona. “It is not a big leap to look at soaring food and housing costs and think that chronic stress is taking its toll in the form of increased alcohol use to cope with today’s hardships.”
The report also noted tha🌳t women who turned 35 between 2018 and 2019 were nearly 60% more likely to binge drink or report AUD symptoms — including blackouts, dizziness, vomiting, and anxiety — than women who tꦜurned 35 between 1993 and 1997.
And after months of nonstop♐ swigging, those symptoms became the painful norm for Adams.🎃
“I’d go in and ou🧔t of blackouts throughout the weekend. I’d wake up hungover and with all this anxiety about what I might have said or done the night before,” she said.
“I’d have pounding he🐟adaches and would feel extremely nauseou𒐪s,” continued Adams. “But the mental gymnastics of trying to remember what had happened [while I was drinking] was so exhausting. I literally couldn’t get out of bed.
“I was depresseꦐd because I felt stuck in this tox♈ic cycle,” she added.
Embracing the label
But on Aug. 3, 20ﷺ22, she made a call 🃏for help.
“I called my mom and said, ‘ꦜI’m in pain and I can’t stop drinking,’” Adams recalled. Days later, her parents checked her into rehab at Ashley Addiction Treatment Center in Havre de Grace, Maryland, where sh🔥e received specialized care for 28 days.
“It was the best deci🐷sion I ever made,” she told The Post, noting that recovery didn’t come without its hurdles.
“At first, I couldn’t even say ‘I’m an alcoholic,🦩’” said Adams. “The best I could do was say: ‘I’m Grace, and I’m powerless to alcohol,’ because I didn’t think of myse✅lf as an alcoholic.
“When people hear that term, they think of some old guy drinking in the park, not necessarily someone young [who looks like me],” she continued. “But after a while, I embraced the [🔯alcoholic] label because it helped me I understand that I had a problem.”
Following her stay, Adams returned to𒁏 Manhattan, quit her job, and moved into the Release Recovery sober living house on the🧜 Upper East Side.
She resided there for four𒆙 months alongside a 🦄group of other 20-somethings overcoming addiction.
“I met all of these young, cool, beautiful women who were living the life I wanted to live,”൩ she said of her sober-living roommates. “Maintaining🦩 your sobriety in a city where you used to party was hard at first. I cried for hours when I moved in, but everyone was so supportive.”
And now Adams h🎀ad dedicated her life to offering that same support to other women.
She currently works at Recovery Release and with her growing “Sober Not Boring” audience of over 10,000 followers on TikTok.
“Before getting help, I didn’t realize that young women in New York City were getting sober and staying sober because the binge drinking culture is so prevalent here,” said Adams, who now enjoys juicy mocktail😼s and soft drinks when she hangs out with friends.
She’s also begun training for 🐲the New York City Marathon — her first-ever long run🧜, scheduled for November.
“I’ve learned that there’s no need t🌊o dilute your life with alcohol,” she said, just two days shy of her one-year sobriety anniversary.
“This has been the best year of my life.”
